Psalms 90:17

REFLECTIONS

READER, have you ever contemplated, in the point of view this blessed Psalm represents it, the dying circumstances of a perishing world? There is nothing which, under grace, can more effectually tend to give a right and proper estimate of human life. In every state, in everything, the funeral proclamation is momentarily making: Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. From a conviction of this unquestionable truth, the inquiry arises what will be the best preparation for it; and, since there can be no exemption, how shall you or I be suitably and properly affected towards it? This Psalm opens with an answer the most satisfactory. The Lord is the only dwelling place in all generations. The Rock of Ages is the only habitation. If God, in Christ, be the dwelling place of the believer, here the soul resides secure amidst all the dying and the dead circumstances of a convulsed, tottering, crumbling, and departing world. Reader, what say you to this security? Are you living upon a faithful, unchangeable covenant-God in Christ? Have you taken shelter in Jesus, as a hiding place from the storm, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land? Oh, what an everlasting security is here! Because I live, saith Jesus, ye shall live also. Fear not, said he, to the dying Patriarch, fear not to go down into Egypt, I will go with thee. And when you and I can say, as the Patriarch did, I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord: then may we add, This God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide unto death!