Ver. 4.-God's estimate of a thousand years. Note- L THE GROUND OF THIS ESTIMATE. It is the eternity of God. He who is from everlasting to everlasting-God, the Eternal. There never was a period in which he was not. He is more permanent than the most changeless things. 1. History teaches us this. Push back so far as we can into the remote past, there we find the sure proof of the Divine existence and work. 2. Science teaches it yet more powerfully. Whether we investigate the old rocks beneath our feet, or gaze upon the stars on high, both alike tell of vast ages, millenniums upon millenniums, in which they have had their being, and alike they proclaim God. 3. Revelation affirms the same. II. lTs BEABON.AllLENESS, Human analogies help us here. For our ideas of time are: 1. .According to our own length of life, To short-lived creatures, such as the insects, a day appears a vast stretch of time; but to us, the days of whose years are three score years and ten, and perhaps four score years, a day is scarcely any time at :ill. We think a great deal of half a century, but what would one like Methuselah have thought of it? Only an insignificant fraction of bis life, not needing to be much counted of. 'l'be angels of God also, what are our centuries to them? Above all, God the Eternal, how could it be otherwise than that a thousand years should be to him as one day? 2. .According to the magnitude and multiplicity of those matters which demand and occupy our attention. There are people who live in very limited spheres, and who have scarcely anything to do-the idle rich, and many more. Their one idea is how to kill time; they hardly know how to get through it-their clays ar.i miserably l0ng. But take the man of affairs, who has large responsibilities resting upon him, the ~tates~ man, the merchant, the governor of wide areas and of great numbers of men ;-these have so much to attend to that the days are all too short and too few, and are gone long before they can accomplish what they have to do. Apply this to the iJea of God. How vast his dominion! how infinite the demands upon his thought and energy! To him, therefore, a thousand yean1 would be as one day. 3. Happiness or misery also cannot but affect our estimate of time. The sufferer tos,ed with pain, the prisoner in his dungeon, the exile, the miserable ones of all k.iuds,-how long, how wearisome, are their days (Job vii. 4; Ps. cxxx. 6; Luke xvi. 23-25) ! On the other hand, the happy ones,-how time flies with them ! And God is the blessed God-" the blessed and only Potentate." All that can contribute to his joy is present to him incre1Leingly; the evil that exists is but the evolution of good. Why should he not be 260 THE BOOK OF PSALMS. [PB, XO, 1-17,
blessed? Our sad days of pain, therefore, which seem to us like a thousand years he knows not, but only the joy which reverses such estimate of time. ' III. ITs BENEFICENT REMINDERS. All truths of Scripture have practical bearincre and this one assuredly bas. 1. lt deepens in us the spirit of holy reverence. (Pd, viii: 3, 4.), 2'. It loosens the_ power. of this world over us. What poor things are all the worlds gifts, when seen rn the hght of God the Eternal I 3. lt bids us be patient, and not fret ourseh·e.s at the seemingly slow progress of good. 4. It ministers unspeakable ronsofotion. W" die, and leave our loved ones and our work; but God ever liveth and they arc iu his charge.-S. C. '