The Swiftness of Life

The Swiftness of Life

Let me speak to you of the frailty of human life, the fleeting nature of time, how swiftly it passes away, how soon we shall all fade as the leaf, and how speedily the place which knows us now shall know us no more for ever. The Apostle James says, "What is your life?" and, thanks to inspiration, we are at no great difficulty to give the reply; for Scripture being the best interpreter of Scripture, supplies us with many very excellent answers. I shall attempt to give you some of them.

It is a great fact that though life to the young man, when viewed in the prospect, appears to be long, to the old man it is ever short; and to all men life is really but a brief period. Human life is not long. Compare it with the existence of some animals and trees, and how short is human life! Compare it with the ages of the universe, and it becomes a span; and especially measure it by eternity, and how little does life appear! It sinks like one small drop into the ocean, and becomes as insignificant as one tiny grain of sand upon the sea-shore. Life is swift. If you would picture life you must turn to the Bible, and we will walk through the Bible-gallery of old paintings.

You will find its swiftness spoken of in the Book of Job, where we are furnished with three illustrations. In the ninth chapter, and at the twenty-fifth verse, we find, "Now my days are swifter than a post." We are most of us acquainted with the swiftness of post-conveyance. I have sometimes, on emergency, taken post-horses where there has been no railway, and have been amused and pleased with the rapidity of my journey. But since, in this ancient book, there can be no allusion to modern posts, we must turn to the manners and customs of the East, and in so doing we find that the ancient monarchs astonished their subjects by the amazing rapidity with which they received intelligence. By well-ordered arrangements, swift horses, and constant relays, they were able to attain a speed which, although trifling in these days, was, in those slower ages, a marvel of marvels; so that to an Eastern one of the greatest ideas of swiftness was that of a post. Well doth Job say our life is like a post. We ride one year until it is worn out, but there comes another just as swift, and we are borne by it, and it is gone, and another year serves us for a steed; post-house after post-house we pass, as birthdays successively arrive; we loiter not, but vault at a leap from one year to another, and still we hurry onward, onward, onward still. Our life is like a post; not like the slow waggon that drags along the road with tiresome wheels, but, like a post, it attains the greatest speed.

Job further says, "My days are passed away as the swift ships." He increases, you see, the intensity of the metaphor; for if in the Eastern's idea anything could excel the swiftness of a post, it was the swift ship. Some translate this passage the "ships of desire;" that is, the ships hurrying home, anxious for the haven, and therefore crowding all sail. You may well conceive how swiftly the mariner flies from a threatening storm, or seeks the port where he will find his home. You have sometimes seen how the ship cuts through the billows, leaving a white furrow behind her, and causing the sea to boil around her. Such is life, says Job, like the "swift ships," when the sails are filled by the wind, and the vessel dashes on, dividing a passage through the crowding water. Swift are the ships, but swifter far is life. The wind of time bears me along. I cannot stop its motion; I may direct it with the rudder of God's Holy Spirit; I may, it is true, take in some small sails of sin, which might hurry my days on faster than otherwise they would go; but, nevertheless, like a swift ship, my life must speed on its way until it reaches its haven. Where is that haven to be? Shall it be found in the land of bitterness and barrenness, that dreary region of the lost? or shall it be that sweet haven of eternal peace, where not a troubling wave can ruffle the quiescent glory of my spirit? Wherever the haven is to be, that truth is the same, we are like "the swift ships."

Again: Job says, it is "as the eagle that hasteth to the prey." The eagle is a bird noted for its "swiftness. I remember reading an account of an eagle attacking a fish-hawk, which had obtained some booty from the deep, and was bearing it aloft. The hawk dropped the fish, which fell towards the water; but before the fish had reached the ocean, the eagle had flown more swiftly than the fish could fall, and catching it in its beak, it flew away with it. The swiftness of the eagle is almost incalculable—you see it, and it is gone; you see a dark speck in the sky yonder; it is an eagle soaring. Let the fowler imagine that by-and-bye he shall overtake it on some mountain's craggy peak—it shall be gone long before he reaches it. Such is our life. It is like an eagle hasting to its prey; not merely an eagle flying in its ordinary course, but an eagle hasting to its prey. Life appears to be hasting to its prey—the prey is the body; life is ever flying from insatiate death; but death is too swift to be outrun, and as an eagle overtakes his prey, so shall death.

If we require a further illustration of the swiftness of life, we must turn again to Job, upon which I shall not dwell. It will be found in the seventh chapter, at the sixth verse; he says, it is "swifter than a weaver's shuttle." which the weaver throws so quickly that the eye can hardly discern it. But he gives us yet a more excellent metaphor in the seventh verse of the same chapter, where he says, "O remember that my life is wind." Now, this excels in velocity all the other figures we have examined. Who can outstride the winds? Proverbially, the winds are rapid; even in their gentlest motion they appear to be swift. But when they rush in the tornado, or when they dash madly on in the hurricane—when the tempest blows, and rends down everything—how swift then is the wind! Perhaps some of us may have a gentle gale of wind, and we may not seem to move so swiftly; but with others, who are only born, then snatched away to Heaven, the swiftness of it may be compared to the hurricane, that soon snaps the ties of life, and leaves the infant dead. Surely our life is like the wind.

Oh! if you could but catch these ideas! You know we are all really in motion. This world is turning round on its axis once in four-and-twenty hours; and besides that, it is moving round the sun in the 365 days of the year. So that we are all moving; we are all flitting along through space. And as we are travelling through space, so we are moving through time, at an incalculable rate. Oh! what an idea it is, could we grasp it! We are all being carried along, as if by a giant angel, with broad outstretched wings, which he flaps to the blast, and flying before the lightning makes us ride on the winds. The whole multitude of us are hurrying along—whither remains to be decided by the test of our faith and the grace of God; but certain it is, we are travelling. Do not think that you are stable things; fancy not that you are standing still; you are not. Your pulses each moment beat the funeral marches to the tomb. You are chained to the chariot of rolling time—there is no bridling the steeds, or leaping from the chariot; you must be constantly in motion.

Concerning the uncertainty of life we have abundant illustrations. "For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." If I were to ask for a child's explanation of this, I know what he would say. He would say, "Yes, it is even a vapour, like a bubble that is blown upward." Children sometimes blow bubbles, and amuse themselves thereby. Life is even as that bubble. You see it rising into the air; the child delights itself by seeing it fly about, but it is all gone in one moment. "It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." But if you ask the poet to explain this, he would tell you that in the morning, sometimes at early dawn, the rivers send up a steamy offering to the sun. There is a vapour, a mist, an exhalation rising from the rivers and brooks, but in a very little while after the sun is risen all that mist is gone. Hence we read of the morning cloud and the early dew that passeth away. A more common observer, speaking of a vapour, would think of those thin clouds you sometimes see floating in the air, which are so light that they are soon carried away. Indeed, a poet uses them as the picture of feebleness—

"Their hosts are scatter'd, like thin clouds Before a Biscay gale."

The winds move them, and they are gone. "What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." So uncertain is life!

Again: if you read in the Book of Ecclesiastes, at the sixth chapter, and the twelfth verse, you will there find life compared to something else, even more fragile than a vapour. The wise man there says that it is even "as a shadow." Now what can there be less substantial than a shadow? What substance is there in a shadow? Who can lay hold thereof? You may see it, but the moment the person passes away it is gone. Yea, and who can grasp his life? Many men reckon upon a long existence, and think they are going to live for ever; but who can calculate upon a shadow? Go, thou man, who sayest to thy soul, "Eat, drink, and be merry; I have much goods laid up for many years"—go thou, and store thy room with shadows; go thou and pile shadows up, and say, "These are mine, and they shall never depart." But, sayest thou, "I cannot catch a shadow"? No and thou canst not reckon on a year, for it is as a shadow, which soon melteth away and is gone. The prophet Isaiah also furnishes us with a simile, where he says that life is as a thread which is cut off. You will find this in his thirty-eighth chapter, at the twelfth verse, "Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life." The weaver cuts off his thread very easily, and so is life soon ended. I might continue my illustrations at pleasure concerning the uncertainty of life. We might find, perhaps, a score more figures in Scripture, if we could search. Take, for instance, the grass, the flowers of the field, etc., etc. But though life is swift, and though it is to pass away so speedily, we are still generally very anxious to know what it is to be while we have it. For we say, if we are to lose it, still while we live let us live; and whilst we are to be here, be it ever so short a time, let us know what we are to expect in it.