“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
When time draws on to a close with us, the last opportunities should be carefully regarded and applied to some such purpose as may show what has been the chief aim and the main design of past endeavours.
A sad thing it would be, indeed, if the last portion of our time were to be reserved for some single effort: for who can accomplish at one step that which a daily progress only can effect?
They who enjoyed long lives of old time, indulged, it must be owned, in some complaints which showed more of the weakness of our common nature, than of that proficiency for which the loan of life, whatever may be the term of its duration, is bestowed. The good king Hezekiah poured his lamentation, when it should seem he had much cause to be contented with what God had wrought for him in his day. He called that “the cutting off his days,” which it may be thought he might have met with more complacency of mind, from the contemplation of the benefits which God had enabled him to procure for Israel: but if there was any token of infirmity in this, it was coupled with a pious mind, and the suit was therefore heard and granted. If David, too, seems sometimes querulous in his pleas for the enlargement of his days, yet he added a good and becoming reason for it, that he might show the power of God to that generation in which his eventful lot was cast, and make it known to those who were to come.
But we may remark in general, that we do not form a right judgment of the Providence of God, if at any time we speak with disparagement of the term of human life, as too short for the accomplishment of things which form its proper end. We should consider, rather, that in all cases the gift of life is made capable of some sufficient share of the mercies and salvation of the Lord. It becomes so for all who partake a common nature, where they put no impediment to the current and communication of Divine Grace. Let us weigh this point with care: it has a seasonable application at this moment, since it will prevent undue regrets when any portion of the loan of life may cease to serve the purposes to which it may have been conducive whilst the season for its exercise endured.
If, then, it is the child who is called hence to an early grave, he goes with the seal of grace upon him; and what was wanting here, the bud, the blossom, and the ripened cluster, will thrive in a happier soil, and flourish in a more propitious climate. The thread of life, which, in this case, was so soon severed from the parent’s bosom, was fastened to the throne of heaven, and death has no power to dissolve it. The Conqueror of Satan, who brought life and immortality to light, will not exclude those little ones, whom He once called into his presence, from the rescued train of countless multitudes who shall hear that glad word of introduction, “Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me.” The privileges of the Gospel stood pledged to them in this life to render their change blessed to themselves, and to leave that consolation, in the day of sorrow, for surviving friends.
If the call hence comes in somewhat of maturer years, though still in the days of youth, the young man will have lived long enough to have learned the rudiments of saving knowledge, and to have practised the first lessons of Christian faith and Christian duty; and thus the best end for which the loan of life was given, will have found that happy earnest of its future fulness.
If, again, the thread of life shall have been continued to later periods of its course, no doubt the opportunities for all those advantages to which life can minister, will render it at all times a blessing and a boon. Nor will you wonder, in comparing the longer with the shorter term of life, that the suit of supplicating parents in our Lord’s days, whether for the child or for the youth, was so often granted by a restoration to a more protracted term of life. You will not wonder that our Blessed Lord should so mark the value of the life which now is, and its connexion, by a right improvement of it, with the life of glory. We are bound, indeed, to bless God for all the dispensations of his hand, for they all serve for good; but we must not reverse the language, not of natural feeling only, but of more just conceptions of the purposes for which life is given, or be led to think that death is the boon, and that a return to this life could be no blessing. When did our Lord make that answer to the mourner’s suit? or when did He reprove the tears and sorrows of survivors with that cold reply? So little ground is there, among the singularities of dress and manners in which some have placed so much of their religion, for refusing to put on the mourning weed for the departed. There is but a single instance in the Sacred Volume of a prohibition so enjoined; and then it was designedly portentous, denoting the last extremity to which offences had grown up in Israel, and the punishments which were to follow.
If now the term of life runs on, and the seasons are prolonged, old age comes forward, and not without its burdens and privations. Will you plead here with old Barzillai, to whom David gave a gracious invitation, to mark the sense he entertained of the value of past services, proposing that he should return with him when he was restored from exile, and brought back in peace and honour to Jerusalem? The old man’s answer was not entirely the most proper and becoming: “and Barzillai said unto the king, Can thy servant taste what I eat, or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing-men or singing-women? Wherefore, then, should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king?” But Barzillai, if this was ill spoken, showed a prudent spirit in what followed, for he puts in a prompt plea for his son: “Behold,” said he, “thy servant Chimham; let him go with my lord the king, and do with him what shall seem good unto thee.” Now David might, no doubt, have replied, “I want you for the council-board, where your sage experience may yield me better service than this youth can furnish.” But David had a due regard to the privileges of descent, and to the preference to be shown to the children of deserving parents who may spend their lives in the service of their country, and frequently can find no reward in this life, but in the persons of surviving children. It is the plain stamp of barbarism which rests upon those governments which do not recognize this principle, and where the hand of power makes one only testament for the frail possessor after all his services. David formed a different judgment; he accepted Barzillai’s tender of his son; he followed the same course which he had pursued with poor Mephibosheth, the son of the princely, noble-minded Jonathan, who preferred the known will of God, and his love to David, to the crown of one who had incurred the forfeiture of what he had so ill-sustained. David placed Mephibosheth at his own board, although he could neither serve him in the field, nor attend him in his exile. The first order made upon the king’s return, after receiving Mephibosheth’s excuse, was to confirm to him the grant which had before been made in his behalf.
Thus have we traced the several stages of the life of man, and in each of them we have found that life might be a blessing, and the ground of every blessing; and that God, ever gracious, ever merciful, might crown with some word of benediction the closing days of each such term or period of the life of man, just as He did the six glorious days of the creation. The morning and the evening (for so we reckon time) were followed by a solemn benediction, but with a special blessing for the Sabbath-day, the crown of all that stupendous work, the day sanctified by the Creator’s rest; the day claimed for Himself, with a marked reserve, such as the true Proprietor of all that He had made, and of all the bounties which distinguished man’s first abode in Paradise, was pleased to attach to one tree in the garden, by which the first pair might be reminded of the homage due to God, and might fulfil it by a strict regard to his commandment.