accompanied. But if he practically felt that at any moment "his soul might be required of him," he would feel the folly of trusting in uncertain riches,-in themammon of unrighteousness,-and would be sensible of the wisdom of being "rich towards God," rich in faith and good works, instead of "heaping up riches and not knowing who shall gather them," thus "walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself in vain."

In short, in all cases where there is not an utter and total want of all religious belief, serious reflexion on the shortness and uncertainty of human life must necessarily have most useful effects, and tend most powerfully to enable us to resist temptation, and to preserve us from sin.

Accordingly, this reflexion is repeatedly impressed upon us in the Scripture, and

Ps. xxxix. 6.

enforced by a variety of illustrations. They compare the life of man to the fading flower, the perishing grass, to smoke, to a fleeting vapour, to the sleep of a night, to a dream.—" All flesh is grass," says Isaiah in the text, " and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it." -And in another place the same prophet represents us as all fading away like a withering leaf1." As soon as thou scatterest them," says the Psalmist, "they are even as a sleep, and fade away suddenly like the grass. In the morning it is green, and groweth up, but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered1." And again, "The days of man are but as grass, for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the

Isa. Ixiv. 6.

i Ps. xc. 5, 6.

Ps. ciii. 15.

wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.”— "My days are consumed away like smoke. -My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass'." And the apostle St. James, when expostulating with those men who reckoned upon life as upon something certain, says, "For what is your life?—It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

It is unnecessary to recite more of the passages of Scripture which express the same sentiment. The useful lesson which they teach ought never to be forgotten by us. We may be reminded of it by the sight of the several objects to which they compare our uncertain life. When we look on a fading flower, on a withered leaf, on a passing cloud, or a dispersing

1 Ps. cii. 3, 11.

m James iv. 14.

vapour, we should reflect that the fleeting object before us admonishes of the short and fleeting nature of our mortal exist

ence.

Perhaps we are still more forcibly reminded of this, by every instance that we witness of the extinction of animal life, by every death of a beast, a bird, or a reptile; and far more forcibly still, and far more affectingly, by the deaths of our fellow men. On every side of us we see and hear of those who partake of the same nature with ourselves, departing out of the land of the living, and going down to the silence of the grave. Some but just open their eyes in this world, and then close them again till the day of resurrection; some are called away in early youth; some, when just advancing into manhood some in their full vigour; some in the feebleness of declining years. "One dieth,' says Job, “in his full strength, being

wholly at ease and quiet;-and another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them"." No period of age, no strength of constitution, no appearance of health, can give the slightest security of continuing here. Many we see cut off in the midst of their strength by some sudden accident; many by the violence of fierce and rapid sickness; many by lingering and tedious disease. Certainly all these various considerations, especially such daily spectacles of mortality, ought not to be lost upon us; certainly they ought feelingly to remind us "how frail and uncertain our own condition" is. They should remind us of it, not to make us melancholy, not to depress us into sadness, not to sink us into a dull and reckless indif

n Job xxi. 23, 25, 26.

1