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The world is full of broken columns. Every heart carries its own crowded cemetery. The cemeteries in which you lay dead flesh and bones are not the true cemeteries. The graveyards are in the heart. "My purposes are broken off"; this is the cry of a disappointed man; the muffled moan of a baffled hope. It is not the peculiar cry of a Jew, or of a Gentile, of an Orientalist, or an Occidentalist, it is simply the voice of universal man. God has graciously enriched the world with example men; men who have been made to show in their melancholy experience how vain is ambition, how uncertain is expectation, how unstable is strength. Job is such man.

I. AS REVEALING THE SPECULATIVE SIDE OF HUMAN LIFE. All men have purposes. Man cannot live by history alone; he must strengthen himself by hope. Man puts out his hand and plucks of the tree of tomorrow. Every man speculates concerning the future, and feels himself inspired as he dwells on the charms of the coming time. Man's power of speculation always exceeds man's power of realisation. The poetic fancy is in advance of the toiling hand. The wanderer's mind is at the destination long before the wanderer's foot has taken the first step of the journey! The power of speculation and the power of realisation are not coordinate. We paint many a fire which we never can enkindle. We plant olive yards which bear no fruit, and dig wells which hold no water. Yet we would not give up this power of projecting ourselves into the future! We would not like to be barred in the small prison called "today." Not a man but is pleasing himself with some dream of fancy. Each is saying, "The times will change for the better; the cold winds will die out; the sky will be a cloudless arch; I shall walk on a carpet of violets through palaces of perfume."

II. AS DISCLOSING THE REAL SIDE OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE. "Purposes"! — that is poetry; "Broken"! - that is history! This is a sad combination of words! Life is full of half-built towers. Men had begun to build, but were not able to finish. Life is a pile of fragments. Nowhere is there aught complete. Life is all beginnings; there is no finished pinnacle!

III. AS SUGGESTING MAN'S TRUE COURSE AS A SPECULATIST AND AS A WORKER. "Go to now, ye that say today or tomorrow," etc. There is a "tonight" between today and tomorrow. Learn —

1. All purposes against God must be broken off.

2. Form the loftiest purposes for God, and they will be fulfilled.

3. Remember the moral import of uncertainty.

(Anon.)

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KJV: My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart.

WEB: My days are past, my plans are broken off, as are the thoughts of my heart.