The Pulpit Commentary — Amos — Section 165

used, nnd the work that can be done in it is not much. Take from it the two childhoods, infancy and infirm age, and it becomes greatly shorter still. Not more than finy active years enter into the longest life. On the most sanguine assumption these are the working hours of our day of life. What we do for God and men is done while they pass. They may not be so many, but they can scarcely be more, and if they are all given us we may thankfully reckon that we have lived our time. II. THEllll: ARE EX0EPTIONAL OASES IN WHICH THIS PERIOD 18 CUT SHORT. The normal life-term is not the actual one. The overwhelming majority never see it. When the septuagenarian has his birthday feast, the friends of his youth are not one in ten among the guests. From childhood till that hour they have been dropping off, 11nd now nine-tenths and more are gone. 1. A moiety of the r= ~ in chudhood. Infant mortality is an obscure subject. Whether from the standpoint of equity or economy, there is much in it we cannot explain. Their death before they have transgressed brings up the solemn mystery of original sin, and the suffering of one for the sin of another (Rom. v. 14). 'l'hen their death before activity begins or conscious- ness dawus, and so apparently before they have been used, raises the almost equally perplexing question-Is there, so far as this life goes, a single human being made in vain? 2. Many more die before or at maturity. They are healthy till growth is almost complete. 'l'he body has acquired the strength and hardness needed for the burden of life's work. The mind has received the training which fits it to solve the problems of existence, and govern and use the body in accomplishing the highest purposes of both. Yet just now, when the tool has been formed and tempered and finished, it is broken before it has once been used at its best in the more serious work of life. Here we are face to face not only with an apparently purposeless creation, but also with what seems an unproductive training. 3. Many also die with their work to all appearance unfinished, or only well begun. Their capacity is growing; their field is widening; their influence is increasing. '!'hey are in the full swing of activity and usefulness. Yet at the very moment when the richest fruit of their life-work is begiuning to form, they are cut down-cut down, too, where their death leaves a permanent blank, and no one ia available to take up their work. Their mysterious character and solemn interest prepare a field for faith in the fact that--:-- III. THESE SUNSETS AT NOON ABE DIVIllELY OBDEBED. Cl I will cause," etc. To kill and to make alive are Divine prerogatives. Let the sun set where be will, the event is God's doing. And, in the light of Scripture and observation, a philosophy of such events is not altogether impossible to conceive. 1. Take noon sunsets in sin. These are often untimely and far from unaccountable. (1) Sin is war against God; and while he is omnipotent and righteous and the Disposer of life, it cannot conduce to length of days. The wickedness of men is a continual provocation of his just judgment, and therefore an inevitable shortener of life. (2) Sin is also war against the species. The wicked are hateful and bating one another. 'l'he essential selfishness of the corrupt heart is misanthropy in another aspect. Misanthropy, again, is murder in its earlier stage (1 John iii. 15), leading on to the other stages of it (Jas. iv. 1, 2); and a dispensation of universal murder must mean many a life cut short and many a sun untimely set. (3) Sin does violence to our oum nature. The normal life of the body is a pure one; the direction of appetites only to their legitimate objects, and to these in the strictest moderation. This is obviously the royal road to health and length of days. Perversion of appetite on the one hand, and excessive indulgence of it on the other, do violence to the natural order. If the life is impure, in fact, and as it is impure, it is unnatural, 11nd therefore likely to be short. There is no "fleshly lust" which does not "war against the life" (1 Pet. ii. 11) of soul and body both. Of course, the operation of second causes, such 11s the laws of reciprocit.y and health, is not something distinct from the Divine agency, but the instrumentality it employs. The laws of nature are simply God's executive, the hands and fingers which weave the threads of his purpose into the web of his work. 2. Take noon sunsets in grace. These also are not unknown. The good die young. Sometimes they die through the sin of others, sometimes in consequence of sin of their own. These, however, are the occasions only of their removal. The reason of it lies deep in the purposes of God. (1) Some are taken away from the evil to come. (Isa. lvii. 1.) The young .A.hijah, "because in him was found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the 166 THE BOOK Olt AMOS. (ou. vm. 1-14.