you. ever gliding down the stream
of time into the ocean of eternity by William Nicholson from Prayer
for Divine Mercy 1862. We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before
you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. Psalm 90 verse
7 and 8. Man is here recognized as a sinner
in his relationship to the divine being, his creator, his benefactor,
his governor and lawgiver. By his iniquities and his secret
sins, he is represented as a transgressor of that law which is holy, just
and good. Man has resisted God's authority,
despised His counsels, and followed the devices of his own corrupt
heart. Having acted thus, he is exposed
to the divine displeasure and to the penalty denounced against
rebellious men. We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation. Man is guilty and needs pardon,
condemned and needs justification, impure and needs righteousness
and holiness, a wanderer and outcast and needs reconciliation
and adoption, an air of wrath exposed to eternal perdition
and needs salvation and a title to heaven. Man is frail and mortal. This is the state of all, and
it is the fruit of sin. Look at your frail, decaying
body, how it sickens and languishes, how it is pained and agonized,
how its bloom and its strength depart, how it withers and dies,
and says to corruption, You are my father. and to the worm you
are my mother Job chapter 17 verse 14 all this has been produced
by sin Most affecting representations of man's frailty and mortality
are given by Moses in the context of Psalm 90. His life is a dying
one. You sweep men away in the sleep
of death. They are like the new grass of
the morning, though in the morning it springs up new, by evening
it is dry and withered. Verses five and six. Man is destined
to return to dust. By the sweat of your brow you
will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from
it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust
you will return. Genesis chapter 3 verse 19. Remember
him before the dust returns to the ground it came from. Ecclesiastes
chapter 12 verse 6 and 7. You carry them away as with a
flood, ever gliding down the stream of time into the ocean
of eternity. The flood of mortality is ever
flowing, and man is carried away with it, carried with it surely
and irresistibly. Time passes, unobserved by men,
they are as asleep, as it does with people asleep, and dreaming
of happiness and security, and when it is over, it is as nothing. man's life is short and transient
the length of our days is seventy years or eighty if we have the
strength yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly
pass and we fly away Psalm 90 verse 10 Man resembles the grass, which
in the morning grows up and flourishes in its beautiful greenness, but
which in the evening is cut down and instantly withers, changes
its colour, and loses all its beauty. So it will be with man. you always overpower them and
they pass from the scene you disfigure them in death and send
them away Job chapter 14 verse 20 Come then, O man, and behold
your picture. You are a sinner, and perdition
is your prospect, the blackness of darkness for ever. You are
like grass. This is the emblem of your life
and of all your works—grass. not the strong and enduring tree
of the forest, not even the shrub, but grass, which flourishes in
the morning, and by evening it is dry and withered. All the
glory of man, all that beautifies and adorns his life, all that
is beauty to the eye or gives pleasure to the senses, is still
more frail, does not endure the life of the short-lived plant
which arrays itself in its beauty. All men are like grass, and all
their glory is like the flowers of the field. the grass withers
and the flowers fall 1 Peter 1 verse 24 How short-lived is
the glory of your physical nature Youth, beauty, strength, intellect,
energy, are fast failing you. The wind of sickness, or cares,
or toil, or old age, will pass over them, and they will be entirely
gone. A frost shall lay the flower
in the dust, or a blight may leave its withered remains to
shiver on the stem. Just so with frail man. Observe the flowers which remind
us most of the bloom of Eden, and which shed their delightful
fragrance on the path of life. The happy social hearth, the
friendships founded on virtue, the hallowed domestic relationships,
the fellowship of saints. Separation by death changes all
these scenes. Loneliness and solitude follow. Behold the cemeteries around
you. They cover the generations of
short-lived men. like the herbage of the season. Life and death have trodden in
each other's footsteps, and the career of each goes on. Death is at the heels of life,
cutting down its present plans, and sternly trampling into dust
its constant but vain creations. All men are like grass, and all
their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers,
and the flowers fall. 1 Peter 1.24 It is appointed
for men to die once, and after this comes judgment. Hebrews 9.27 you