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9 lines
20 KiB
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<p>Here is, I. A call to young people to think of God, and mind their duty to him, when they are young: <i>Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth</i>. This is, 1. The royal preacher’s application of his sermon concerning the vanity of the world and every thing in it. “You that are young flatter yourselves with expectations of great things from it, but believe those that have tried it; it yields no solid satisfaction to a soul; therefore, that you may not be deceived by this vanity, nor too much disturbed by it, <i>remember your Creator</i>, and so guard yourselves against the mischiefs that arise from the vanity of the creature.” 2. It is the royal physician’s antidote against the particular diseases of youth, the love of mirth, and the indulgence of sensual pleasures, the vanity which childhood and youth are subject to; to prevent and cure this, <i>remember thy Creator</i>. Here is, (1.) A great duty pressed upon us, to <i>remember</i> God as our <i>creator</i>, not only to remember that God is our Creator, that he <i>made us and not we ourselves</i>, and is therefore our rightful Lord and owner, but we must engage ourselves to him with the considerations which his being our Creator lay us under, and pay him the honour and duty which we owe him as our Creator. <i>Remember thy Creators</i>; the word is plural, as it is <a class="bibleref" title="Job.35.10" href="/passage/?search=Job.35.10">Job 35:10</a>; <i>Where is God my Makers</i>? For God said, <i>Let us make man</i>, us, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. (2.) The proper season for this duty—<i>in the days of thy youth</i>, the <i>days of thy choice</i> (so some), thy choice days, thy choosing days. “Begin in the beginning of thy days to remember him from whom thou hadst thy being, and go on according to that good beginning. Call him to mind when thou art young, and keep him in mind throughout all the days of thy youth, and never forget him. Guard thus against the temptations of youth, and thus improve the advantages of it.”</p>
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<p class="tab-1">II. A reason to enforce this command: <i>While the evil days come not, and the years of which thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them</i>.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">1. Do it quickly, (1.) “Before sickness and death come. Do it while thou livest, for it will be too late to do it when death has removed thee from this state of trial and probation to that of recompence and retribution.” The days of sickness and death are <i>the days of evil</i>, terrible to nature, <i>evil days</i> indeed to those that have forgotten their Creator. These <i>evil days</i> will <i>come</i> sooner or later; as yet they <i>come not</i>, for God is <i>long-suffering to us-ward</i>, and gives us <i>space to repent</i>; the continuing of life is but the deferring of death, and, while life is continued and death deferred, it concerns us to prepare, and get the property of death altered, that we may die comfortably. (2.) Before old age comes, which, if death prevent not, will come, and they will be <i>years of which we shall say, We have no pleasure in them</i>,—when we shall not relish the delights of sense, as Barzillai (<a class="bibleref" title="2Sam.19.35" href="/passage/?search=2Sam.19.35">2 Sam. 19:35</a>), --when we shall be loaded with bodily infirmities, old and blind, or old and lame,—when we shall be taken off from our usefulness, and our <i>strength</i> shall be <i>labour and sorrow</i>,—when we shall either have parted with our relations, and all our old friends, or be afflicted in them and see them weary of us,—when we shall feel ourselves die by inches. These <i>years draw nigh</i>, when <i>all that comes</i> will be <i>vanity</i>, the remaining months all months of vanity, and there will be <i>no pleasure</i> but in the reflection of a good life on earth and the expectation of a better life in heaven.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">2. These two arguments he enlarges upon in the following verses, only inverting the order, and shows,</p>
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<p class="tab-1">(1.) How many are the calamities of old age, and that if we should live to be old, our days will be such as we shall <i>have no pleasure in</i>, which is a good reason why we should return to God, and make our peace with him, <i>in the days of our youth</i>, and not put it off till we come to be old; for it will be no thanks to us to leave the pleasures of sin when they have left us, nor to return to God when need forces us. It is the greatest absurdity and ingratitude imaginable to give the cream and flower of our days to the devil, and reserve the bran, and refuse, and dregs of them for God; this is offering <i>the torn, and the lame, and the sick for sacrifice</i>; and, besides, old age being thus clogged with infirmities, it is the greatest folly imaginable to put off that needful work till then, which requires the best of our strength, when our faculties are in their prime, and especially to make the work more difficult by a longer continuance in sin, and, laying up treasures of guilt in the conscience, to add to the burdens of age and make them much heavier. If the calamities of age will be such as are here represented, we shall have need of something to support and comfort us then, and nothing will be more effectual to do that than the testimony of our consciences for us that we begin betimes to remember our Creator and have not since laid aside the remembrance of him. How can we expect God should help us when we are old, if we will not serve him when we are young? See <a class="bibleref" title="Ps.71.17,Ps.71.18" href="/passage/?search=Ps.71.17,Ps.71.18"><span class="bibleref" title="Ps.71.17">Ps. 71:17</span>, <span class="bibleref" title="Ps.71.18">18</span></a>.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">[1.] The decays and infirmities of old age are here elegantly described in figurative expressions, which have some difficulty in them to us now, who are not acquainted with the common phrases and metaphors used in Solomon’s age and language; but the general scope is plain—to show how uncomfortable, generally, the days of old age are. <i>First</i>, Then <i>the sun</i> and <i>the light</i> of it, <i>the moon</i> and <i>the stars</i>, and the light which they borrow from it, will <i>be darkened</i>. They look dim to old people, in consequence of the decay of their sight; their countenance is clouded, and the beauty and lustre of it are eclipsed; their intellectual powers and faculties, which are as lights in the soul, are weakened; their understanding and memory fail them, and their apprehension is not so quick nor their fancy so lively as it has been; the days of their mirth are over (light is often put for joy and prosperity) and they have not the pleasure either of the converse of the day or the repose of the night, for both <i>the sun</i> and <i>the moon</i> are darkened to them. <i>Secondly</i>, Then <i>the clouds return after the rain</i>; as, when the weather is disposed to wet, no sooner has one cloud blown over than another succeeds it, so it is with old people, when they have got free from one pain or ailment, they are seized with another, so that their distempers are <i>like a continual dropping in a very rainy day</i>. The end of one trouble is, in this world, but the beginning of another, and deep calls unto deep. Old people are often afflicted with defluxions of rheum, like soaking rain, after which still more clouds return, feeding the humour, so that it is continually grievous, and therein the body, as it were, melts away. <i>Thirdly</i>, Then <i>the keepers of the house tremble</i>. The head, which is as the watch-tower, shakes, and the arms and hands, which are ready for the preservation of the body, shake too, and grow feeble, upon every sudden approach and attack of danger. That vigour of the animal spirits which used to be exerted for self-defence fails and cannot do its office; old people are easily dispirited and discouraged. <i>Fourthly</i>, Then <i>the strong men shall bow themselves</i>; the legs and thighs, which used to support the body, and bear its weight, bend, and cannot serve for travelling as they have done, but are soon tired. Old men that have been in their time <i>strong men</i> become weak and stoop for <i>age</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Zech.8.4" href="/passage/?search=Zech.8.4">Zech. 8:4</a>. <i>God takes no pleasure in the legs of a man</i> (<a class="bibleref" title="Ps.147.10" href="/passage/?search=Ps.147.10">Ps. 147:10</a>), for their strength will soon fail; but <i>in the Lord Jehovah there is everlasting strength</i>; he has everlasting arms. <i>Fifthly</i>, Then the <i>grinders cease because they are few</i>; the teeth, with which we grind our meat and prepare it for concoction, cease to do their part, <i>because they are few</i>. They are rotted and broken, and perhaps have been drawn because they ached. Some old people have lost all their teeth, and others have but few left; and this infirmity is the more considerable because the meat, not being well chewed, for want of teeth, is not well digested, which has as much influence as any thing upon the other decays of age. <i>Sixthly, Those that look out of the windows</i> are <i>darkened</i>; the eyes wax dim, as Isaac’s (<a class="bibleref" title="Gen.27.1" href="/passage/?search=Gen.27.1">Gen. 27:1</a>), and Ahijah’s, <a class="bibleref" title="1Kgs.14.4" href="/passage/?search=1Kgs.14.4">1 Kgs. 14:4</a>. Moses was a rare instance of one who, when 120 years old, had good eye-sight, but ordinarily the sight decays in old people as soon as any thing, and it is a mercy to them that art helps nature with spectacles. We have need to improve our sight well while we have it, because the light of the eyes may be gone before the light of life. <i>Seventhly, The doors are shut in the streets</i>. Old people
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<p class="tab-1">[2.] It is probable that Solomon wrote this when he was himself old, and could speak feelingly of the infirmities of age, which perhaps grew the faster upon him for the indulgence he had given himself in sensual pleasures. Some old people bear up better than others under the decays of age, but, more or less, the days of old age are and will be <i>evil days</i> and of little pleasure. Great care therefore should be taken to pay respect and honour to old people, that they may have something to balance these grievances and nothing may be done to add to them. And all this, put together, makes up a good reason why we should <i>remember our Creator in the days of our youth</i>, that he may remember us with favour when these <i>evil days come</i>, and his comforts may delight our souls when the delights of sense are in a manner worn off.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">(2.) He shows how great a change death will make with us, which will be either the prevention or the period of the miseries of old age. Nothing else will keep them off, nor any thing else cure them. “Therefore <i>remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth</i>, because death is certainly before thee, perhaps it is very near thee, and it is a serious thing to die, and thou shouldst feel concerned with the utmost care and diligence to prepare for it.” [1.] Death will fix us in an unchangeable state: <i>Man</i> shall then <i>go to his long home</i>, and all these infirmities and decays of age are harbingers of and advances towards that awful remove. At death <i>man goes</i> from this world and all the employments and enjoyments of it. He has gone for good and all, as to his present state. He has gone <i>home</i>, for here he was a stranger and pilgrim; both soul and body go to the place whence they came, <a class="bibleref" title="Eccl.12.7" href="/passage/?search=Eccl.12.7">Eccl. 12:7</a>. He has gone to his rest, to the place where he is to fix. He has gone <i>to his home, to the house of his world</i> (so some), for this world is not his. He has gone <i>to his long home</i>, for the days of his lying in the grave will be many. He has gone <i>to his house of eternity</i>, not only to his house whence he shall never return to this world, but to the house where he must be for ever. This should make us willing to die, that, at death, we must <i>go home</i>; and why should we not long to go to our Father’s house? And this should quicken us to get ready to die, that we must then go to our <i>long home</i>, to an <i>everlasting habitation</i>. [2.] Death will be an occasion of sorrow to our friends that love us. When <i>man goes to his long home the mourners go about the streets</i>—the real mourners, and those, as now with us, distinguished by their habits as they go along the streets,—the mourners for ceremony, that were hired to weep for the dead, both to express and to excite the real mourning. When we die we not only remove to a melancholy house before us, but we leave a melancholy house behind us. Tears are a tribute due to the dead, and this, among other circumstances, makes it a serious thing to die. But in vain do we <i>go to the house of mourning</i>, and see <i>the mourners go about the streets</i>, if it do not help to make us serious and pious mourners in the closet. [3.] Death will dissolve the frame of nature and take down the earthly house of this tabernacle, which is elegantly described, <a class="bibleref" title="Eccl.12.6" href="/passage/?search=Eccl.12.6">Eccl. 12:6</a>. Then shall <i>the silver cord</i>, by which soul and body were wonderfully fastened together, <i>be loosed</i>, that sacred knot untied, and those old friends be forced to part; then shall <i>the golden bowl</i>, which held the waters of life for us, <i>be broken</i>; then shall <i>the pitcher</i> with which we used to fetch up water, for the constant support of life and the repair of its decays, <i>be broken</i>, even <i>at the fountain</i>, so that it can fetch up no more; and <i>the wheel</i> (all those organs that serve for the collecting and distributing of nourishment) shall be <i>broken</i>, and disabled to do their office any more. The body shall become like a watch when the spring is broken, the motion of all the wheels is stopped and they all stand still; the machine is taken to pieces; the heart beats no more, nor does the blood circulate. Some apply this to the ornaments and utensils of life; rich people must, at death, leave behind them their clothing and furniture of <i>silver</i> and <i>gold</i>, and poor people their earthen <i>pitchers</i>, and the drawers of water will have their <i>wheel broken</i>. [4.] Death will resolve us into our first principles, <a class="bibleref" title="Eccl.12.7" href="/passage/?search=Eccl.12.7">Eccl. 12:7</a>. Man is a strange sort of creature, a ray of heaven united to a clod of earth; at death these are separated, and each goes to the place whence it came. <i>Fir
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