Psalm 39:5 Behold, you have made my days as an handbreadth; and my age is as nothing before you… Take man in all the variety of his behaviour and humours, in his best and most settled estate (for so much the original imports); nay, in the best managements of his affairs, in the subtilty and strength of all his designs and projectings; even in the pre-eminence of his reason and pretended excellency of his wisdom; when he designs to look and speak wisest, and put off the face of vanity; when he thinks he is most in the right, and his achievements are most successful; take him with all his advantages, and dress him up above nature, with all the improvements of art and sciences, and he is still the veriest fop in the creation, and the merest antic that appears upon the stage of the world. I. CONSIDER MAN IN HIS CIVIL AND SECULAR CAPACITY. The greatest confidence that men usually have in the things of the world arises from a great estate of wealth and treasure. But what is the foundation of this confidence, but a greater portion of the earth we tread on, or some refined part of it, some rubbish taken out of its bowels, burnished and made shining (to please the fool), and stamped with some image and superscription. But observe the vanity; are we children when we play with trifles, and wise men when we please ourselves with these greater toys? Or rather to confirm our vanity, are we not like them, given to change, and throw away one foolery to take up another? The difference can be no more than that the one is the pleasure and divertisement of children, and the other of men; but both the same vanity. II. EXAMINE HIM AS TO HIS MORAL AND DIVINE ESTATE, as he is the son and disciple of virtue, and wisdom, and religion; as he is guided by reason, and pretendedly governed by conscience; there, too, he is vanity. 1. The original dignity of man above other creatures is that tie is endowed with a rational soul, a pure immaterial substance that cannot die or be extinguished; by this tie claims kindred with the angels, nay, a certain affinity to God Himself, being created after His image, and cannot but think immortality essential to his very being; but, alas I to invert the words of the apostle, this immortal may put on mortality, and this incorruptible may put on corruption. 2. If we venture a strain higher, even to the best effects of reason; to the high-flown pretences of wisdom and learning, we shall make much the same discoveries. The wisdom of men is not only foolishness with God, but really in itself; and knowledge is as truly but science falsely so called. III. TO FIX UPON A STATE AND CONDITION OF LIFE REALLY THE BEST AND THE ONLY ONE NOT SUBJECT TO VANITY IS EASY, AND IN FEW WORDS TO BE DISCOVERED, IN CONTEMPLATION AT LEAST, THOUGH EXPERIENCE HATH PROVED THE PRACTICE TO BE VERY RARE AND DIFFICULT. If we should meet and confer together, and discourse this great point one with another in the next world, some little space before our trial comes on. at that. great tribunal of God, what, I pray, would you call wisdom? What would you call exemption from vanity and folly? Be sure not that by which in the preceding world we got a great estate; for, alas! that is quite gone and lost to us and our posterity, nothing of that nature can escape the general conflagration. No! nor that by which we once got fame and renown, for that is vanished too, and perhaps is really inglorious and base in the esteem of all at that day; for then be sure our judgments will be more discerning, and we shall have other thoughts and apprehensions of things. No I nor that by which we attained to arts and sciences, were statesmen or politicians; for we shall have no manner of use of them, neither in heaven nor in hell. Our knowledge must, then, be of another nature, of much greater perfection, or we cannot be happy; and sinner, too, the more sagacious and discerning they then become, the more fitted and qualified (as we may say) will they be for their due punishment; their remorse and torments will be the sorer and more pungent. We shall infallibly then pronounce upon the debate, That we were altogether vain in She other world, and that that was the truest wisdom which exerted itself in all the previsionary means for this great and terrible day of judgment, to secure the grand interest of everlasting life. (John Cooke, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. |
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