SERMON VII. PSALM XXXix. 5. Behold, thou haft made my days as an handbreadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee; verily every man, at his best state, is altogether vanity. HE fhortness of life is become fo SERM. Ttrite and proverbial an obferva tion, that it is repeated with levity, and heard with indifference. The most serious truths make little impreffion; the most folemn warnings are little regarded. We behold the grave perpetually opening to receive I 4 VII. SERM. receive those with whom we have been VII. converfant; but, unless fome peculiar connection is diffolved, we behold mortality without emotion. The foldier, in the heat of the battle, though his courage is aided by the hurry and bustle of the action, can scarcely view his comrade falling at his fide without vifible terror, and though he is conscious that the least mark of cowardice will blaft his fame for ever, he cannot forbear to fhudder at the thought, that, perhaps, the next moment may terminate his existence, Yet in the great field of the world, the Christian foldier fees his companions fall on his right hand and on his left, with little reflection upon his own danger, till he feels the blow that levels him with the dust. In this beautiful and fublime pfalm, the pious author reviews the shortness and vanity of life; and, while he meditates on the inftability of human affairs, his heart kin dles VII. dles within him, and, in all the warmth SERM. of devotion, he addreffes himself, in this forcible apostrophe, to the Author of his being: Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days what it is ; that I may know how frail I am! which immediately introduces the exclamation that hath been chofen for the prefent fubject of our thoughts; Behold thou haft made my days as an hand-breadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee; verily every man, at his best ftate, is altogether vanity! He entreats his Creator to make him thoroughly fenfible of the end which must happen indiscriminately to every one, and prays that he may conftantly remember the frailty of his nature, fince the time he had to prepare for eternity was so short, and fince man, in his most profperous condition, was the child of vanity. First, to fupport the affertion that our days are as an hand-breadth, or, as the older |