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The illustration is drawn from agricultural life. It is the close of harvest, and the busy reapers are carrying home the spoil. There are few scenes to be witnessed upon earth more pleasing and attractive. How suggestive of comfort and plenty! What a picture of happy industry and well-rewarded toil. How exquisite the patches of colour! How merry and melodious the song! Mark how skilfully the reaper handles his sickle, and clutches the corn; one sweep, and the whole armful is down, and laid so neat and level that when the band is put round the sheaf almost every straw is of equal length. The single stem is called "a stalk of corn"; the armful, which the reaper cuts down with one sweep of his hook, is called "a sheaf"; whilst a bundle of sheaves, placed together and set upright, ready to be borne away to the homestead, is styled, from an old Dutch root, "a shock of corn." Well, what an interesting and significant metaphor this is! and how suggestive! How much there is in that bundle of wheat-sheaves, now ready to be carried home, to remind you of the aged Christian, who has served his generation by the will of God! What anxiety has been expended upon that corn! Through what risks and storms has it come! A thousand contingencies might occur to check the growth or affect the quality of the grain, and the value of the harvest. But now it has been brought safely through all these risks. The little green thing has become a vigorous and fruitful stalk. The farmer's solicitude is over; his months of anxious toil are ended; the grain is safely gathered in — how much in all this to suggest the closing scene in the life of a ripe believer. "Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season." As we read the text we naturally think of the old and grey-headed saint. How many years of anxiety have been expended upon him! How many storms have swept over him! Through what a variety of experience has he passed! Perhaps in early life he gave little promise of a long and useful career. Yet here he is, come to life's close in happiness and honour. He has weathered the blasts, he has borne his fruit, he has served his generation, and all that remains for him is just to be gathered in — gently borne away to the homestead of heaven. Yet I would not have you run away with the idea that the text applies exclusively to the aged. This prominent idea is not so much old age, as ripeness, maturity. It does not say, "Thou shalt come to thy grave in old age," but "in a full age." There is a difference. Old age is not absolutely promised to all God's people; but a "full age" is. It is noticeable that, although in the early history of the human race many lived to a great length of time, even to hundreds of years, it is not recorded in Scripture of any of these that they died "in a good old age, and full of years"; not until we come to Abraham is such a record given; although his term of life was but a fourth of that of many who had gone before him; the reason probably being that, though Abraham's years were fewer, yet his virtues were greater; his life was a life of faith, and therefore of completeness. I have seen a matured saint cut off at twenty; and another man, not nearly so ripe, at threescore and ten. You may remember how, addressing young men, Solomon, with characteristic sagacity, makes the distinction I am indicating. "My son," he says, "keep my commandments: for length of days, and long life, shall they add to thee"; intimating, of course, that the natural tendency of virtue is to lengthen a man's days; but that, whether such a man's days shall be many or few, he shall, at all events, have "a long life," in the sense of a full and complete one.

"They err, who measure life by years,

With false and thoughtless tongue:

Some hearts grow old before their time,

Others are always young.

'Tis not the number of the lines

On life's fast-filling page;

'Tis not the pulse's added throbs,

Which constitute true age."Amongst moral and responsible beings, that life is really the longest, however brief its outward term, into which the largest amount of beneficent activity is condensed. Thoughts suggested here in regard to a good man's death.

1. It is not unwelcome. "Thou shalt come to thy grave." He is not driven or dragged to it, as may be said of many an ungodly man. God makes him willing when He has made him ready. I have often been struck with the fact that, when the end of a Christian's life begins to draw near, however reluctant he had been hitherto to leave the world, and however he may even have dreaded his departure, all that reluctance and fear melts away.

2. The death of a good man is seasonable. "As a shock of corn cometh in in his season."

3. As death is welcome to the ripe believer, and seasonable, so it is honourable. It is no ignominious blow; it is not a crushing, humiliating stroke; it is a release, an enfranchisement, a coronation.

(J. Thain Davidson, D. D.)

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KJV: Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.

WEB: You shall come to your grave in a full age, like a shock of grain comes in its season.