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There are three main causes which go to determine the length of time of every human life.

1. The first is physical. Every man has a constitution given him by God which has a certain amount of vital power and no more, which can bear a certain amount of strain and exertion and no more. When this stock is exhausted first one and then another organ gives up, and the end comes. How soon it will come is partly determined by circumstances. In one set of circumstances it is delayed; in another it is hastened; but no circumstances, no precautions, however incessant, can preserve it for ever. Not that strength of constitution is always allowed to be the measure of life. Its course is not seldom arrested by a violent death; it is cut short in battle, or by the executioner, or by lightning, or by railway accident, or by drowning, or by the murderer's knife, or by poison taken unwitting!y, or by the bite of an animal, or by pestilence that walketh in darkness; and yet such events might suggest to those who believe in the providence of God that there are other and more influential, although less patent, causes that affect the length of human life, causes which we now proceed to consider.

2. Every man has a certain work assigned him to do, and when it is done, or ought to have been done, then he has to make room for others. What that work exactly is He knows who has placed us here. But most of us can only infer generally, and not always quite distinctly, why we were placed here, while none of us can dare to say certainly at the close of life that the work which our Maker meant us to do has been completed. Too many of us — alas! — never think of this solemn truth. The outward form of the work matters less than the presence or absence of the ennobling motive. The highest work may be even irretrievably degraded by the absence of that purpose. But, however this may be, with each of us a day comes when the work we had to do has been done or ought to have been done, and can be no longer done, and then the end comes.

3. Closely related to this cause, and yet distinct from it, there is a third. Every man is here on his probation or trial; he has a certain number of difficulties to encounter, a certain number of opportunities of which he may avail himself, measured unto him by a perfect justice which will deal with him accordingly. When these difficulties have been passed, in whatever manner, with whatever difficulty, the end comes. Who can say when the last difficulty has been surmounted, or when the last opportunity has been rejected or missed? We do not know. But our ignorance does not disprove the fact. tie knows who has made us, who has placed us here on our trial, who removes us when we have passed it or have failed.

(Canon Liddon.)

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KJV: My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.

WEB: My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me.