I HAVE here a clock, with which I desire to illustrate and emphasize the
truth taught us in the twelfth verse of the ninetieth Psalm, where it
says, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto
wisdom."

Whatever is valuable we measure. Some things are measured by the yard,
some things by the quart or gallon, other things by the pound or by the
ton. Land is measured by the acre. One of the most valuable things that
God gives to us is time. Queen Elizabeth, when she was dying, was
willing to give her entire kingdom if she could only have one hour more
in which to prepare for death.

As time is very valuable we measure it in seconds, minutes, hours, days,
weeks, months, years, centuries. In the earliest time men had no means
of measuring time, except as they saw it measured with the great clock
which God has set in the heavens; for He tells us in the first chapter
of Genesis that He made "the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule
the night." The most accurate clocks in the world are those which most
nearly keep time with the sun. All the effort to regulate clocks and
watches is simply to adjust their movements so as to have them keep time
with the movement of the sun. God has given us a conscience which is
designed to regulate our lives until they shall be in harmony with the
life of Christ, who is the Sun of Righteousness. Hundreds of years
before Christ came, people may have had some very rude way of dividing
the time during the day and night, but their principal division of time
was simply day and night, summer and winter. These changes of day and
night, summer and winter, helped to mark the progress of time, and they
still do. If it were all daytime, or all night, and we had no clocks, we
would have no means of measuring time. When Baron de Trench was
liberated from his dungeon in Magdeburg, where the King of Prussia had
confined him in darkness for a period of ten years, where he had no
means of measuring how the time passed and had even very few
thoughts--when he was liberated, and was told that he had been in prison
for ten years, his astonishment was almost beyond expression, for it had
not seemed to him to be so long. It had passed away like a painful
dream.

In the early period of the world's history, human life was much longer
than at present. Men lived to be several hundred years old. I suppose
you can all tell how old Methuselah was. He was the oldest man who ever
lived. When huma