1 Chronicles 29:15

‘AS A SHADOW LIFE IS FLEETING’

‘Our days on the earth are as a shadow.’

1 Chronicles 29:15

I. The shadow is a fit emblem of human life.—From the hour it falls on the dial it moves round the little circle until the sun sinks, when in a moment it is gone. A few hours past, and its work is done. The shadow thrown by the brightest sunshine must vanish when the night comes. Thus it is with life. As the hours pass, life draws to its close, and at last ‘the night cometh when no man can work,’ for it is the night of death. A few years at the most, and man’s life is over—his work is done.

II. Think, too, how soon a shadow may vanish from the face of the sun-dial even when the sun is high in the heavens and the night long distant.—Look on a sun-dial when a little cloud passes between the earth and the sun. In a moment the shadow is gone. So it is with life. How slight a cause may lead to death! How many pass away from this earth in the bloom of youth—in the meridian of life when age is as yet far from them, cut off by a sudden illness or launched into eternity without a moment’s warning by an accident! Truly life is frail and fleeting as a shadow. Well may the holy men of old have spoken of the shortness of their pilgrimage here on earth. Read the poetry of the Old Testament, and over and over again you must alight on passages which speak of life in the rich imagery of the East. ‘As the waters that are dried up’; ‘as the flower of the field’; ‘as the grass that is cut down’; ‘as a watch in the night’; ‘as a tale that is told.’ Such is the life of man.

III. In all times have men been led to meditate on the shortness of human life.—You cannot open a volume of poems without finding life compared to all that is transitory. This is not because such comparisons furnish materials for beautiful word-painting—for pretty verses that will please the ear, but because the world of nature abounds with true images of mortal life—images which constantly present themselves to the thoughtful mind and teach the one lesson that ‘brief life is here our portion.’ ‘What is life?’ we ask, and Nature answers:—

What is life! like a flower with the bane in its bosom,

To-day full of promise—to-morrow it dies!—

And health, like the dew-drop that hangs in its blossom,

Survives but a night, and exhales to the skies.

Nature is a very eloquent preacher to those who will heed. There is nothing, ‘from the giant oak to the dwarf moss which grows upon its bark,’ on which there is not a message to the heart writ by the finger of God.

IV. But God does not speak to us through Nature without a purpose.—We are not to ponder in our hearts on the analogy between human life and Nature in its various phases for the pleasure of indulging in sentimental feelings. We must not watch the fleeting shadow, and then, after a few saddened reflections turn to the world and its pursuits only to forget the lesson which these reflections should leave behind. When Moses mused on the shortness of human life, his prayer was, ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’ Life is short, so we must seek for wisdom to make the best use of it. No more is required than that every man should do his best with the hours entrusted to his care.

Not enjoyment and not sorrow

Is our destined end or way,

But to act that each to-morrow

Finds us further than to-day.

Rev. W. S. Randall.

Illustration

‘In the garden of a vicarage in Lancashire there is an old sun-dial, with an inscription engraved on its pedestal. The words tell the reader that the hours will not wait for any man, but that they glide away never to be recalled; and the verses conclude by exhorting all who read them to labour while life lasts, and “watch and pray” lest their labour be in vain. There are very few of these old sun-dials which have not some inscription on them relating to the shortness of human life, and the value of that life, short as it is. On a curious old dial in the College of All Souls, Oxford, there is an inscription which warns all who go to look at the moving shadow, that the hours of their lives not only pass away for ever, but are laid to their charge. These inscriptions were written by pious men who wished their sun-dials to be silent witnesses to the transitory nature of life, reminding those who saw them that their lives were as fleeting as the shadow which fell across the dial.’