that spring should come next it would be unavailing. The winter is coming. But with this fixed order is established perpetual change, variety, mutability, so that although we know the season that is coming we know not what kind of a season it shall be, and all our temporal interests hang upon that question. When the merchant has got his stock, when the man of pleasure has fixed for his party, when the General has planned his campaign, when the Admiral has laid down the arrangements for the battle, when the grand politician has perfected the plot for a new crisis of the world, what must they do? Not look to what the earth but what the heaven will do. Everything depends upon that. They cannot decide the market price even of hard sovereigns, they cannot foretell the value of their wheat, they cannot determine the life and health of their soldiers or the hours and effect of movements independent of that one consideration, what will the heavens do? Three days rain will change a whole campaign or a harvest. By the arrangement of the seasons we are constantly kept at the door of Divine mercy, begging “Give us this day our daily bread.” That eternal voice preaching through all our temporal interests is to us the solemn, never-ceasing protest against worldliness, earthliness,
vanity, living for time, living for the body; and, above all, against every impure or ungodly method of attempting to secure our temporal aims.
“For days” as well as for seasons. The season passes slowly, but the day—oh what a solemn appointment is that! When the Lord made the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night it would have been very easy for Him to make two suns so that we should bask in perpetual daylight. But no, it was his will that our life should be cut into very short lengths and that by a mark so deep, broad, black, that the dullest man could not escape its impression. The dark gulf that lies between the dead day and the day unborn is the ever recurring remembrancer—Thy days are numbered; thy life is held under law; thy time is a measured current of golden sands. Every particle as it comes may easily slip away, if unwatched will slip, and once past thy hand it will be borne off by the rushing river and thou shalt never see it again, but if caught, held and brought to the mint of the great King it will there be turned into precious coin to serve in perpetuity the double purpose of enriching man and recording the majesty of God. Seize upon thy days as they pass! The heavens tell thee to do it; the dark
and mantled earth tells thee; thy drowsy faculties tell thee; thy weary limbs tell thee; all are saying “numbered, numbered, numbered.” Life is running away fast.
Not only for days but “for years.” The days, as I have said, are short; they pass rapidly, and we calculate that the days of our years are threescore years and ten. And when you come to multiply 70 by 365 it makes a very large number, and if we have lost a few handfuls of days, well, cannot we make them up? Have we not been young, and are we not in this pleasant watering place, where one must see life and have a little pleasure, and if we do throw away a few days, why, cannot we recover them? Can we say that of the years? Are the years so very plentiful—such a large number assured to you that you can afford to squander a few, to turn them not only to useless purposes but to bad ones. Can you?—the years!—oh is not it wonderful, the way in which thy Lord and my Lord, thy Creator and my Creator, marks out before our eye the progress of the years?
Perhaps you may remember in childhood watching the day as it grew and spread itself out, making conquests from the night and winning moments, minutes, hours, till you began to think the day was going to do away the night. You
saw it stretching over the hours that once were dark till it seemed as if the tips of the sunset touched the tips of the sunrise, and still the light was gaining so that in a little time the darkness would be all driven away and it would be day the twenty-four hours round. But just then the night began to come back and the day grew shorter, dimmer, colder, and the darkness spread itself over the light till it seemed as if in its turn the day was going to be quenched and darkness to wrap up the whole twenty-four hours. But then the day returned.
Was it an accident this first time? Would it ever occur again? You watched it: just the same process and at the same time, and you began to feel—it is a wheel! with its regulated, measured appointed movement; steady, by rule it rises to a certain point, and then comes down to a certain point, then turns again and comes up. It is a perfectly balanced wheel, making its revolution steadily, steadily. I did not fix those revolutions: the great Architect did! He knows how many the wheel itself can perform; He knows what each revolution marks off and what it accomplishes, and He knows too how many shall measure off my thread of life. I do not know the number, you do not know; but this we do know, it is marked upon the dial, and we are
tolerably sure it is not more than threescore and ten. Suppose you saw the dial of life before your eye as plain as that dial is and the hand pointing twenty, thirty, forty, fifty of the divisions gone—gone never to return! Suppose you felt that that hand was pressing forward and would point and point to successive lines till at last, without a moment’s warning, the hour will strike and it is over, no recall! Man of twenty, proud of thy youth! man of fifty, proud of thy maturity! man of seventy, proud of thy years! are you prepared to meet your God? Has your time been spent with a view to eternity? Has the measure of your days been taken? Has the course of your years been run in holiness? If not, by the deep voice of the heavens above thee; that voice which evermore is speaking; by the night and the day, and the season and the year, I charge thee prepare to meet thy God. For thy time is passing and eternity at hand.
“Thy years shall not fail.” The thought of man never feels that it can say this to nature. He sees the stones themselves have marks of age and decay—the very mountains, the very seas tell of change and limit. And in the skies too far off for us to trace decay we trace something else—measure. Everything is measured. The moon goes by measure and the sun by measure,