Teaching Resources International

Our Duty and His Strength
Charles Spurgeon

“And they say unto him, ‘We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.’ He said, ‘Bring them hither to me.’” — Matthew 14:17-18

Our line of duty begins, first of all, in immediate obedience to Christ’s first command: “Bring ye them to me.”  “Five loaves, Master, it is all we have; two fishes.”  “Bring ye them to me.”  “Master, they are barley loaves; only five.” “Bring them to me.”  “There are two fishes; they are only two; they are not worth thinking of; let us keep them for ourselves.”  “No, bring them to me.”  “But they are such little fishes.”  “Bring them to me,” saith he, “bring them to me.”  The Church’s first duty is, when she looks to her resources and feels them to be utterly insufficient for her work, still to bring all that she has to Christ.  But how shall you bring them?  Why, in many ways. 

You must bring them to Christ in consecration.  There is a brother yonder who says, “Well, I have but little money to spare!”  “Never mind,” says Christ, “let what you have be brought to me.”  “Ah,” says another, “I have very short time that I can spare in laboring to do good.”  “Bring it to me.”  “Ah,” says another, “but I have small ability; my stock of knowledge is very slender; my speech is contemptible.”  “Bring it to me.”  “Oh,” saith one, “I could only teach in the Sunday school.”  “Bring it to me.”  “Ah,” says another, “and I do not know that I could do that; I could but distribute a tract.”  “Bring it to me.”  Every talent that the Church has is to be brought to Christ, and consecrated.  And mark you this – I speak a strong thing which some will not be able to receive – anything which you have in this world, which you do not consecrate to Christ’s cause, you do rob the Lord of.  Every true Christian, when he gave himself to Christ, gave everything he had.  Neither calls he anything that he has his own, but it is all the Master’s.  We are not true to the Master’s cause unless it be so. 

Bring ye them to me – not only in consecration, but also in prayer.  I think our prayer-meetings should be the seasons when the Church brings up all her barley loaves and fishes to Christ.  To get them blessed, here we come together around the altar.  We are weak and feeble, we come to be made strong; we have no power of ourselves, we come that we may receive power from on high; and we wait in the prayer-meeting, as thy disciples did in the upper room at Jerusalem, till the Spirit be poured out.  It is marvelous how a man with one talent can sometimes do ten times more than a man with ten talents, for he has ten times the grace.  A soldier, after all, is not always useful according to his weapon.  Give a fool an Armstrong gun [an early machine gun], and perhaps he will destroy himself with it.  Give a wise man but the poorest piece of fire-arms, and you shall find, with good and steady aim, and bold advance, he shall do more service with his small weapons, than the other with far better arms.  So there are men, who seem as if they might be leaders in God’s house, that are laggards, doing nothing, while there are others who are but little in Israel, whom God through his grace makes to be mighty.  Bring ye hither, O ye servants of the Lord, all that ye have kept back, pour ye all the tithes into his storehouse, that his house may be full. 

“Prove me now,” saith the Lord of hosts, “if I do not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”  Let us bring all we have to Christ, likewise in faith, laying it all at his feet, believing that his great power can make little means suffice for mighty ends.  “Lord, there are only five loaves,” – they were five loaves only when we had them in our hands, but now they are in thy hands, they are food for five thousand men.  “Lord, there are two fishes,” – they were paltry to insignificance while they were ours, but thy touch has ennobled them, and those little fishes shall become food for that vast multitude.  Blessed is that man who, feeling that he has truly consecrated all to God, can say, “There is enough. I do not want more talent; I do not need more substance; I would not wish to have more, there is enough for my work; I know it is utterly insufficient in itself, but our sufficiency is of God.” 

Oh! do not tell me, sirs, that we, as a denomination, are too feeble to do much good.  Do not tell me that the Christianity of England is too weak for the evangelization of the whole world.  No such thing: there is enough, there is plenty if the Master pleases it.  If there were only six good men living, and these six were thoroughly consecrated to God, they would be enough for the world’s conversion.  It is not the multiplication of your means, it is not the complication of your machinery, it is not the organization of your societies, it is not the qualification of your secretaries that God cares for a whit; it is your consecrated men who are wholly his and only his.  Let them believe that he can make them mighty, and they shall be mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.  I hesitate not to say that there are some pulpits that would be better empty than occupied; that there are some congregations to whom it would be far better if they had no preacher at all; for, having a minister who is not ordained of God, and not speaking by faith, they content themselves with things as they are, and grow listless.  Were the sham taken away, they might cry out for a real ministry.  God would bestow on them one taught of the Holy Ghost, who would speak with a tongue of fire, with inward witness and with spiritual energy, resting his confidence in God’s promises and his Word.  Oh dear friends, we ought to believe that there is enough means if Christ do but bless them, enough to bring in God’s chosen ones. 

“Bring ye them to me,” once more, in active service.  That which is dedicated to Christ in solemn covenant, and in earnest prayer, and in humble faith, must be dedicated in active service.  Are youall at work for Christ?  Are you all doing something for Christ?  I think there should not be a single member of this Church who is not somehow occupied for the Master.  Shall I except any? – except the weak upon their beds; and they can speak a good word for him when they are visited: except the dying upon their couches, and they can bear a blessed testimony to his faithfulness when they are going through the river: except the dumb, and they can act religion, when they cannot speak it: except the blind, and they can sing his praises: except the utterly incapacitated, and these can magnify the Lord by their patience.  Still we ought, everyone of us, if we be Christ’s, to be serving him. 

Now dear friends, if you want any inducements to lead you to bring all that you have to Christ, let me urge this.  In bringing it to him, you put your talent into his hand, whose hand was pierced for you.  You give to him who is your dearest friend; you give to him who spared not the blood of his heart that he might redeem you.  Do you not love him?  Is it not an honor to be permitted to show your love to so notable and noble a personage?  We have heard of women that have worked and all but starved themselves to bring food for their children; and as they put the precious morsels into the little ones’ mouths, they felt their toil to be nothing, because they were giving it to those they loved.  And so with the believer – he should feel that he most blesses himself when he blesses Christ.  And, indeed, when the Christian doeth ought for Jesus, it more blesses him that gives than him that takes.

Besides, when you give to him, you have another inducement, that you are thus giving to the multitude.  I know people think, when they are doing something for the Church that they are pleasing the minister; or pleasing the deacons.  Oh! dear friends, it is not so.  What interest have I in all the world but the love of poor souls.  There is a man, I think, present now, who I remember, some two or three winters ago, came to me to join the Church.  And when I sat down in the room to talk to him, I saw by the look of the poor man’s face he wanted bread natural as well as bread spiritual.  So I said, “Before I talk to you, I should like to see you a little refreshed;” and we fetched him something to eat.  I looked at him for a minute, for I saw his eyes glisten, and I left the room, for fear he should not eat so much when I was there.  This though I can tell you, when I saw the great pleasure with which he ate, it would have been sufficient compensation to me if that little had cost ten thousand pounds.  And when you see the poor sinner lay hold of Christ so greedily, and yet so joyfully, when you see his gleaming eye, and the tear as it runs down his cheek, you will say, I am too well paid to have done good to such a poor heart as this.  Lord, it is enough; I have fed these hungry souls.

Then to close this point.  “Bring ye them to me, and ye shall have as much left as ye had when ye brought them.”  They took up of the fragments more than ever they gave.  Christ will never let any man die in his debt.  What ye have done unto him is abundantly repaid, if not in temporals, yet in spirituals.  The fragments shall fill the baskets that are so liberally emptied.  You shall find that while watering others you are yourself watered.  The joy you impart shall be mutual.  To do good is to get good, and to distribute to others for Christ is the surest way of enriching one’s self.

The rest of the believer’s duty I will briefly sum up.  When you have brought your talents to Christ and have a conscientiousness of your great mission, your next duty is to look up.  Thank God for what you have got: look up!  Say, “There is nothing in what I do; there is nothing in my prayers, my preachings, my goings, my doings, except thou bless the whole.  Lord, bless it!”  Then, when you have blessed, break.  Go abroad and actively serve the Master, and when you have thus broken and have thus distributed to others, mind that you only distribute from Christ’s own hand.  You are to put your talents and abilities into Christ’s hand.  He gives the blessing on it; then he gives back to you: afterwards, you give it to the people.  If I give you bread from this pulpit to eat that is my own, it will be of no use to you.  But if, having gotten it in my study, I put it in the hand of Christ and come up here, and Christ hands it back to me and I give it to you, you shall be fed to the full.  This is Christ’s way of blessing men; he does not give the blessing first to the world; it is to his disciples, and then the disciples to the multitude.  We get in private what we distribute in public.  We have access to God as his chosen favorites.  We come near to him.  He gives to us, we give to others. 

Now I want to end by making you say, “We can.”  Yes! Christ is with us, and we can.  God is for us, and we can.  The Holy Ghost is in us, and we can.  God the Holy Spirit calls us, Jesus Christ the Son of God cheers us, God the Father smiles upon us; we can, we must, we will.  The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.  But have we believed in Christ ourselves?  If not, we can do nothing.  Come to Jesus first, then work for Jesus.  Give him your own heart first, then give him all that you have.  So shall he accept your offering, and bless your soul for his name’s sake.

Excerpted and edited from Spurgeon’s sermon, “Compassion for the Multitude.”

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The Resurrection Credible By C. H. Spurgeon PDF

By C. H. Spurgeon

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Jesus Declining the Legions C. H. Spurgeon

“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” — Matthew 26:53, 54

It is the garden of Gethsemane.  Here stands our Lord, and yonder is the betrayer.  He is foremost of the multitude.  You know his face, the face of that son of perdition, even Judas Iscariot.  He comes forward, leaving the men with the staves, and the swords, and the torches, and lanterns, and he proceeds to kiss his Master; it is the token by which the officers are to know their victim.  You perceive at once that the disciples are excited: one of them cries, “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?”  Their love to their Master has overcome their prudence.  There are but eleven of them, a small band to fight against the cohort sent by the authorities to arrest their Master; but love makes no reckoning of odds.  Before an answer can be given, Peter has struck the first blow, and the servant of the high-priest has narrowly escaped having his head cleft in twain; as it is, his ear is cut off.

Then the Savior comes forward in all his gentleness, as self-possessed as when he was at supper, as calm as if he had not already passed through an agony.  Quietly, he says, “Suffer it to be so now;” he touches the ear, and heals it, and in the lull which followed, when even the men that came to seize him were spell-bound by this wondrous miracle of mercy, he propounds the great truth, that they that take the sword shall perish with the sword, and bids Peter put up his weapon.

Then he utters these memorable words: “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?”

For a man to have force ready to his hand, and then to abstain from using it, is a case of self restraint, and possibly of self-sacrifice, of a far nobler kind.  Our Savior had his sword at his side that night, though he did not use it.  “What!” say you, “how can that be true?”  Our Lord says, “Can I not now pray to my Father, and he will give me twelve legions of angels?”

Our Lord had thus the means of self-defense; something far more powerful than a sword hung at his girdle; but he refused to employ the power within his reach.  His servants could not bear this test; they had no self-restraint, the hand of Peter is on his sword at once.  The failure of the servants in this matter seems to me to illustrate the grand self-possession of their Master.

Let us now proceed to learn from the words of the Lord Jesus which we have selected as our text.

Brethren, I would have you notice from the text OUR LORD’S GRAND RESOURCE. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father?”

Our Lord is surrounded by his adversaries, and there are none about him powerful enough to defend him from their malice; what can he do?  He says, “I can pray to my Father.”  This is our Lord’s continual resource in the time of danger; yea, even in that time of which he said, “This is your hour and the power of darkness.”  He can even now pray to his Father.

First, Jesus had no possessions on earth, but he had a Father. I rejoice in his saying, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father?”  He is a betrayed man; he is given up into the hands of those who thirst for his blood; but he has a Father almighty and divine.  If our Lord had merely meant to say that God could deliver him, he might have said, “Thinkest thou not that I can pray to Jehovah?” or, “to God:” but he uses the sweet expression “my Father” both here and in that text in John, where he says, “The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”

O brethren, remember that we have a Father in heaven.  When all is gone and spent, we can say, “Our Father.”  Relatives are dead, but our Father lives.  Supposed friends have left us, even as the swallows quit in our wintry weather; but we are not alone, for the Father is with us.  Cling to that blessed text, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come unto you.”  In every moment of distress, anxiety, perplexity, we have a Father in whose wisdom, truth, and power, we can rely.  Your dear children do not trouble themselves much, do they?  If they have a want, they go to father; if they are puzzled, they ask father; if they are ill-treated, they appeal to father.  If but a thorn is in their finger, they run to mother for relief.  Be it little or great, the child’s sorrow is the parent’s care.  This makes a child’s life easy: it would make ours easy if we would but act as children towards God.  Let us imitate the Elder Brother, and when we, too, are in our Gethsemane, let us, as he did, continue to cry, “My Father, My Father.”  This is a better defense than shield or sword.

Our Lord’s resource was to approach his Father with prevailing prayer.  “Can I not now pray to my Father?”  Our Lord Jesus could use that marvelous weapon of All-prayer, which is shield, and sword, and spear, and helmet, and breast-plate, all in one.  When you can do nothing else, you can pray.  If you can do many things besides, it will still be your wisdom to say, “Let us pray!”  But I think I hear you object, that our Lord had been praying, and yet his griefs were not removed.  He had prayed himself into a bloody sweat with prayer, and yet he was left unprotected, to fall into his enemies’ hands.  This is true, and yet it is not all the truth; for he had been strengthened, and power for deliverance was at his disposal.  He had only to press his suit to be rescued at once.  The Greek word here is not the same word which would set forth ordinary prayer: the Revised Version puts it, “Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father?”  We make a great mistake if we throw all prayer into one category, and think that every form of true prayer is alike.  We may pray and plead, and even do this with extreme earnestness, and yet we may not use that mode of beseeching which would surely bring the blessing.  Hitherto, our Lord had prayed, and prayed intensely, too; but there was yet a higher form of prayer to which he might have mounted if it had been proper so to do.  He could so have besought that the Father must have answered; but he would not.  O brethren, you have prayed a great deal, perhaps, about your trouble, but there is a reserve force of beseeching in you yet: by the aid of the Spirit of God you may pray after a higher and more prevailing rate.  This is a far better weapon than a sword.

I was speaking to a brother yesterday about a prayer which my Lord had remarkably answered in my own case, and I could not help saying to him, “But I cannot always pray in that fashion.  Not only can I not so pray, but I would not dare to do so even if I could.”  Moved by the Spirit of God, we sometimes pray with a power of faith which can never fail at the mercy-seat; but without such an impulse we must not push our own wills to the front.  There are many occasions upon which, if one had all the faith which could move mountains, he would most wisely show it by saying nothing beyond, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  Had our Lord chosen to do so, he had still in reserve a prayer-power which would have effectually saved him from his enemies.  He did not think it right so to use it; but he could have done so had he pleased.

Notice, that our Lord, felt that he could even then pray. Matters had not gone too far for prayer.  When can they do so?  The word “now” practically occurs twice in our version, for we get it first as “now,” and then as “presently.”  It occurs only once in the original; but as its exact position in the verse cannot easily be decided, our translators, with a singular wisdom, have placed it in both the former and the latter part of the sentence.  Our Savior certainly meant — “I am come now to extremities; the people are far away whose favor formerly protected me from the Pharisees; and I am about to be seized by armed men; but even now I can pray to my Father.”

Prayer is an ever-open door. There is no predicament in which we cannot pray.  If we follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, we can now pray effectually unto our Father, even as he could have done.  Do I hear you say, “The fatal hour is near?”  You may now pray.  “But the danger is imminent!”  You may now pray.  If, like Jonah, you are now at the bottom of the sea, and the weeds are wrapped about your head, you may even now pray.  Prayer is a weapon that is stable in every position in the hour of conflict.  The Greeks had long spears, and these were of grand service to the phalanx so long as the rank was not broken; but the Romans used a short sword, and that was a far more effectual weapon at close quarters.  Prayer is both the long spear and the short sword.  Yes, brother, between the jaws of the lion you may even now pray.  We glory in our blessed Master, that he knew in fullness of faith that if he would bring forth his full power of prayer he could set all heaven on the wing.  As soon as his beseeching prayer had reached the Father’s ear, immediately, like flames of fire, angels would flash death upon his adversaries.

Our Lord’s resort was not to the carnal weapon, but to the mighty engine of supplication.  Behold, my brethren, where our grand resort must always be.  Look not to the arm of flesh, but to the Lord our God.  Church of God, look not piteously to the State, but fly to the mercy-seat. Church of God, look not to the ministry, but resort to the throne of grace.  Church of God, depend not upon learned or moneyed men, but beseech God in supplicating faith.  Prayer is the tower of David built for an armory.  Prayer is our battle-axe and weapons of war.  We say to our antagonist: “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father.”  Let this suffice to display our Savior’s grand resource in the night of his direst distress

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Pictures of Life PDF

By C. H. Spurgeon

“What is your life?” James 4:14

It well behoves me, now that another year of my existence has almost gone, standing on the threshold of a fresh era, to consider what I am, where I am going, what I am doing, whom I am serving, and what shall he my reward.  I will not, however, do so publicly before you; I hope that I may be enabled to perform that duty in secret; but rather let me turn this occurrence to another account by speaking to you of the frailty of human life, the fleeting nature of time, how swiftly it passes away, how soon we all shall fade as a leaf, and how speedily the place which knows us now shall know us no more for ever.

The apostle James asks, “What is your life?” and, thanks to inspiration, we are at no great difficulty to give the reply; for Scripture being the best interpreter of Scripture, supplies us with many very excellent answers.  I shall attempt to give you some of them.

I. First, we shall view life with regard to ITS SWIFTNESS.

It is a great fact that though life to the young man, when viewed in the prospect appears to be long, to the old man it is ever short, and to all men life is really but a brief period.  Human life is not long.  Compare it with the existence of some animals and trees, and how short is human life!  Compare it with the ages of the universe, and it becomes a span; and especially measure it by eternity, and how little does life appear!  It sinks like one small drop into the ocean, and becomes as insignificant as one tiny grain of sand upon the seashore.

Life is swift.  If you would picture life, you must, turn to the Bible, and this evening we will walk through the Bible-gallery of old paintings.  You will find its swiftness spoken of in the Book of Job, where we are furnished with three illustrations.  In the ninth chapter and at the twenty-fifth verse, we read, “Now my days are swifter than a post.”  We are most of us acquainted with the swiftness of post-conveyance.  I have sometimes, on an emergency, taken posthorses where there has been no railway, and have been amazed and pleased with the rapidity of my journey.  But since, in this ancient Book, there can be no allusion to modern posts, we must turn to the manners and customs of the East, and in so doing we find that the ancient monarchs astonished their subjects by the amazing rapidity with which they received intelligence.  By well-ordered arrangements, swift horses, and constant relays, they were able to attain a speed which, although trifling in these days, was in those slower ages a marvel of marvels; so that, to an Eastern, one of the clearest ideas of swiftness was that of “a post.”  Well doth Job say that our life is swifter than a post.  We ride one year until it is worn out, but there comes another just as swift, and we are borne by it, and soon it is gone, and another year serves us for a steed, post-house after post-house we pass, as birthdays successively arrive, we loiter not, but vaulting at a leap from one year to another, still we hurry onward, onward, ever onward.  My life is like a post: not like the slow wagon that drags along the road with tiresome wheels, but like a post, it attains the greatest speed.

Job further says, “My days are passed away as the swift ships.”  He increases, you see, the intensity of the metaphor; for if, in the Eastern’s idea anything could exceed the swiftness of the post, it was the swift ship.  Some translate this passage as “the ships of desire;” that is, the ships hurrying home, anxious for the haven, and therefore crowding, on all sail.

You may well conceive now swiftly the mariner flies from a threatening storm, or seeks the port where he will find his home.  You have sometimes seen how the ship cuts through the billows, leaving a white furrow behind her, and causing the sea to boil around her.  Such is life, says Job, “as the swift ships,” when the sails are filled by the wind, and the vessel dashes on, cleaving a passage through the crowding waves.  Swift are the ships, but swifter far is life.  The wind of time bears me along.  I cannot stop its motion, I may direct it with the rudder of God’s Holy Spirit; I may, it is true, take in some small sails of sin, which might hurry my days on faster than otherwise they would go; but, nevertheless, like a swift ship, my life must speed on its way until it reaches its haven.  Where is that haven to be?  Shall it be found in the land of bitterness and barrenness, that dreary region of the lost?  Or shall it be that sweet haven of eternal peace, where not a troubling wave can ruffle the quiescent glory of my spirit?  Wherever the haven is to be, that, truth is the same, we are “as the swift ships.”

Job also says that life is “as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.”  The eagle is a bird noted for its swiftness.  I remember reading an account of an eagle attacking a fish-hawk, which had obtained some booty from the deep, and was bearing it aloft.  The hawk dropped the fish, which fell towards the water; but before the fish had reached the ocean, the eagle had flown more swiftly shall the fish could fall, and catching it in its beak it flew away with it.  The swiftness of the eagle is almost incalculable; you see it, and it is gone; you see a dark speck in the sky yonder; it is an eagle soaring; let the fowler imagine that, by-and-by, he shall overtake it on some mountain’s craggy peak, it shall be gone long before he reaches it.  Such is our life. It is like an eagle hasting to its prey; not merely an eagle flying in its ordinary course, but an eagle hasting to its prey.  Life appears to be hasting to its end; death seeks the body as its prey; life is ever fleeing from insatiate death; but death is too swift to be out run, and as an eagle overtakes his prey, so shall death.

If we require a further illustration of the swiftness of life, we must turn to two other passages in the Book of Job, upon which I shall not dwell.  One, will be found in the seventh chapter, at the sixth verse, where Job says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” which the weaver throws, so quickly that the eye can hardly discern it.  But he gives us a yet more excellent metaphor in the seventh verse of the same chapter, where he says, “O remember that my life is wind.”  Now this excels in velocity all the other figures we have examined.  Who can out stride the winds? Proverbially, the winds are rapid; even in their gentlest motion they appear to be swift.  But when they rush in the tornado, or when they dash madly on in the hurricane, when the tempest blows, and tears down everything, how swift then is the wind!  Perhaps some of us may have a gentle gale of wind, and we may not seem to move so swiftly; but with others, who are only just born, and then snatched away to heaven, the swiftness may be compared to that of the hurricane, which soon snaps the ties of life, and leaves the infant dead.  Surely our life is like the wind.

Oh, if you could but catch these idea, my friends!  Though we may be sitting still in this chapel, yet you know that we are all really in motion.  This world is turning round on its axis once in four-and-twenty hours, and besides that, it is moving round the sun in the 365 days of the year.  So that we are all moving, we are all flitting along through space, and as we are traveling through space, so are we moving through time at an incalculable rate.

Oh, what an idea this is could we but grasp it!  We are all being carried along as if by a giant angel, with broad outstretched wings, which he flaps to the blast, and flying before the lightning, makes us ride on the winds.  The whole multitude of us are hurrying along, — whither, remains to be decided by the test of our faith and the grace of God; but certain it is that we are all traveling.  Do not think that you are stable, fixed in one position; fancy not that you are standing still; you are not.  Your pulses each moment beat the funeral marches to the tomb.  You are chained to the chariot of rolling time; there is no bridling the steeds, or leaping from the chariot; you must be constantly in motion.

Thus then, have I spoken of the swiftness of life.

II. But, next, I must speak concerning THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE, of which we have abundant illustrations.

Let us refer to that part of Scripture from, which I have chosen my text, the Epistle of James, the fourth chapter, at the fourteenth verse: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”  If I were to ask for a child’s explanation of this, I know what he would say.  He would say, “Yes, it is even a vapor, like a bubble that is blown upward.”  Children sometimes blow bubbles, and amuse themselves thereby.  Life is even as that bubble.  You see it rising into the air; the child delights in seeing it fly about, but it is all gone in one moment.

“It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”  But if you ask the poet to explain this, he would tell you that, in the morning, sometimes at early dawn, the rivers send up a steamy offering to the sun.  There is a vapor, a mist, an exhalation rising from the rivers and brooks, but in a very little while after the sun has risen all that mist has gone.  Hence we read of “the morning cloud, and the early dew that passeth away.”  A more common observer, speaking of a vapor, would think of those thin clouds you sometimes see floating in the air, which are so light that they are soon carried away. Indeed, a poet uses them as the picture of feebleness, —

“Their hosts are scatter’d, like thin clouds

Before a Biscay gale.”

The wind moves them, and they are gone.  “What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”  So uncertain is life!

Again, if you read in the Book of Ecclesiastes, at the sixth chapter, and the twelfth verse, you will there find life compared to something else, even more fragile than a vapor. The wise man there says that it is even “as a shadow.”  Now, what can there be less  substantial than a shadow?  What substance is there in a shadow?  Who can lay hold of  it?  You may see a person’s shadow as he passes you, but the moment the person passes away his shadow is gone.  Yea, and who can grasp his life?  Many men reckon upon a long existence, and think they are going to live here for ever; but who can calculate upon a shadow? Go, thou foolish man, who sayest to thy soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease! eat, drink, and be merry;” go thou, and store thy room, with shadows; go thou, and pile up shadows and say, “These are mine, and they shall never depart.”  But thou sayest, “I cannot catch a shadow.”  No, and thou canst not reckon on a year, or even a moment, for it is as a shadow, that soon melteth away, and is gone.

King Hezekiah also furnishes us with a simile, where he says that life is as a thread which is cut off.  You will find this in the prophecy of Isaiah, the thirty-eighth chapter, at the twelfth verse: “Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life.”  The weaver cuts off his thread very easily, and so is life soon ended.

I might continue my illustrations at pleasure concerning the uncertainty of life.  We might find, perhaps, a score more figures in Scripture if we would search.  Take, for instance, the grass, the flowers of the field, etc.  But though life is swift, and though it is to pass away so speedily, we are still generally very anxious to know what it is to be, while we have it.  For we say, if we are to lose it soon, still, while we live, let us live; and whilst we are to be here, be it ever so short a time, let us know what we are to expect in it.

III. And that leads us, in the third place, to look at LIFE IN ITS CHANGES.

If you want pictures of the changes of life, turn to this wonderful Book of poetry, the Sacred Scriptures, and there you will find metaphors piled on metaphors.  And, first, you will find life compared to a pilgrimage by good old Jacob, in the forty-seventh chapter of Genesis, and the ninth verse.  That hoary-headed patriarch, when he was asked by Pharaoh what was his age, replied, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not obtained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”  He calls life, a pilgrimage.  A pilgrim sets out in the morning, and he has to journey many a day before he gets to the shrine which he, seeks.  What varied scenes the traveler will behold on his way!

Sometimes he will be on the mountains, anon he will descend into the valleys, here he will be where the brooks shine like silver, where the birds warble, where the air is balmy, and the trees are green, and luscious fruits hang down to gratify his taste, anon he will find himself in the arid desert, where no life is found, and no sound is heard, except the screech of the wild eagle in the air, where he finds no rest for the sole of his foot, — the burning sky above him, and the hot sand beneath him, — no roof-tree, and no house to rest himself; at another time he finds himself in a sweet oasis, resting himself by the wells of water, and plucking fruit from palm-trees.  At one time he walks between the rocks, in some narrow gorge, where all is darkness, at another time he ascends the hill Mizar; now he descends into the valley of Baca anon he climbs the hill of Bashan, and a high hill is the hill Bashan and yet again going into the mountains of leopards, he suffers trial and affliction.

Such is life, ever changing.  Who can tell what may come next?  Today it is fair, tomorrow there may be the blundering storm; today I may want for nothing, tomorrow I may be like Jacob, with nothing but a stone for my pillow, and the heavens for my curtains.  But what a happy thought it is, though we know not how the road winds, we know where it ends.  It is the straightest way to heaven to go round about. Israel’s forty years wanderings were, after all, the nearest path to Canaan.  We may have to go through trial and affliction; the pilgrimage may be a tiresome one, but it is safe; we cannot trace the river upon which we are sailing, but we know it ends in floods of bliss at last.  We cannot track the roads, but we know that they all meet in the great metropolis of heaven, in the center of God’s universe.  God help us to pursue the true pilgrimage of a pious life!

We have another picture of life in its changes given to us in the ninetieth Psalm, at the ninth verse: “We spend our years as a tale that is told.”  Now David understood about tales that were told; I daresay he had been annoyed by them sometimes, and amused by them at other times.  There are, in the past, professed story-tellers, who amused their hearers by inventing tales such as those in that foolish book the “Arabian Nights.”  When I was foolish enough to read that book, I remember sometimes you were with fairies, sometimes with genii, sometimes in palaces, anon you went, down into caverns.  All sorts of singular things are conglomerated into what they call a tale.

Now, says David, “we spend our years as a tale that is told.”  You know there is nothing so wonderful as the history of the odds and ends of human life.  Sometimes it is a merry rhyme, sometimes a prosy subject; sometimes you ascend to the sublime, soon you descend to the ridiculous.  No man can write the whole of his own biography, I suppose, if the complete history of a man’s thoughts and words could be written, the world itself would hardly contain the record, so wonderful is the tale that might be told.  Our lives are all singular, and must to ourselves seem strange; of which much might be said.  Our life is “as a tale that is told.”

Another idea we get from the thirty-eighth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, at the twelfth verse: “I am removed as a shepherd’s tent.”  The shepherds in the East build temporary huts near the sheep, which are soon removed when the flock moves on; when the hot season comes on, they pitch their tents in the most favorable place they can find, and each season has its suitable position.  My life is like a shepherd’s tent.  I have pitched my tent in a variety of places already; but where I shall pitch it by-and-by, I do not know, I cannot tell.  Present probabilities seem to say that —

“Here I shall make my settled rest,

And neither go nor come:

No more a stranger or a guest,

But like a child at home.”

But I cannot tell, and you cannot divine.  I know that my tent cannot be removed till God says, “Go forward;” and it cannot stand firm unless he makes it so.

“All my ways shall ever be

Order’d by his wise decree.”

You have been opening a new shop lately, and you are thinking of settling down in trade, and managing a thriving concern; now paint not the future too brightly, do not be too sure as to what is in store for you.  Another has for a long time been engaged in an old establishment; your father always carried on trade there, and you have no thought of moving; but here you have no abiding city; your life is like a shepherd’s tent; you may be here, there, and almost everywhere before you die.  It was once said by Solan, “No man ought to be called a happy man till he dies,” because he does not know what his life is to be; but Christians may always call themselves happy men here, because, wherever their tent is carried, they cannot pitch it where the cloud does not move, and where they are not surrounded by a circle of fire.  God will be a wall of fire round about them, and their glory in the midst.  They cannot dwell where God is not the bulwark of their salvation.

If any of you who are God’s people are going to change your condition, are going to move out of one situation into another, to take a new business, or remove to another county, you need not fear, God was with you in the last place, and he will be with you in this.  He hath said, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.”  That is an oft-told story of Caesar in a storm.  The sailors were all afraid; but he exclaimed, “Fear not! thou carriest Caesar and all his fortunes.”  So is it with the poor Christian.  There is a storm coming on, but fear not, thou art carrying Jesus, and thou must sink or swim with him.  Well may any true believer say, “Lord, if thou art with me, it matters not where my tent is.  All must be well, though my life is removed like a shepherd’s tent.”

Again, our life is compared in the Psalms to a dream.  Now, if a tale is singular, surely a dream, is still more so.  If a tale is changing and shifting, what is a dream?  As for dreams, those flutterings of the benighted fancy, those revelries of the imagination, who can tell what they consist of?  We dream of everything in the world, and a few things more!  If we were asked to tell our dreams, it would be impossible for us to do so.  You dream that you are at a feast; and lo! the viands change into Pegasus, and you are riding through the air; or, again, suddenly transformed into a morsel for a monster’s meal.  Such is life.  The changes occur as suddenly as they happen in a dream.  Men have been rich one day, and they have been beggars the next.  We have witnessed the exile of monarchs, and the flight of a potentate; or, in, another direction, we have seen a man, neither reputable in company nor honorable in station, at a single stride exalted to a throne; and you, who would have shunned him in the streets before, were foolish enough to throng your thoroughfares to stare at him.  Ah! such is life. Leaves of the Sibyl were not more easily moved by the winds, nor are dreams more variable.  “Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”  How foolish are those men who wish to pry into the future!  The telescope is ready, and they are going to look through it, but they are so anxious to see, that they breathe on the glass with their hot breath, and they dim it, so that they can discern nothing but clouds and darkness.  Oh, ye who are always conjuring up black fiends from the deep unknown, and foolishly vexing your minds with fancies, turn your fancies out of doors, and begin to rest on never-failing promises!  Promises are better than forebodings.  “Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.”

Thus I have spoken of the changes of this mortal life.

IV. And now, to close, let me ask, WHAT IS TO BE THE END OF THIS LIFE?

We read in the second Book of Samuel, chapter 14, and verse 14, “We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.”  Man is like a great icicle, which the sun of time is continually thawing, and which is soon to be as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.  Who can recall the departed spirit, or inflate the lungs with a new breath of life?  Who can put vitality into the heart, and restore the soul from Hades?  None.  It cannot be gathered up again; the place that once knew it shall know it no more for ever.

But here a sweet thought charms us.  This water cannot be lost, but it shall descend into the soil to filter through, the Rock of ages, at last to spring up a pure fountain in heaven, cleansed, purified, and made clear as crystal.

How terrible if, on the other hand, it should percolate through the black earth of sin, and hang in horrid drops in the dark caverns of destruction!  Such is life!  Then, make the best use of it, my friends, because it is fleeting.  Look for another life, because this life is not a very desirable one, it is so changeable.  Trust your life in God’s hand, because you cannot control its movements, rest in his arms, and rely on his might; for he is able to do for you exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or think; and unto his name be glory for ever and ever! Amen.

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