A shaft from Nature's quiver cast Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud." The great dramatic poet of England has given us the seven ages of man,—the mewling infant, the whining schoolboy, the sighing lover, the bearded soldier, the well-rounded magistrate, the tremulous old man, and the second childhood. So men and women pass over the world's stage as mere players. If, likewise, we open our Scriptures, we find different words, for seven ages, to represent man's life. At first, human existence was measured by centuries. But the Ninetieth Psalm records threescore and ten years as the limit of life. Job, however, spoke not of years, when he declared that the number of a man's months is with God. Again, it was said that man that is born of a woman is of few days. Once more, prayer is made that God will wait till a man accomplish as an hireling his day; as though one day's work might cover it all. A New Testament saint, who reflected much on the future blessedness which will never cease, declared that our light affliction in this life is but for a moment. And one dwelling under the shadow of Him who is from everlasting declared unto God, "Mine age is as nothing before thee." The centuries give place to years; the years, to months; the months, to days; the days, to one day; one day, to a moment; the moment, to a cipher, as the true symbol of the life of man. : The philosophers and poets of every age have delighted to set forth the brevity of life by like symbols. The poet Euripides called life "a little day." Aristotle described certain creatures on the River Hypanis, that live only one day those which die at eight in the morning die in youth, and those that die at five in the evening reach old age: so the life of an aged man is little longer than that of a child. Do we weep for one who has gone before noonday? Our separation is short, since we ourselves shall follow before nightfall. When Sir Thomas More was threatened with death, he answered, "Is that all, my lord? Then, in good faith, the difference between your Grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day, and you to-morrow." When Saadi met a man in Damascus, who was dying at one hundred and fifty years old, he heard him lamenting, "I said, coming into the world by birth, 'I will enjoy myself for a few moments.' Alas! at the variegated table of life I partook of a few mouthfuls; and the fates said, 'Enough!' Shadow, cloud, smoke, wind, swift arrow, fading flower, bubbles rising and breaking on the stream, snowflakes falling on the sea, these are the emblems of life. Is the body called the house of the soul, it soon crumbles; is it the tent, the tabernacle, it is moved away; is it the clothing of the soul, the vesture soon decays; is it called the casket holding a precious jewel, the clay cracks, and the treasure is removed. "Surely every man walketh in a vain show." So many die every day, that men think of it as of the common sunset, or the fading of the rainbow from a summer sky. A man's cradle and his coffin may be made from the same tree. Life is a short journey, but very grievous; as one makes a painful passage over rough seas between ports near each other. He who floats for a moment on life's troubled waters soon sinks beneath the waves; and the noise of the sea, the rush and tumult of tide and storm, is still lifting up its voice as proudly as before. Unmeasured years are in the eternal state; and the years that can be counted soon go by, like the ships which pass out of shallow harbors into the deep sea. We shall do wisely, if we all join in the prayer of the man of God: "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." "Of all numbers," said the Puritan pastor, we cannot skill to number our days. We can number our sheep, and our oxen, and our coin; but we think that our days are infinite, and, therefore, we never go about to number them. We can number other men's days and years, and think they will die ere it be long, if we see them sick, or sorc, or cold; but we cannot number our own." And, if we turn to the Genevan Reformer, we hear him saying, "Even the most accomplished accountant is unable to calculate the fourscore how far asunder are the several planets, and how many miles it is from the centre of the moon to the centre of the earth; but they cannot measure the threescore years and ten which divide the cradle from the grave." We see, all around us, men spending their lives in reckoning, who find it difficult to count up their own age; and, as they approach the limit of life, they heed not the increasing years. In England, a man 1 has been, for some time, employed in reckoning up the limitations of life; and it is found, that, where a million persons set forth together, more than a quarter part die before they are past five years old; nearly four hundred thousand of them drop out by the way before thirty years are past; at forty-five, only one-half still pursue their journey; at seventy, only twenty-three men out of a hundred maintain the thinned ranks; at fourscore and ten, ninety and nine in every hundred have become weary of the road, and repose in the last sleep; at the end of the century, only two out of ten 1 Dr. Farr, register-general. |