xviii PAGE ROME, 8. THE STABILITY OF HEAVEN, 9. EARNESTNESS AND FREQUENCY IN PRAYER, Col. iv. 2. 11. How To WALK WORTHY OF GOD, 12. NO TEARS IN HEAVEN, 13. RELIGIOUS HEEDFULNESS, 14. PRAISE YE THE LORD, . 15. THINGS ABOVE SHOULD BE SOUGHT, . . DAILY WALK WITH WISE MEN. JANUARY 1. LEIGHTON. Behold, thou hast made my days as a handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee.-Psalm xxxix. 5. We A handbreadth.-This is one of the shortest measures. need not long lines to measure our lives by: each one carries a measure about with him, his own hand; that is the longest and fullest measure. It is not so much as a span: that might possibly have been the measure of old age in the infancy of the world, but now it is contracted to a handbreadth, and that is the longest. But how many fall short of that! Many attain not to a finger-breadth: multitudes pass from the womb to the grave; and how many end their course within the compass of childhood! Whether we take this handbreadth for the fourscore years that is ordinarily the utmost extent of man's life in our days, or the four periods of our age, in which we use to distinguish it, childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, there are great numbers we see take up their lodging ere they come near the last of any of these, and few attain to the utmost border of them. All of us are but a handbreadth from death, and not so much; for many of us have passed a great part of that handbreadth already, and we know not how little of it is behind. We use commonly to divide our lives by years, months, weeks, and days, but it is all but one day; there is the morning, noon, afternoon, and evening. Man is as the grass that springs in the morning. As for all the days that are passed of our life, death hath them rather than we, and they are already in its possession. When |