2. The uncertainty of human life and the vanity of human wishes have always been the theme of the satirist as well as of the preacher. But satire by itself is no remedy ; it can, at best, only point out the disease. In the very fact that nothing is certain about life except its uncertainty, we have a safeguard. We know roughly the limits by which we are circumscribed ; we know enough to warn, but not enough to paralyse. Could we look forward with absolute certainty to half a century of health and vigour, we might be carried away even more than we are by I the pride of life. Did we know that death awaited us in the near I future, our spirits would be dulled, our ardour damped in carry- j ing out legitimate schemes of useful work. As it is, we may con- ; struct our averages of life, we may frame our insurance tables for ] the mass with some approach to accuracy; but we cannot predict ■ the length of an individual life, save when medical skill can ' anticipate by a little the decree which has already gone forth. It is a merciful dispensation that has so ordered things. God would, indeed, have us to ponder over the mysteries which surround our existence, but not in such a way as to sap the power of action in us. ^ Herein is the secret, the true alleviation of the burden of to-morrow ; not the false and feeble attempt to oppose care by carelessness, to turn from the anxieties and troubles of life to a wild recklessness, assuming only a painful jauntiness which con- ceals the pain. The true remedy is not forgetfulness, but faith. This is the peace of God which passeth all understanding, which guards the heart and calms the fevered life. To the soul which
1 Henry Smith. 2 s_ u '£yng.
230 THE RIGHT USE OF TIME
has this noble courage born of faith no turn of affairs can come amiss. He is not open to the blows of chance. It is not mere resignation : it is glad confidence that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. "If I should intend Liverpool and land in heaven," said John Howe about a passage from Ireland. If, what then ? To John Howe, who knew that the eternal God was his refuge, and underneath were the everlasting arms, what shadow could the future have ? Why should he be bowed down by the burden of to-morrow ? As his days, right on till the last sand had run, right on till the last gasp of breath, so would be his strength.^
II.
A Wise Enumeration. "Teach us to number our days."
1. What does it mean to " number our days " ? Not just to calculate the chances of our own survival in this world — which we may easily gather from the actuarial tables of an insurance company. It means to take the measure of our days as compared with the work to be performed, with the provision to be laid up for eternity, with the preparation to be made for death, with the precaution to be taken against judgment to come. It is to estimate human life by the purposes to which it should be applied, by the eternity to which it must conduct. It means to gauge and test our own career in the light of its moral and spiritual issues. And as God teaches us this, we understand the secret of true wisdom. For wisdom lies in a just estimate of the • real value of things. " What shall it profit a man ? " remains the final question. As Plato said, in one of his mystical sentences, it is the art of measurement which would save the soul.
2. The Psalmist's petition in effect asks that we shall so mind the things of this world as not to forget their issues ; and that we shall so mind the things of eternity as not to forget that they are to be gained through godliness, righteousness, and sobriety in using the things of time. The sublime motive in the distance must not overpower us, so that we shall be rendered unfit for discharging our present duty, small and insignificant though it may be ; nor
> Hugh Black, Con\fort, 169.
PSALM xc. 12 231
must we be so engrossed with the present duty as to lose sight of the grand motive, which redeems from littleness every duty, how- ever small, which is a means to so great an end.
3. The true way to number our days is not so to number them that they seem to include the result of om- lives, but so to number them that they seem to include simply the beginning of our lives. They and all they bring are only stepping-stones which lead us up to the threshold of a nobler life, nobler in its opportunities, occasions, and the character of its joy. Life is not mere existence, the coming and the going of breath, and its coming again ; life means all that it includes of feeling and thinking and doing and growth. And the heavenly life is only the continuing of our activities and the multiplication of serviceable occasions along those high levels and stretches of being to the altitude of which we are lifted by the movement of prior activities, as birds are lifted by the movement of their wings. The man who numbers his days rightly, numbers them not as if they ended anything, but as if they began something. He thinks of them in their termina- tion as bringing him not to an end but to a beginning — a beginning for which, if rightly used, they prepare and fit him.