Homilist Psalm 119:83 For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget your statutes. I. Here is a SHRIVELLED life. The empty leathern bottles, hung up in the unchimneyed houses of the East, get shrivelled in the heat. There are human lives — 1. Shrivelled in their thoughts. There is nothing broad or elastic in their conceptions, their whole mental natures run into a few miserable smoky dogmas. 2. Shrivelled in their sympathies. Narrow thinkings and selfish habits contract the soul that should expand into a seraph into a miserable grub. II. Here is an UNLOVELY life. A shrivelled leathern bottle, black with smoke, has nothing in it to admire, nothing to charm the eye or even to invite the touch. Unlovely lives are by no means uncommon. III. Here is a USELESS life. So long as the bottle is hung up, shrivelled and black in the smoky apartment, it is of no service whatever. What millions there are of every generation who have been of no service to the universe. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget thy statutes.WEB: For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. I don't forget your statutes. |
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