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SERMON XX.

PSALM xc. 12.

"SO TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS, THAT WE MAY APPLY OUR HEARTS UNTO WISDOM."

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"WE spend our years," says the Psalmist, in a preceding verse, "as a tale that is told." It is at once a humbling and an affecting declaration; for it intimates that whilst the life of man is brief and fleeting, he is himself regardless of the fact. tale that is told!" How just and lively the emblem! In a few more hours, another year will have closed, and another such "tale" will have been told! Before it flows past us as a thing forgotten, let us pause to review the character of its incidents. The rehearsal would be soon completed. Events which were the subjects of our long anticipations-the pleasures which we hoped for-the trials which we apprehended-the plans which we projected the dangers which we have exe

cuted, may all be crowded into a very brief recital. This circumstance, whilst it marks the vanity of our existence, is favourable to our consideration of the fact. What then, let us ask, has been in our case the character of the year which is well nigh past? To some it may have been as a mournful "tale”—a year "in which they have had no pleasure "-" spent with sighing, consumed in trouble, and in which they have seen evil.” Within its narrow space they may have been stripped like Job of every earthly comfort, of every earthly friend. The winter's wind may be howling mournfully over the graves of those who were once the nearest and dearest to their hearts-the budding promises of spring and blossoming hopes of summer may all have been blighted-and they themselves left to sit beside their widowed and childless hearths, feelingly sensible that "man walketh in a vain shew"-and that when the Lord "with rebukes doth chasten man for iniquity, He maketh all his beauty to consume away like as a moth fretteth a garment."

With others, the year may have been one of a very different character. The Lord may have "crowned it with goodness." It may have been spent in dreamy listlessness-in reckless gaietyin unvaried, but engrossing wordliness. To most, however, its records present a chequered pageits sky now bright with sunny beams-now dark with clouds and showers.

But this, after all, is not the question which

I am anxious that you should propose to yourselves. An important portion of your existence is rapidly ebbing away. That you may appreciate how important, just call to mind the long perspective of days, and weeks, and months, which appeared before you at its commencement. You have travelled onwards a stage, and that scene is now one of retrospect instead of prospect. But remember that by the length of that entire stage-by all those days and weeks and months, you are so much the nearer to death, to judgment, and eternity-to heaven or to hell! Now then, I do ask of young and old, what has been the character of the past year as respects your preparation for these awful events? You have had space to repent. Have you repented? Warnings and invitations have been addressed to you. Have you heeded them? Have you accepted them? The Spirit has pleaded with you. Have you inclined your ear to his godly motions? The Lord Jesus has stood at the door of your heart and knocked. Have you opened unto him? You stand silent, conscience-stricken. Each one feels that he has been negligent and indolent, that time has been wasted and eternity forgotten-that this world has been served and heaven disregarded. O then, my brethren, if you are sensible of the error of your ways, how applicable will the words of Moses, the man of God, appear to you-how earnestly will you address yourselves to Him, "the dwelling-place of his people in all generations,"

and cry,

"So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." We have here to notice,

I. THE PSALMIST'S PETITION.

II. THE END TO WHICH IT WAS DIRECTED.

"Teach us to

I. The PETITION of the text is, number our days," and this suggests,

i. A duty to be discharged.

ii. An inaptitude on our part to discharge it. iii. Our consequent need of the Divine assistWe have then

ance.

i. An important duty to discharge—that we should "number our days." The very term implies,

(1.) That they have a limit, and that this is within the scope of our powers to calculate. It would be folly to speak of measuring that which is infinite-of numbering, that which is innumerable. But what in sooth, is the limit? We refer to the lively oracles of truth, and we read in the tenth verse" The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away." And though to the young and the novice this may seem to open an almost interminable vista of futurity, yet the verdict of experience has been the same in all generations. History and fiction, poets and philosophers, have uniformly recognized the position that life is short. In fact there is no truth more certain-no apothegm more trite.

As

for revelation, it would seem to have exhausted all "the chambers of imagery" in order to convey the same simple but important idea. Fleeting as the shadow; transient and fading as the flower of the field; evanescent as the morning vapour; contracted as a hand-breadth; shifting as a pilgrimage; swifter than the transit of the weaver's shuttle, or the breathless haste of a post, or the bounding speed of a winged ship, or the stoop of the eagle upon its prey-these, and such as these, are the inspired, though emblematic, characteristics of mortal life. It is therefore a possible duty to which we are called. Our days do admit of numbering. The tale may soon be told.

(2.) The expression may further remind us of the uncertainty of life. A man has no need to compute again, the sum which he has once ascertained. His sole object in numbering it is to attain to certainty. Thus should we calculate the days of our years; and though their precise limit may not be discoverable, seeing that "the Father hath put the times and the seasons in his own power, this we may do: we may tell the sum that is past, and as we enumerate it, draw the inference that the residue must be proportionably diminished. We may call to mind, that as the flower of the field is liable to wither under every breeze which sweeps over it, so is that still frailer thing, the life of man, exposed at every moment to decline and death. It is but the snapping of a thread-the stopping of a pulse-the arrest of a breath-the

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