I. Notice, first, the very pernicious fact of our inaptitude to feel and reflect that our mortal condition is fading. (1) We are very unapt to recognise the common lot and destiny of all human life that it is to fade and is fading. The vast world of the departed is out of our sight even what was the material and visible part. What is constantly in our sight is the world of the living, and we are unapt to think of them as all appointed not to be living. And we may note a circumstance which aids the deception, namely, that the most decayed and faded portion of the living world is much less in sight than the fresh and vigorous. "Out of sight, out of mind" in a great degree. (2) We are very prone to forget our own destiny, even while we do recognise the general appointment to fade and vanish. We have some unaccountable power and instinct to dissociate ourselves from the general condition and relationship of humanity. (3) We are apt to regard life much more as a thing that we positively possess, than as a thing that we are losing, and in a train to cease possessing.
II. Notice a few of those monitory circumstances which verify this our declining state. (1) How many successive generations of men have faded and vanished since the text itself was written? (2) To a reflective mind, the constant, inevitable progress towards fading would appear very much related to it. One has looked sometimes on the flowers of a meadow which the mower's scythe was to invade next day: perfect life and beauty as yet, but to the mind they have seemed already fading through the anticipation. (3) But there are still more decided indications of decay. There are circumstances that will not let us forget whereaboutswe are in life; feelings of positive infirmity, diminished power of exertion, grey hairs, failure of sight, slight injuries to the body far less easily repaired. Let us not absurdly turn from this view of life because it is grave and gloomy, but dwell upon it, often and intensely, for the great purpose of exciting our spirits to a victory over the vanity of our present condition; to gain from it, through the aid of the Divine Spirit, a mighty impulse toward a state of ever-living, ever-blooming existence beyond the sky.
J. Foster, Lectures,1st series, p. 245.
I. Isaiah forms a most correct estimate of our condition upon earth, because we are all frail like the leaf.
II. The prophet's reminder marks the certainty of our approaching death.
III. The metaphor reminds us of the uncertainty of the time when death may come.
IV. The lesson of our gradualdecay is set forth in the falling leaf.
V. The text suggests the renovation which will follow our decay.
W. N. Norton, Every Sunday,p. 447.
References: Isaiah 64:6. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 303; S. Randall, Literary Churchman Sermons,p. 236; Pulpit Analyst,vol. ii., p. 454; Outline Sermons to Children,p. 102; A. F. Barfield, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 150; F. Wagstaff, Ibid.,vol. vi., p. 232; E. D. Solomon, Ibid.,vol. xxiv., p. 296. Isaiah 64:6-8. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 437. Isaiah 64:7. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 229; J. F. Haynes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 314; J. P. Gledstone, Ibid.,vol. xvii., p. 89; Homiletic Magazine,vol. ix., p. 204; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1377.