Man's reason is his distinctive privilege; but it has one melancholy result: it makes him know his own weakness and mortality. Other creatures are only aware of evil when they actually come upon it, and after the moment of terror are tranquil and careless, as before. Man has evil allotted to him, with all the aggravation of its prospect and approach the long-sustained and harassing pains of doubt and apprehension, fears going and returning. His melancholy foresight creates a perpetual war; and he lives within a circle of enemies, and sustains his life as in a besieged city. He may be conscious of strength, but his enemies are strong too; and they are many, and he is one.
I. This is more especially the effect of the gift of reason on the subject of death. On other points it only reveals to us our insecurity; here it reveals to us the end of our existence itself as far as this world is concerned. No sooner is man born than he foresees his death; he is made a prophet in spite of himself. The soul which God has given him is a prophetic one. Such being the effect of the gift of reason on this subject, and such our particular privilege and trial, how do men meet it?
II. Worldly men take one view of this, and say that such a looking forward and such a prophetical tone of mind with respect to death is not natural, because it leads to such results. And as a counterbalance to, and remedy for, such presages they take refuge in the matter-of-fact sensation of life which belongs to us. They throw themselves deliberately and systematically upon this worldly instinct, in order to counterbalance the true prophetic nature of the soul and prevent it from acting, in order to deaden the sense of futurity and annihilate the other world to their minds.
III. Now what is the Scripture way of dealing with the subject of death? It does not allow it to be thus put aside. It makes us view it with steady, calm eye and keep it before us. It tells the soul to reckon beforehand, to see, to prepare; it lengthens its sight: it fixes its aim. Foresight was given us that we might be, not paralysed, indeed, and rendered motionless, but sobered and chastened in the exercise of our active faculties, that we should feel that very check of which worldly men are impatient, for they would fain while they do live be going to live for ever in their imagination.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional,p. 258.
Reference: Psalms 103:15-19. Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 536.