But we may become, if possible, still more thoroughly impressed with the propriety of the representation here given of our present existence, if, with the king of Israel in the text, we contrast it with that of the Deity. "Before thee," says he, "we are strangers and sojourners." When we compare the term of our own existence merely with that allotted to our fellow creatures, extending the former in imagination, as we are almost sure to do, to the farthest possible limit, it is no wonder if the conviction of its brevity come not very forcibly home to us. Multitudes, we know, have scarcely time to enter on life, before they are summoned to leave it. Multitudes more we behold cut off long before they have reached maturity. Comparatively few are suffered even to approach the period commonly assigned to old age. What wonder, then, if buoyed up by the suggestions of a too flattering imagination, and contrasting our expected term of fourscore years at least with that allotted to these ephemeral beings, we proceed to invest ourselves with the character of patriarchs, and contemptuously reject, at least for the present, every idea that, by supposing the possibility of an earlier termination of our existence, appears to place us on a level with those who have fallen thus prematurely around us. Not to examine at present into the strength

of the foundation upon which, in any particular instance, such presumptuous hopes are built, it were well for us frequently to compare the length of even this anticipated existence, with that of His duration whom we are taught, both by reason and revelation, to conceive of as without beginning of days or end of years. In the presence of such a Being as this, how utterly insignificant does the longest term of years ever allotted to human life appear! Carry your imaginations back to the origin of our world, to a period preceding that in which the earliest ray of light visited it, or the Divine energy began to impart life and beauty to the shapeless mass of which it consisted. How vast the distance that seems, to human conceptions, to separate us from that period! How many generations of men have successively made their appearance upon earth, acted the parts allotted to them, and withdrawn, since then! What multitudes of events, big with the most important consequences to nations and to the whole human race, as well as to individuals, have taken place during that long interval! What labour is requisite to acquire even such an imperfect knowledge of its history, as authentic records have placed within our reach! And yet, my friends, long as we are in the habit of considering it, in what light must it appear to Him whose goings

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forth have been of old, even from everlasting? In what light does it appear even to us, when contrasted with such ideas of eternity as we are capable of forming? Can we not multiply it in imagination, until the wearied mind shrinks from the continuance of the task, and until the apparently tedious interval of six or seven thousand years, during which so many millions of human beings have become tenants of the grave, gradually shrinking in its dimensions, assume the appearance of a point, amidst the vastness of infinity? And if this be true even of the space of time that has elapsed since the creation, how much more applicable must it be to the duration of a single life! How much of eternity does seventy or eighty years appear to occupy! Let them declare, whose lives have been already extended to that period. Let them say how short, to the eye of memory, appears the interval between the sunny plains of childhood and the dark confines of the grave. Will not all such persons, borrowing an image similar to that employed in the text, join in the acknowledgment of the patriarch, and admit that "few have been the years of their pilgrimage"?

Another contrast which we should not omit to make, in meditating on this subject, and which, as believers in Christianity, may be ex

pected to bring the matter home to us with peculiar force, is that observable between the brevity of the present life and the endless duration of the future existence, to which we have been encouraged to look forward. How, my fellow Christians, can we avoid regarding ourselves as strangers and sojourners in a world like this, when we have the prospect before us of being admitted into mansions where we may take up our abode for ever! It is the duty of every Christian, who is desirous of deriving any benefit from the religion which he professes to believe, to make the prospect of a new and more durable existence hereafter as familiar to him as possible. When once he has been convinced of the truth of Christianity, and of the solidity of the foundation upon which rests the hope of everlasting life there held out to us, it should thenceforth become a leading object with him, to make that hope habitually present to his mind, and capable of exciting at all times a degree of interest proportioned to its real value. To the man who has succeeded in accomplishing this, the words of the text must, indeed, appear beautifully expressive of the ideas he has accustomed himself to attach to the present existence. Looking forward to an eternal home, in some of the happy and peaceful mansions which the Lord Jesus is gone to prepare, it is impossible for him not to

feel himself whilst here, comparatively speaking, a stranger and a sojourner. To ask whether we entertain such sentiments of the present life, were to ask whether we are entitled to the name of Christians. Taking for granted, therefore, that we do, or that, so far as we do not, we are conscious of a deficiency in our faith, and are exerting a proportionate degree of diligence in our efforts to remedy it, let us rather attend at present to the nature of the influence, which such views of the present existence ought to exert upon our conduct.

And here it seems proper to notice, in the first place, the use made by David himself, in the passage from which the text is taken, of the reflection it contains. What this use was, we shall perceive at once, by observing the connection. You will recollect that the text occurs in a solemn address to the Deity, made by David, after the collection of certain voluntary offerings, on the part both of himself and his subjects, towards bearing the expense of erecting the temple, subsequently built by Solomon. "But who am I," he continues, after having returned thanks for the success that had hitherto attended the undertaking, "who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come