March 10 | Evening

12 March 10th, evening.

Man is few of days and full of trouble, Job 14 verse 1.

It may be of great service to us, before we fall asleep, to remember this mournful fact,

or it may lead us to hold lightly to earthly things.

There is nothing very pleasant in the recollection that we are not above the arrows of adversity,

but it may humble us and prevent us from boasting like the psalmist that our mountain stands

firm, that we shall never be moved.

It may prevent us from making our roots too deep in this soil, from which we are so soon

to be transplanted into the heavenly garden.

Let us keep in mind the frail tenure upon which we hold our temporal mercies.

If we remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman's axe, we will

not be so ready to build our nests in them.

We should love, but we should love with the love that expects death, and that reckons

upon separations.

Our dear relations are simply loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to

their lend us hand may be sooner than we think.

This is also true of our worldly goods.

Do not riches take to themselves wings and fly away?

Our health is equally precarious.

Frail flowers at the field we must not reckon upon blooming forever.

There is a time appointed for weakness and sickness, when we will have to glorify God

by suffering and not by earnest activity.

There is no single point in which we can hope to escape from the sharp arrows of affliction.

Out of our few days there is not one secure from sorrow.

Man's life is a cask full of bitter wine.

He who looks for joy in it will be better looking for honey in a salty ocean.

Beloved reader, do not set your affections upon things of earth, but seek those things

that are above, for hear the moth devours and the thief's steels, but there all joys

are perpetual and eternal.

The path of trouble is the way home.

Lord, make this thought a pillow for many a weary head.

This has been morning and evening, a production of crossway.