August 23

So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. - Psalms 90:12.

A KNOWLEDGE of the frailty of life and the certainty of death, one would imagine, would be very powerful, very efficient, and very operative. But what is the fact? We do not find any thing that is really less impressive and less influential than death! How was it in the days of Job? Eliphaz says, “They are destroyed from morning to night; they perish forever.” And it is the same now. Sometimes the sudden dissolution, the sight of a dying bed, or the passage of a funeral, will produce a temporary impression: but it is little more than a momentary one; men soon go on again as before; one returns to his farm, and another to his merchandise; one is mad after honour, another after money, and another after the dissipations of the world. Men do not live as those who know they must die. They do know it; and yet what a slight influence it has over them!

Here we see the inefficacy of mere knowledge. Some people seem to think that knowledge is to do every thing. Why, this, like any other truth, may lie in the mind uninfluential. Some imagine that all truth must necessarily be influential according to the nature and importance of the thing believed. It ought to be so, and it would be so if we were in a proper state of mind. We are fallen creatures, and much of the effect of the fall is apparent in the derangement of the operation of the powers of the mind, so that it is now an undeniable fact, that the clearest convictions can be counteracted, that men may see and approve better things and follow the worse. But is it not strange that such knowledge, so immediately and eternally interesting to man, should be uninfluential? Is it not a proof of the depravity of human nature that he can be insensible and indifferent here? But why is it so desirable to consider our latter end, and what influence should the knowledge we have of our mortality have over us? It should lead us to abhor and forsake sin, which has “brought death into the world, and all our woe.” How should this knowledge loosen our. hold of the earthly things which we must certainly, and which we may so soon, be deprived of! It was a good reflection of Esau, so far, when he said, “Behold, I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me?” And so we may say with regard to various things which would entice us and engross our supreme attention.

The ancients made use of this fact when they were accustomed to place before their guests at their feasts a skeleton, in order to excite them to the more mirth while they could enjoy it, for they could not enjoy it long. But how much better use does the apostle make of it, when, writing to the Corinthians, he says, “Brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that both they that have wives should be as those that have none.” So it should lead us immediately and earnestly to say, with Paul, “That I may win Christ, and be found in him.” He has destroyed death as to its sting now, and will as to its state hereafter; and the voice from heaven cries, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,” and only such; that is, all who die in a state of union and communion with him, having his righteousness to justify them and to give them a title to heaven, and his Spirit to sanctify them and make them “meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.”

It is important for us to know that we must shortly die, in order that we may turn this knowledge to the most advantageous account. We shall, therefore, be concerned to do with our might whatsoever our hand findeth to do, “for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither we are going.” Let us then pray with Moses, “Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am.” “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”