n and our true peace; and under the shadow of
earthly disappointment, all unconsciously to ourselves, our Divine
Redeemer is walking by our side.

LIFE A TALE

We spend our years as a tale that is told. Psalm xc.9.

We bring our years to an end like a thought, is the proper rendering of
these words, according, to an eminent translator. But as the essential
idea of the Psalmist is preserved in the common version, I employ it
as peculiarly illustrative and forcible. It will be my object, in
the present discourse, to show the fitness of the comparison in the
text;--to suggest the points of resemblance between human life and a
passing narrative.

I observe, then, in the first place, that the propriety of this simile
is seen in the brevity of life. What more rapid and momentary than a
story? It is heard, and passes. Though it beguiles us for the time,
it dies away in sound, or melts from before, the eye. And this I say,
strikingly illustrates the brevity of life. The brevity of life! It is
a trite truth, and yet how little realized! Probably there is nothing,
more common, and yet there is nothing, more pernicious, than the habit
of virtual dependence upon length of days. Thus the best ends of our
mortal being are lost sight of; the solemn circumstances, the suggestive
mysteries of life, are misconstrued. The heavens, which give a myriad
hints of worlds beyond the grave, are, to many, impenetrable walls,
shutting them in to mere pursuits of sense,--the upholstery of a
workshop or bazaar; and this earth, which is but a step,--a filmy
platform of our immortal course,--is to them the solid abiding place of
all interest, and of all hope.

It is well, then, to break in upon this worldly reliance,--to consider
how fleeting and uncertain are the things in which we garner up so much.
Therefore, in order that we may more vividly realize the brevity of
life,--how like it is to a passing tale,--let us consider the rapidity
of its changes, even in a few short years. We are, to some degree, made
aware how fast the current of time bears us on, when we pause and remark
the shores; when we observe how our position to-day has shifted from
what it was yesterday; how the sunny slopes of youth have been changed
for the teeming uplands of maturity; yea, perhaps, how already the
stream is narrowing, and rushing more swiftly as it narrows, towards
those high hills that bound our present vision, upon whose summits
lingers the d