October 11

The illumination he spreads is not the cold barren light of the moon, but the shining of the spring sun, which not only enlightens, but warms and enlivens, and fills the earth with fertility and beauty.

Let this direct and encourage us. It is the Lord alone that teaches us to profit: he alone can render the most common truth impressive and influential. Moses had seen the Egyptians destroyed in the Red Sea, and all the multitudes of his brethren buried in the wilderness. And needed he to be taught the doctrine of mortality? Knew he not that the days of our years are threescore years and ten? and that the period of human life is as uncertain as it is short? Yet he felt that no less a teacher than God was necessary to instruct him properly: and therefore he prays, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." And do we not see the need of this continually? Our neighbours fall around us. Death enters our houses. We feel the attacks of disease; and the decays of nature; and yet how do we live? us dying creatures? or as those who suppose they are to live here always?

But while we feel our need of this teaching let us remember that he gives his holy Spirit to them that ask him. If we perish for lack of knowledge, our sin will lie at our own door. "If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." We are incapable of conducting ourselves, but here is an infallible Director, who offers to accompany us, and would never leave us nor forsake us, and requires nothing but our submission—May the language of my heart be, "Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day."

OCTOBER 11.—"Man dieth."—Job 14:10.

But how came he to die? He was not made mortal like the beasts that perish. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, because all have sinned."

But now there is not a day, or an hour, or a moment, in which man dieth not. The frequency of the occurrence hinders much of the force and seriousness of the impression it is otherwise so adapted to produce. "They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it." And not only the commonness but the irksomeness of the event is unfriendly to consideration. The subject is too gloomy and repulsive to engage the thought of the generality of mankind: and the main concern of thousands is to keep it, or banish it from their minds. Yet their putting the evil day far off is not putting it away. The way to die safely is to die daily. Young says, "Familiar thoughts will smooth the road to death:" and the royal preacher tells us, "sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart."

We often see a fellow-creature in situations and circumstances peculiar to himself, and in which we shall not be called to follow

him: but when we see man dying we behold an emblem and an instance of our own destiny; and we should bring home the case, and say, by-and-by I shall require these attentions—What I now hear and see I shall experience—My soul will refuse dainty meat—a shivering will seize my trembling limbs—and the world will recede from my view, and appear like land to the mariner entering the ocean. Infinitely diversified as human conditions are, they all terminate in the same result. All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Death is the way of all the earth—

And what is it for man to die? It is an event the most solemn and affecting, whatever view we may take of it. It is the termination of all his busy concerns in life, and suffers him to interfere no more in any thing that is done under the sun. It is his farewell to earth with all its possessions and attractions; his eye will no more see good. It is the disruption of all his ties of friendship and kindred here; to say to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister. It is the destruction of his body, so fearfully and wonderfully made, and the reducing of it to such a state of loathsomeness, as compels the survivors to bury their dead out of their sight, and to inscribe over the sepulchre—

"How loved, how valued once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot: A heap of dust alone remains of thee, 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be."

It is his entering into a new and untried mode of being; his transition from a course of action to a state of retribution. It is a thing that cannot be repeated, and the consequences of which are irreversible: it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

So far one event happeneth to all: but there is a vast difference in men's dying, according as they are morally and religiously considered. The wicked is driven away in his wickedness. His death, indeed, is not always very dreadful in the manner. There is sometimes a strange senselessness that attends it. Frequently even the danger of dissolution is concealed from him, and he dies "a slow sudden death." The poet's words are not true, "Fools men may live, but fools they cannot die:" for observation shows us that commonly men die as they live. The Scripture says of many of them, "They have no bands in their death, but their strength is firm." This is sometimes indeed affected rather than real. When they have died with a kind of levity and sportiveness it has been by way of diversion. They would indeed have it supposed to be a proof of the absence of fear; but it is the effect of its prevalence—So the schoolboy passes the churchyard "whistling aloud to keep his courage up." I have heard from dying lips exclamations of anguish and horror, which I should not like to publish. These are often attributed to disease; and the poor wretch is supposed to be under the influence of delirium—and it may be so—But whatever may be the manner of departure, as to those that die in their sins, the consequences are dreadful beyond imagination. If they even fall asleep as gently as lambs, they awake with the devil and his angels.

But the dying chamber of the children of God and the heirs of immortality is none other but the house of God and the gate of heaven.