of the work by which generations pass away, which makes it yet more melancholy to contemplate. It is truly an affecting thought, that, of all who are now listening to me, there shall not be, in a few years, one survivor on earth. And yet I think there is something still more deeply touching in the view of that gradual dropping away of one after another, vacating his seat and causing the place that once knew him, to know him no more, until the whole of us shall have passed away; and he who looks down from this pulpit shall meet other eyes, when all these are sealed in death, and speak of redemption to the future prisoners of hope, when we shall be enjoying all its fullness, or have forfeited its privileges, and are past its power forever.

"So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

I. Let us then inquire what is the true art of numbering our days, and how we may learn the correct arithmetic of life. The theoretical part of the business, the science of numbering our days is by no means very difficult. It is not hard, with all the facts we have, to come to a correct estimate of human life.

1. Let us add them up and find the sum of them. The term of human life has been shortened at successive times, until fixed at its present limitation. The days of the years of man were once nearly a thousand years. But God, for reasons not at all honorable to man, viz. because the wickedness of man waxed great in the earth, and he had too long a time to plot and execute purposes of mischief, and perhaps

to prevent the necessity of a second deluge, cut short his days. The process of shortening the term of ordinary living was gradual. Noah, with his antideluvian constitution, lived to the period of his fathers 950 years. Shem, who had only the advantage of an antideluvian birth, was cut short, perhaps by the climate after the flood, 350 years; 200 years were taken from the lives of his immediate descendants and the average age of the three succeeding generations was about 440. The next change was in the time of Peleg, who, with his descendants for several generations, lived but about 240 years. And so the diminution went gradually on. Terah, the father of Abraham lived 205 years. The three Patriarchs reached the age of about 180. When Israel was passing through the wilderness, the boundary was fixed, as it is said in this Psalm, to three score years and ten; and now, when we speak of human life in the abstract, this is the amount at which it is reckoned; 70 years; this is the first number in our calculation; the short year that is gone seventy times repeated and no more. I know that when one looks forward from childhood, through youth and manhood, to old age, the term seems long, and the heart is ready to say "it is enough." Hope is in the future, and in the soul's earnest aspiring after it, time seems to move but tardily. The fore ground is full of goodly prospects, and in the eagerness to enjoy, the space looks long to pass over. But when all that was in prospect has been seen and tasted, and hope has been attained or disappointed, and when the eye, from the other extreme of life, and with eternity full and near

before it, casts a returning look, how short and diminished appears the distance between this day, and the first remembered day; and who of the aged will not exclaim with good old Jacob "few have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage ?"

But let your seventy years be as much, as your imagination can make them. I will not try to make the small number less. Think the term long, if you will. But you have not yet numbered your days. For,

2. In the true arithmetic of life there is a substraction to be made. There is a great deal of existence which you must not count life. There are the days of infancy of which there is no memory left. There are the hours of sleep, which are as if they were not; those intermediate deaths they may be called, in which we do not so much live as prepare to live; and there are those many days and hours in which, from a great variety of causes, the mind is not fitted for exertion, nor the hand for labor. They must all be deducted. They are nothing in the correct estimate of life, and then how dimished the remainder of the hours of thought and activity, which alone deserve to be called life, is left to you. Greater, far greater are the intervals, than the actual, current life. But we have not made out our estimate yet. We have spoken of the abstract amount. We have been calculating the absolute of human life. But it does not stand unconnected; and let us,

3. Look at it as it stands related to that which shall come after it. We must state the proportion between this life and the life beyond it; and ascertain

the ratio of this part to man's entire existence.

The

terms long and short are relative and if we would know which of these belong to our life, we must compare our seventy years with the hereafter, eternity. There can be no comparison. There exists

no proportion. Who can complete the ratio of the finite to the infinite? Ah, it is in this view that the Bible tells us of life, that it is a vapor, a morning flower, a handbreadth, a span, a vanity, a dream, a tale, a nothing. A single grain of sand bears some proportion to the sum of the drifts of the desert, a drop, nay, the least particle of exhaled vapor has a calculable relation to the aggregate waters of the ocean, that has scarcely a sounding or a shore. A moment, the present now, might be multiplied into the life of the earliest made angels but no multiplication of time can make eternity. This life can be no measure of the life to come; however long it may be, yet placed beside the line of eternity, it diminishes to a point, and the point itself is lost. What would you think of seventy years, if they were marked off from some distant point in the endless futurity? Would you not think that term, as but a little, trifling interval, would you not esteem it as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night, or as a sleep? And why not think the same of that seventy years, which begins the endless series?

But you may be thinking, what is the profit of this calculation, if death does not end nor even interrupt our existence, what if life be as it is represented by us? 4. Hear then another part of this estimate.

have not yet taken into view the bearing of this life, on the life to come. If it were an unconnected quantity, no matter for it. No matter how short and how squandered, if when gone, it were gone forever and forgotten; if the consequences of time did not survive time itself; if no influence were sent out from it into and through eternity; if life and all its doings were not to pass under the eye and the review of God. But time is to give complexion to eternity. The moments that come and go in such rapid succession and are counted to be no more, are, every one of them, immortal in their consequences. Every moment that God gives to man, shall return at the appointed day and make its report of every deed, and whisper and thought before the judgment throne. Time is to man, in some respects, a more serious season than eternity. Eternity is absolutely the creature of time; derives all its cast and character from time; is troubled or serene, inviting or revolting, a blessing or a curse, as time, omnipotent time ordains it. Life is probationary, immortality retributive. The present is seed time, the future is harvest season. Take this into the estimate. In the numbering of your days, overlook rot this most serious consideration.

So then this is the result. We have seventy years given us, diminished indeed by a few deductions; and though nothing in comparison with eternity, yet something in itself, and in this term we are to act for eternity, we are to make or to mar our endless future prospects, and this you suppose is the end of this alarming computation. No.