THE CLOCK.
MEASURING TIME.
Suggestion:—Object: An ordinary clock or watch.
I HAVE here a clock, with which I desire to illustrate and emphasize the truth taught us in the twelfth verse of the ninetieth Psalm, where it says, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
Whatever is valuable we measure. Some things are measured by the yard, some things by the quart or gallon, other things by the pound or by the ton. Land is measured by the acre. One of the most valuable things that God gives to us is time. Queen Elizabeth, when she was dying, was willing to give her entire kingdom if she could only have one hour more in which to prepare for death.
As time is very valuable we measure it in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries. In the earliest time men had no means of measuring time, except as they saw it measured with the great clock which God has set in the heavens; for He tells us in the first chapter of Genesis that He made "the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night." The most accurate clocks in the world are those which most nearly keep time with the sun. All the effort to regulate clocks and watches is simply to adjust their movements so as to have them keep time with the movement of the sun. God has given us a conscience which is designed to regulate our lives until they shall be in harmony with the life of Christ, who is the Sun of Righteousness. Hundreds of years before Christ came, people may have had some very rude way of dividing the time during the day and night, but their principal division of time was simply day and night, summer and winter. These changes of day and night, summer and winter, helped to mark the progress of time, and they still do. If it were all daytime, or all night, and we had no clocks, we would have no means of measuring time. When Baron de Trench was liberated from his dungeon in Magdeburg, where the King of Prussia had confined him in darkness for a period of ten years, where he had no means of measuring how the time passed and had even very few thoughts—when he was liberated, and was told that he had been in prison for ten years, his astonishment was almost beyond expression, for it had not seemed to him to be so long. It had passed away like a painful dream.
In the early period of the world's history, human life was much longer than at present. Men lived to be several hundred years old. I suppose you can all tell how old Methuselah was. He was the oldest man who ever lived. When human life became shorter, time consequently became more valuable and men were more anxious to measure it.
I want to show you how to measure time, and what makes it valuable; for David asked to be taught properly to number his days; and the purpose was so that he might apply his heart unto wisdom.
Now, this watch and this clock are instruments with which we measure time. Once there was a king who desired not to forget that, like other men, he must die, and he had a man whose duty it was to come before him each hour and repeat the words: "Remember thou art mortal!" That is, every hour he had this man remind him that sometime he would have to die. Each time the man came in before the king, he was reminded that he had one hour less to live; so, each and every time that you hear the clock strike, you should be reminded of the fact that another hour has passed, and that you have one less to live. In this sense every clock has a tongue, and when it strikes it tells us that we will now have one hour less to live upon the earth.