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In withered laurels glide before my sight!
What lengths of far-famed ages, billowed high
With human agitation, roll along

In unsubstantial images of air!

The melancholy ghosts of dead renown,
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause

With penitential aspect, as they pass,

All point to earth, and hiss at human pride,

The wisdom of the wise, and prancings of the great."

This picture. of Dr. Young sets before us, in its true character, that revelation of life which mortality inscribes on the brow of the mere worldling. Death makes him a complete bankrupt in a world not designed to be his heaven, and for a world which but for his own perversion, might have been his heaven. His sun goes down in starless midnight. When he breathes his last, all is lost, and lost forever.

II. Let us now turn our meditations to the thought contained in the second Scripture-to man as transient.

"For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." The object of the inspired penman was to rebuke those who say: "To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain." Stop a moment, ye thoughtless men, laden with earthly cares! Hear the instructions of heavenly wisdom! "Ye know not what shall be on the morrow." Your plans contemplate a year; yet your knowledge does not grasp the events of a single day. Twenty-four hours of future time are too much for you to fathom. Think, too, of yourselves, especially your present life. "What is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Look above yourselves to the power that gave and upholds your being, and learn to say: "If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that."

Thus the Apostle reasons with presumers upon future time, selecting the most transient and fleeting object in nature as an image of life. Life is not a rock that rests for ages unshaken in its bed; it is not an antique temple that has resisted the wear of centuries; it is not a plant that blooms in the summer and fades in the autumn; but it is a mere vapor-the thing of a moment, just seen, and then gone. The Scriptures compare it to a mere shadow that flits before the eye, and disappears. Its march is said to be swifter than a weaver's shuttle. The whole of its years is likened to a tale that is told. It is like grass which flourisheth in the morning, and in the evening is cut down, and withereth away. By such figures the Bible seeks to convey to our minds an impressive sense of the exceeding brevity of life. God would have us feel, that our stay on earth is very transient, embraced in a period comparatively reduced to a very small compass. He speaks to us

and of us as strangers and pilgrims here, men on a journey, not at home. There is a truth, a startling truth, shining through every Scripture figure, whose object is to apprise us of the shortness of life. Poetry baptizing its verse in the thoughts of the Bible, has turned its hallowed eye upon life's scene, and in strains monitory and pensive, often rehearsed what none deny, yet what millions fail practically to appreciate. Let us not despise these truthful songs of the muse. They record the protest of reason against that common folly, by which all men think all men mortal but

themselves.

"Opening the map of God's expansive plan,
We find a little isle-this life of man:
Eternity's unknown expanse appears,
Circling around, and limiting its years."

"Pause here and think; a monitory rhyme
Demands one moment of thy fleeting time.
Consult life's silent clock-thy bounding vein:
Seems it to say-'Health here has long to reign?'
Hast thou the vigor of thy youth? an eye
That beams delight? a heart untaught to sigh?
Yet fear. Youth ofttimes healthful and at ease,
Anticipates a day it never sees."

"How short is human life! the very breath

Which frames my words, accelerates my death."

"Between two breaths, what crowded mysteries lie-
The first short gasp, the last and long-drawn sigh!"

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Dismiss not these strains as the idle dream of poetry. They are poetry founded upon fact; and this is what I wish you to see. I know that even when we desire to do so, we find a difficulty in impressing our minds with the truth upon which we are reflecting. We can see it, and state it in words, while we fail to feel it. We follow others to the tomb, forgetting that others will soon follow us there. Let us, if possible, break this charm, and at least seck to startle our apathy into a moment's meditation.

Borrowing an illustration from one of the published sermons of Dr. Spencer, formerly an honored pastor in this city, let me suppose this congregation to consist of two thousand souls. Here you are before me in the land of the living, in the house of God, of different ages, and all in good health. Now, estimating your prospects by a general average, what is before these two thousand souls?

"In the course of one year, 66 of them will die
In ten years, 588 will have died.
In twenty years, 1078 will be gone.
In thirty years, 1477 will be no more.
In forty years, 1744 will be in eternity.
In fifty years, 1922 will be dead men."

Think, I entreat you, of this tabular estimate, for it is founded on facts, and states a general law of human mortality. Only seventy-eight of the whole two thousand left after the lapse of fifty years! Nineteen hundred and twenty-two falling victims to death, while half a century is running its course! Hear the words of the excellent man of God, from whom I have borrowed this statement:

"Would that this picture were as efficacious as it is appalling! Would that the hearts of the two thousand in a promiscuous assembly were so affected with the idea that sixty-six of them will die in a single year, that sixty-six of them in a single year would hear the voice of the Son of God, and live! My hearers, your days are fast numbering up! The sands in your glass of life are rapidly falling! for you the shroud is weaving! for you the bed of death is spread! Your seat here will soon be vacant, and the ear that now listens to me will be sealed up, till the trump of the arch-angel shall awake the dead. Death is certain. Life is uncertain. To day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. To-morrow may be too late to hear."

These earnest words of the faithful preacher are as true and as important to-day, as when first uttered by one who is now sleeping in the tomb.

Let me ask you to keep this supposition before your minds for a moment longer. Of the two thousand persons, all of whom with the exception of seventy-eight, will be dead in the space of fifty years, I wish you to notice

First, the diversity of their present age. Some are little children; some are young people; some are in middle life; and some are advanced in years. You now see them at all ages. What will be the fact when they die? Will they all live up to the same age? By no means. The diversity now is not greater than that which will prevail at the time of their death. Of the sixty-six to be drafted in the first year, some will be children, some in blooming youth, some in manhood, and some in old age, each class furnishing its quota for the tomb. The same diversity will be seen in the five hundred and eighty-eight, whom the lapse of ten years will remove to the world of spirits. Classify these persons by any rule of which you can think-by their age. their condition, their business, or their character; and you can form no class exempt from death during every year until they are all gone. God in his sovereign pleasure lets the shaft fall where and when he will, filling up the grave with all classes from the living.

Note, secondly, that not a soul can tell when his turn will come, whether in the first year, or the first ten years, or the last ten of the fifty, or whether he shall be numbered among the seventy-eight who survive all the rest. Millions die when they least expect it, sometimes without a moment's warning, and always without any capacity to foresee the time of the event. Death comes upon them like a thief in the night, and steals away their breath.

Observe, thirdly, that while the aggregate number is constantly decreasing, all that are living, are as constantly approaching the period when they will cease to live. They start on a journey that is to last fifty years; and by the time they have traveled twenty years, more than half of them are dead, and in thirty years more, all of them are gone with the exception of the surviving seventy-eight. Where are the companions of these survivors? They are left behind, having fallen, each coming up to the point where he was to fall, and where he did fall, touched by an unseen hand.

Consider, fourthly, the impressions as to life made on each, when the closing hour came. The lad of ten years had been thinking of his manhood; length of days was the vision that charmed his spirit; perhaps he communed in thought with the scenes of his college-life, and in hope drew a sketch of his professional career; but alas! alas! how amazed was he, when he saw death standing between him and all that he had fancied in the future. How brief the period of his sojourn! How short his life! It fled like a dream when one awaketh.

The youth of more years was not less buoyant and hopeful; he too had made his map and drawn his plan; life's bounding current, its elastic step, and playful smile assured him of a long and delightful tour; he believed the flattering tale; yet a voice from heaven whispered in his ear, and he went to the realms of the dead, utterly overwhelmed and disappointed by the brevity of his days. He had hardly begun to live when he ceased to breathe. How short life seemed to him! What a transient scene!

Farther along you see one in the full maturity of manhood, busily engaged with the practical duties of time, neither young nor old the merchant, the farmer, or the scholar, so occupied with his calling as scarcely to notice the years as they roll by him; but at length the victor stands across his path, extending the fatal scepter as he approaches. Disease is now upon him, and death at his door. His hour has come. The forty or fifty years of his pilgrimage now seem to him like a mere shadow. Say to him, "We spend our years as a tale that is told;" and he will understand you. Yonder I see the frosts of ninety winters gathered on that wrinkled, time-worn brow. Bending under the weight of ninety years, standing on the very verge of the grave with death watching his words, the veteran thus muses with himself: "I have

been a boy, a youth, a man, and now I am old. When I was but a child, my manhood seemed far in the distance; and when I became a man, my childhood seemed but a step behind me. And now old age spans the whole space, as if it were one fleeting and mysterious moment. My life, long as it has been in comparison with that of others, seems like a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." And thus all these classes, the lad, the youth, the mature man, and the aged, come at last to the same conclusion. The weeks, the months, the years, alike of the longest and the shortest life, are fled ere one is aware of it.

I have thus endeavored to impress upon your thoughts the theme of man as mortal and transient. On this subject we need less to be reasoned with than to reflect upon what is undeniably true. Every one consents to the statement: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Every one knows, that after the lapse of a few years at the longest, his earthly career must come to an end. Such a truth ought to engage our reflections, if not always, yet sometimes, and that too with sufficient frequency to impress our hearts. There is sound sense in the inspired prayer: "Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am." "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

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Who, moreover, can think of this life under the two aspects now presented, without extending his meditations into the future? "Man dieth, and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" "If a man die, shall he live again?" Is this all? These few and fleeting days-this rapid transit amid the scenes of time this hurried and changing bustle between the day of one's birth and the day of his death these transient joys and sorrows that flutter within the confines of a moment: is this all that reason has to affirm, or faith to receive, in regard to the des tiny of man? The splendid and prophetic mechanism of a spiritual nature the marvelous endowments of the human soul, as remarkable in kind as they are exalted in degree-this faculty of reason, this power of conscience, this gem of hope, this capacity to suffer or enjoy, this wonderful law of progress, these deep-seated moral instincts, as irresistible as they are universal; was all this made to be demolished in an hour? Who can believe it? The suggestions of immortality most forcibly salute the eye, when most we think of death. They glitter with intensest ray upon the horizon of life as it sinks into darkness, giving us a sense of the after-scene as prophetic as it is real. This short hour can not be the entire sum of our conscious being. The greatest of all absur dities, the most revolting, least accordant with reason and reason's God, is that which discredits the future being of the soul. Thought rising from the lowest depths of our moral natures when touched by the inspiration of death, uniformly repels the idea. That which

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