THE FOURTH DIVISION.

Morning Prayer.

FOR THE BURIAL SERVICE.

PSALM XC. Domine, refugium.

:

1. LORD, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another.

2. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made : Thou art God from everlasting, and world without end.

For the tribes of the children of Adam, wandering in this wilderness of things temporal, with no certain dwelling-place, there is only one refuge in weariness, in danger, in death, even that strong and loving God Who hath been, is, and will be, the Helper and the Defender of all who seek to Him. To His mighty mercy only can man securely fly from the dangers of life and of death. With Him only is safety, with Him only is unchangeableness. The race of man is ever failing and being renewed, and the generation of time is ever rolling on into the generation of eternity; but He is ever true, and ever the same. Before the mountains were bid to stand as a refuge from the overflowing waters; before the earth, which we fancy to be an abiding-place, was made; before the angelic hosts were called into being, and before man him

self, with all his little world of fear and frailty, was formed from the dust, He is Immortal, Unchangeable, Almighty, Whose Name hath ever been, I AM THAT I AM.

again

3. Thou turnest man to destruction Thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.

LXX. Turn not man to humiliation;

For Thou hast said, Be ye turned, sons of men.

4. For a thousand years in Thy sight are seeing that is past as a

but as yesterday

watch in the night.

At the word of the Eternal, man dies. He has said, 'Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.' At His word he rises again from the dust, in that day when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.' Between the day of our birth and the day of our death-between the day of our death and the day of our resurrection between the first day of creation and the last of judgment— who shall say how short or how long is the interval of time in the eyes of the ever-living God? His Holy Spirit has given us the solemn charge— 'Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' Yea, time and all its centuries are to Him but as yesterday, as a day which is past and over, and is now as nothing, compared with the to-morrow of eternity. The ages and

the dispensations, the promise to Adam, the engagement with Noah, the oath to Abraham, the covenant with Moses, these were but watches, through which the children of men had to wait amid the darkness of things created, until the morning should dawn of things uncreated. Now is 'the night far spent, and the day at hand.'

5. As soon as Thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep and fade away suddenly like

the grass.

:

Heb. Thou carriest them away as with a flood;

They are even as a sleep,

They are in the morning as grass that changeth.

LXX. Their years are as things of nought.

In the morning let it depart as the grass.

6. In the morning it is green, and groweth up but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.

The mighty rush of time carries away our feeble lives before it, like the flood of Noah once swept away the dwellers on the earth. Our hopes, and plans, and deeds are but like the fancies that come in slumber-scattered and forgotten when the sleep is past. We ourselves are but as the grass growing in the summer field-springing up green and fresh in the morning of life, but cut down by the mower whose name is Death, and laid lifeless and withering on the earth from which it grew, when the evening of age and decay has come. All flesh is grass, and

all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the

field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand for

ever.'

7. For we consume away in Thy displeasure and are afraid at Thy wrathful indignation.

8. Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee: and our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance.

9. For when Thou art angry all our days are gone we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.

LXX. Our years are spent in care like a spider.

Short as life is for man's sin, by multiplying his sins he makes it shorter. As we add day to day, so do we add sin to sin, and provoke most justly God's wrath and indignation against us. The children of

Israel in the wilderness made their lives shorter than even the brief time given to man, by their idolatries, and stubbornness, and murmurings. The generation of six hundred thousand passed away in their forty years' wanderings in the sight of Moses. And among them that call on the name of Christ, who can tell how many may be 'weak and sickly,' and how many may sleep, for their own misdeeds, or their misbelief? Our iniquities, however hidden they may be from man, are before our God, and

cannot but call forth His displeasure. He is the Revealer of secrets.' Our whole lives, with all their sins, lie spread out open and clear before His face. He brings to light the hidden things of darkness, and makes manifest the counsels of our evil hearts.' They cannot be dissembled before Him, and He doth not dissemble His wrath against them. Therefore we die. Death is the frown of the Almighty. In His pleasure is life.' In His displeasure our term of days contracts and shortens, and they become few indeed. The end, uncertain to each, but yet most certain to all, slacks not in its onward coming; for our years, though we may strive to spin them out in care and sorrow, as a spider spins out her thread, come to an end; they depart and leave us, like a tale that is finished, like a word that is spoken and not repeated, like a thought which has gone from the memory and cannot be recalled.

10. The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.

Seventy years of life is the utmost term we can expect to attain unto. May we not well say with aged Jacob, Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage?' It may be that some toil wearily on through eighty years, yet the experience of 'the