The Brevity of Life by William C. Richardson

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 26, 1882

The Brevity of Life.

By William C. Richardson

"Our days are as a hand-breadth." "They are swifter than a weaver's shuttle." "They are passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that hasteth to the prey." These and many other striking figures are employed by the sacred writers to illustrate the brevity of human life. "For what is our life?" says an inspired apostle. "It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." The three-score years and ten which constitute the great sum of our days are sometimes exceeded; but a thousand times more frequently man's life falls short of that number. It is certain, indeed, that the average length of man's life is not more than thirty years. Death performs his work with amazing celerity. His foot is never at rest, and his hand is never relaxed from its grasp of the destroying dart. If the population of the globe be taken at thirteen hundred millions, and thirty years as the average duration of human life, then death claims at least four-score victims for every passing minute of time. In a less interval than the beat of the clock, somewhere some heart ceases to beat. Are not the words of the psalmist as true as they are terrible, "Thou carriest them away as with a flood?" What a mighty flood of life ebbs every twelve hours to flow no more, from the nearly three-score thousand hearts stricken pulseless and cold in that brief interval! And such is man's life at the best; a vanishing cloud; a curling smoke; a bubble on the wave; a breath on the crystal; a shadow; a dream!— William C. Richardson, in Chicago Standard.

The greatest joy of life is in the presence of God.