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 departing light, and around whose base thickens the solemn
shadow.
This rapidity of change is most strikingly illustrated when, after a few
years' absence, we return to the scenes of our youth. We plunged into
the current of the world, buoyant and vigorous; our thoughts have been
occupied every hour, and we have not noticed the stealthy shadow of
time. But we come back to that early spot, and look around. Lo! The
companions of our youth have grown into dignified men,--the active and
influential citizens of the place. Care has set
"Busy wrinkles round their eyes."
They meet us with formal deportment, or with an ill-concealed
restlessness, as though we hindered them in their work,--work! Which,
when we parted with them, would have been flung to the winds for any
idle sport. How quickly they have changed into this gravity and anxiety!
On the other hand, those who stood where they stand now,--whose names
occupied the signs and the records which theirs now fill,--have passed
away, or, here and there, come tottering along, bent and gray-headed
men. Those, too, who were mere infants-those whom we never saw-take up
our old stations, and inspire them with the gladness of childhood. And
exactly thus have we changed to others. We are a mirror to them and they
to us.
From this familiar experience, then, let us realize that the stream of
life does not stop, nor are we left stationary, but carried with it;
though our condition may appear unchanged, until we lift up our eyes,
and look for the old landmarks. The brevity of our life! my friends.
Amid our daily business,--in the sounding tumult of the great mart, and
the absorption of our thoughts,--do we think of it? Do we perceive how
nearly we approach a goal which a little while ago seemed far before
us? Do we observe how quickly we shoot by it? Do we mark with what
increasing swiftness the line of our life seems reeling off, and how
close we are coming to the end? Time never stops! Each tick of the clock
echoes our advancing footsteps. The shadow of the dial falls upon it
a shorter and shorter tract, which we have yet to pass over. Even if a
long life lies before us, let us consider that thirty-five years is high
noon with us,--the meridian of that arc which comprehends but threescore
years and ten!
But we may be more vividly impressed with the fact of the brevity of
life, if we adopt some criterion wider than these familiar measurements.
The narrative, the story, engages our ears, in the pauses of care and
labor. We listen to it in the noonday rest, and around the evening fire.
It is a slight break in the monotony of our business,--an interlude in
the solemn march of life. And thus, in some respects, is life itself.
It is so, if we take into view a long series of existence, such as the
succession of human generations, or, still more, the periods of creative
development, and the computations of time as applied to the forms and
changes of the material universe. In this vast train of being, our
individual existence, however important to ourselves, is but an
interlude-a tale. Let us, then, for a while, lay aside any conventional
method of estimating our life,--a method in which that life fills a
large space, simply because it is brought near to the eye,--and let us
endeavor to take a view of it, as it were, from the fixed stars, or from
the elevation of the immortal state.
Compare, then, if you will, this life of yours or mine, not with the
personal standard of threescore years and ten, but with the whole course
of human history; and instantly we appear but as bubbles in the stream
of ages. But, again, consider how history itself is as "a tale that is
told;" and then, indeed, what a mere incident in it all is your life
and mine! If we stand off at the distance of a few centuries, so that we
have no present interest in them, it is strange how the proudest empires
assume an empty and spectral aspect. Their growth and decline occupied
ages; but what a brief achievement it appears now! Why puzzle ourselves
about their origin, or seek to disengage the true from the fabulous in
their history? Why strain laboriously to settle names, and dates, and
dynasties? What mere point they have occupied in the processes of
the great universe! Their hieroglyphic pillars, their gray old
pyramids;--what are they to the age of Uranus, or the new planet? Each
of these empires fulfilled its mission, and relatively that mission was
a great one; but in the long sweep of God's providence, and among the
phenomena of absolute being, what a brief link, a subordinate climax, it
was! The huge ribs of the earth, and the coral islands of the sea were
longer in building; and even these are transitory manifestations of
God's purposes, which stream around us through constant change
and succession. And what, then, are these nations-these epochs of
humanity-but waves rising and breaking on the great sea of eternity?
Mysterious Egypt, haughty Assyria, glorious Greece, kingly Rome;--how
spectral they have become. They stand out in no relief. As we recede
from them, they sink back, flat and inanimate on the horizon. Each is a
tale that has been told. Surely, then, if such is the life of nations,
I need not labor to impress upon you a sense of the brevity of our
individual existence.
But, for a moment, turn your thoughts to estimates that far exceed the
periods of history, and confound all our ordinary measurements. What is
our mortal existence, into which we crowd so much interest,--over the
anticipated length of which we slumber,--into whose uncertain future
we project our lithe plans so confidently,--compared to the age of the
heavens,--the lifetime of worlds?--compared to their march, from the
moment when they obeyed the creative fiat to that when they shall
complete their great cycle? It takes three years for light to travel
from the nearest fixed star to the earth; from another it takes twelve
years; while, on its journey from a star of the twelfth magnitude,
twenty four billions of miles away, it consumes four thousand years. And
yet we speak of long life! Why, when the light that wraps us now shall
be changed for the light that is just leaping from that distant star,
where in the gray bosom of the past shall we be? Sunken, forgotten,
crumbled to imperceptible atoms; the ashes of generations-the dust of
empires-heaped over us! And when we compare those wide estimates to
that divine eternity that evolves and limits all things, how does our
individual existence on the earth dwindle and vanish!--a heart-throb
in the pulses of the universal life,--a quivering leaf in the forest of
being,--"a tale that is told"!
And yet, my friends, our realization of existence is so intense,--the
horizon of the present shuts us in so completely,--that it really
requires an effort for us to pause and remember that we are such
transitory beings. It cannot be (we may unconsciously reason), that we
to whom this earth is bound with ligaments so intimate and strong; whose
breathing and motion-whose contact and action here-are such realities;
whose ears hear these varying sounds of life; whose eyes drink in this
perpetual and changing beauty; to whom business, study, friendship,
pleasure, domestic relations, are such fresh and constant facts; to whom
the dawn and the twilight, the nightly slumber and the daily meal, are
such regular experiences; to whom our possessions, our houses, lands,
goods, money, are such substantial things;--it cannot be that we are
not fixed permanently here,--that the years like a swift river, sweep us
nearer and nearer to a point where we must sink and leave it all,--that
the corridors of the earth echo our footsteps only as the footsteps of
a successive march-myriads going before, and myriads coming after us-and
soon they will catch no more murmurs of our individual life; for that
will be as "a tale that is told."
The whole train of thought I am now pursuing strikes us with peculiar
force, in reading the biographies of men who have lived intensely, who
have realized the fulness of life, who have mingled intimately with its
varied experiences, and occupied a large place in it. We see how to them
life was, as it is to us, an absorbing fact,--how they have planned, and
thought, and acted, as though they were to live forever; and yet we have
noticed the premonitions of change, the dropping away of friends, the
failing of vigor, the deepening of melancholy shadows, and the coming
of the end; the business closed, the active curiosity and intermeddling
ceased, the familiar haunts abandoned, the home made desolate, the
lights put out, the cup fallen beneath the festal board, and all the
earnest existence stopped forever. And this, too, so quick,--filling so
small a space in absolute time! From their illustration let us, then,
realize that our life, too, amid all these real conditions, is unfolding
rapidly to an end, and is "as a tale that is told."
But life is like a tale that is told, because of its comprehensiveness.
It is a common characteristic of a narrative that it contains a great
deal in a small compass. It includes many years, and expresses many
results. Sometimes it sweeps over different lands, and exhibits the
peculiarities of various personages. In one word, it is characterized by
comprehensiveness. And this, I repeat, is also a characteristic of human
life. When the consideration of the brevity of our mortal existence
excites us to diligence it is well; but when we make it an argument for
indolence, disgust, and despair, we should be reminded of the fact I
am now endeavoring to illustrate,--the fact that even the briefest life
contains a great deal, and means a great deal; and that, if we estimate
things by a spiritual standard, a man's earthly being may contain more
than all the cycles of the material world. From the best point of view,
life is not merely a term of years and a span of action; it is a force,
a current and depth of being. Indeed, considered in its most literal
sense, as the vital spark of our animal organism, it is something more
than a measurement of time;--it is a mysterious, informing essence. No
man has yet been able to tell us what it is, where it resides, or how
it acts. We only know that when we gaze upon the features of the dead
we see there the same organs that pertained to the living; but something
has gone,--something of light, power, motion; and that something we call
life.
But it is chiefly in a moral sense that I make the remark that life is
something more than a term of years or a span of action. In fact, life
is a sum of spiritual experiences; and thus one act, or result, often
contains more than a century of time. Who does not understand the fact
to which I now refer? Who has not felt something of it? Has not each one
of us, at times, realized that he lived a year in a single day,--in
a moment,--in an emotion or thought? Nay, could that experience be
measured by any estimate of time? And if we should compute the length of
any life by such experiences, and not by a succession of years, would
it not be a long life? At least, would it not be a full and immeasurable
life?
But, while every man's history will furnish instances of what I mean,
let us, for the sake of clearer illustration, consider some of the
experiences which are common to all. Defining life to be depth and
intensity of being, then,--a current of spiritual power, and not a mere
succession of incidents,--how much we live when we acquire the knowledge
of a single truth! What an inexhaustible power!--what an immeasurable
experience it is! We are made absolutely stronger by it; we receive more
life with it,--a new and imperishable fibre of being. Fortune cannot
pluck it from us, age cannot weaken it, death cannot set limits to
it. And now, with the fulness of this one experience as a test, just
consider our whole mortal experience as filled up with such revelations
of truth. Suppose we improve all our opportunities; into what boundless
life does education admit us, and the discoveries of every day, and the
ordinary lessons of the world! Tell me, is this life to be called merely
a brief and worthless fact, when by a little reading, for instance, I
can make the experience of other men, and lands, and ages, all mine?
When in some favored hour, I can climb the starry galaxy with Newton,
and pace along the celestial coast to the great harmony of numbers and
unlock the mighty secret of the universe? When of a winter's night,
I can pass through all the belts of climate, and all the grades of
civilization on our globe; scan its motley races, learn its diverse
customs, and hear the groaning of lonely ice-fields and the sigh of
Indian palms? When, with Bacon, I can explore the laboratory of nature,
or with Locke, consult the mysteries of the soul? When Spenser can lead
me into golden visions, or Shakespeare smite me with magic inspiration,
or Milton bathe me in immortal song? When History opens for me all the
gates of the past,--Thebes and Palmyra, Corinth and Carthage, Athens
with its peerless glory, and Rome with its majestic pomp?--when kings
and statesmen, authors and priests, with their public deeds and secret
thoughts are mine? When the plans of cabinets, and the debates of
parliaments, and the course of revolutions, and the results of battle,
are all before my eyes and in my mind? When I can enter the inner
chamber of sainted souls, and conspire with the efforts of moral heroes,
and understand the sufferings of martyrs? Say, when all these deep
experiences-these comprehensive truths-may be acquired through merely
one privilege, is life but a dream, or a breath of air? Thus, too,
do immeasurable experiences flow in to me from nature,--from planet,
flower, and ocean. Thus, too, does more life come to me from contacts
in the common round of action. And, I repeat, every truth thus gained
expands a moment of time into illimitable being,--positively enlarges
my existence, and endows me with a quality which time cannot weaken or
destroy.
Consider, again, how much we really live in cherishing good affections,
and in performing noble deeds. We have the familiar lines of the poet,
to this point:
"One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas."
It is true. There is more life in one "self-approving hour,"-one act of
benevolence,--one work of self-discipline,--than in threescore years and
ten of mere sensual existence. Go out among the homes of the poor, lift
up the disconsolate, administer comfort to the forlorn; in some way, as
it may come across your path, or lie in the sphere of your duty, do a
deed of kindness; and in that one act you shall live more than in a year
of selfish indulgence and indolent ease,--yea, more than in a lifetime
of such. The poet, with his burning, immortal lines, while doing his
work, lives all the coming ages of his fame. From every marble feature
he chisels, the sculptor draws an intensity of being that cannot be
imparted by a mere extension of years. The philanthropist, in his walks
of mercy and his ministrations of love, lives more comprehensively
than another may in a century. His is the fathomless bliss of
benevolence,--the experience of God. The martyr, in his dying hour, with
his face shining like an angel's, does not live longer, but he lives
more than all his persecutors.
Consider, too, the experiences of religion, of worship, of prayer. In
the act of communion with God, in the realization of immortality, in the
aspirations and the idea of perfection, there is a depth and scope of
being from which all sensual estimates of time drop away.
Our mortal life, then, is very comprehensive. If we measure it, not by
its length of years, but by its spiritual results, be they good or evil,
it is a full and large life. It then appears, like the immortal state,
not as a fact of succession, but of experience. Christ has defined
eternal life as such a fact. "Eternal life," he says, "is to know thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." The life of
the blessed in heaven is not marked by years and cycles; it is not so
much protracted being, as a power of knowledge,--a depth of glad and
holy consciousness,--a constant pulsation of harmony with God.
Again, every life may be compared to "a tale that is told," because it
has a plot. In the narrative there is a combination of agencies
working to a crisis. There is a main-point with which all the action is
involved. And so every human life has its main-point.. I will not
now take up time to carry out this illustration minutely. The mere
suggestion that each one is working out a peculiar destiny invests even
the meanest life with a solemn dignity, and counteracts any disparaging
argument drawn from its brevity.
But still I would urge, that the propriety of this comparison between
the peculiar tendency of an individual life and the plot of a story, is
seen in the fact that every man is accomplishing a certain moral result
in and for himself. This is inevitable. We may be inactive, but that
result is forming; the mould of habit is growing, and the inward life
is unfolding itself, after its kind. We may think our career is
aimless, but all things give a shape to our character. And does not this
consideration make our mortal life of deep consequence to us?
All circumstances and experiences are chiefly important as affecting
this result. One of the highest views we can take of the universe is
that of a theatre for the soul's education. We are placed upon this
earth not to be absorbed by it, but to use it for the highest spiritual
occasions. We are placed among the joys and sorrows of our daily lives
to be trained for immortal issues. Our business, our domestic duties,
and all our various relations, constitute a school for our souls. Here
our affections and our powers are acted upon for good or for evil.
Grief strengthens our faith and elevates our thoughts; joy quickens
our gratitude, our obedience, and our trust; temptation forms in us an
exalted and spontaneous virtue, or enfeebles and enslaves us. Chiefly,
then, should we be solicitous about character, the plot of our life;
and in this solicitude our earthly existence rises to the highest
importance.
Let us, then, feel that our mortal career is not vague and aimless. Let
us realize that each life is a special history. The poorest, the most
obscure, has such a history; and although it may be unnoticed by men,
angels regard it with interest. The merchant, every day, in the dust,
and heat, and busy maze of traffic, unfolds a history. The beggar by the
way-side, it may be, outrivals kings in the grandeur and magnitude of
his history. In sainted homes,--in narrow nooks of life,--in the secret
heart of love, and prayer, and patience,--many a tale is told which
God alone sees, and which he approves. The needy tell a tale, in their
unrelieved wants and unpitied sufferings. The oppressed tell a tale,
that goes up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. The vicious tell a
tale of wo, and misspent opportunity, and wasted power. Let us think of
it, I beseech you! Each one of us in his sphere of action is developing
a plot which surely tells in character,--which is fast running into a
great fixed fact.
Once more, we may compare every life to "a tale that is told," because
it has a moral. Any story, good or bad,--the most pernicious work of
fiction, the most flimsy narrative, as the grandest history,--has its
significance. So it is with the life of a man. As all his conduct
he is building up the intrinsic results of character for
himself,--establishing in his own soul a fabric of welfare or of wo,--so
is he furnishing a lesson for others, and accomplishing an end by which
they are affected. The purpose for which any one has lived, the point
which he has attained, the personal history which he has unfolded,
constitute the moral of his life.
For instance, here is a man whose life is frivolous,--divided between
aimless cares and superficial enjoyments. He has no resources in
himself, no fountain of inward peace and joy. His spirit leaps like new
wine in the whirl of exciting pleasure, but in the hour of solitude and
of golden opportunity, it is "flat, stale, and unprofitable." He marks
off the year by its festivals, and distributes the day into hours of
food, rest, and folly. In short, he holds no serious conception of life,
and he is untouched by lofty sentiment. The great drama of existence,
with its solemn shifts of scenery and its impending grandeur, is but a
pantomime to him; and he a thoughtless epicurean, a grinning courtier,
a scented fop, a dancing puppet, on the mighty stage. And surely, such
a life, a life of superficiality and heartlessness, a life of silken
niceties and conventional masquerade, a life of sparkling effervescence,
has a moral. It shows us how vain is human existence when empty of
serious thought, of moral purpose, and of devout emotion.
Another is a skeptic. He has no genuine faith in immortality, in
virtue, or in God. To him, life is a sensual opportunity closing up with
annihilation and to be enjoyed as it may. It is a mere game, and he who
plays the most skilful(sic) hand will win. Virtue is a smooth decency,
which it is well to assume in order to cover and artful selfishness;
and it is a noteworthy fact, too, that, in the long run, those who have
trusted to virtue have made by it. At least, vice is inexpedient, and it
will not do to make a public profession of it. Religion, too, he says,
is well enough; it does for the weak and the ignorant; though shrewd
men, like our skeptic know that it is all a sham, and, of course,
scarce give it a serious thought. What is religion to a keen-minded,
hard-headed, sagacious man of the world? What has it to do with
business, and politics, and such practical matters? Pack it away for
Sunday, and then put it on with clean clothes, out of respect for
the world; but if it lifts any remonstrance in the caucus or the
counting-room, why, like a shrewd man, laugh it out of countenance. What
has our skeptic to do with the future world or with spiritual relations?
Keep bugbears to frighten more timid and credulous persons. But only see
how he uses the world, and plays his scheme, and foils his adversary and
twists and bends his plastic morality, all because he is not troubled
with scruples, and has no faith in God or duty!
And yet, to the serious eye, that scans his spiritual mood, and looks
all around his shrewd, self-confident position, there is a great moral
in the skeptic's life. It teaches us, more than ever, the value of
faith, and the glory of religion. That flat negation only makes the
rejected truth more positive. The specimen of what existence is without
God in the world, causes us to yearn more earnestly for the shelter
of His presence, and the blessedness of His control. From the dark
perspective of the skeptic's sensual view, the bleak annihilation that
bounds all his hopes, we turn more gladly to the auroral promise of
immortality, to the consolations and influences of a life beyond the
grave. Yes, in that tale that is told, in that skeptic history, there
is indeed a great moral. It shows how meaningless and how mean, how
treacherous and false, is that man's life who hangs upon the balance
of a cunning egotism, and moves only from the impulses of selfish
desire-without religion, without virtue, repudiating the idea of
morality, and practically living without God.
Or, on the other hand, suppose we call up the image of one who has well
kept the trusts of family, and kindred, and friendship;--one who has
made home a pleasant place; who has filled it with the sanctities
of affection, and adorned it with a graceful and generous
hospitality;--before whose cheerful temper the perplexities of business
have been smoothed, and whose genial disposition has melted even the
stern and selfish;--who, thus rendering life around her happier and
better, attracting more closely the hearts of relatives, and making
every acquaintance a friend, has, chief of all, beautifully discharged
the sacred offices of wife and mother; encountering the day of adversity
with a noble self-devotion, enriching the hour of prosperity with wise
counsel and faithful love; unwearied in the time of sickness, patient
and trustful beneath the dispensation of affliction; in short, by
her many virtues and graces evidently the bright centre of a happy
household. And now suppose that, with all these associations clinging
to her, in the bloom of life, with opportunities for usefulness and
enjoyment opening all around her, death interferes, and suddenly
quenches that light! Is there not left a moral which abides a sweet and
lasting consolation? That moral is-the power of a kind heart; the worth
of domestic virtues; the living freshness of a memory in which these
qualities are combined.
Thus, then, in its brevity and its comprehensiveness, with its plot and
its moral, we see that each human life is like "a tale that is told."
To you, my friends, I leave the personal application of these
truths. Surely they suggest to each of us the most vital and solemn
considerations. Surely they call us to diligence and repentance,--to
introspection and prayer. What we are in ourselves,--what use we shall
make of life;--is not this an all important subject? What lesson we
shall furnish for others,--what influence for good or evil;--can we be
indifferent to that? God give us grace and strength to ponder and to act
upon these suggestions!
Finally, remember under whose dominion all the sorrows and changes
of earth take place. Let your faith in Him be firm and clear. To Him
address your grief;--to Him lift up your prayer. Of Him seek strength
and consolation;--of Him ask that a holy influence may attend every
experience. And while all the trials of life should quicken us to
a loftier diligence, and inspire us with a keener sense of personal
responsibility, surely when our hearts are sore and bleeding,--when our
hopes lie prostrate, and we are faint and troubled, it is good to rise
to the contemplation of the Infinite Controller,--to lean back upon the
Almighty Goodness that upholds the universe; to realize that He does
verily watch over us, and care for us; to feel that around and above all
things else He moves the vast circle of his purpose, and carries within
it all our joys and sorrows; and that this mysterious tale of human
life-this tangled plot of our earthly being-is unfolded beneath His
all-beholding eye, and by His omnipotent and paternal hand.