A sunset at noon.
This language is at once prophetic and figurative. It predicts an event in the moral world under the figure of an analogous event in the physical world. The symbolical event is not an eclipse of the sun, which the language does not suit, but his going down at midday; and the event symbolized is clearly death in the midst of young life. Israel was rich and prosperous and young. To all outward seeming she was just in the meridian of her life. But her sun would never reach the west. Her end would be premature, sudden, and tragic. As if the sun dropped in an instant beneath the horizon from mid-sky, and the radiancy of noon gave place in that instant to the darkness of night; so Israel's day would darken suddenly, and the night of death fall in a sky all lit with the golden glow of noon.
I. THERE IS TO MEN A NATURAL TERM OF EXISTENCE, WHICH IS THEIR DAY. There is a natural life term to all earthly creatures. This varies endlessly for each, between limits so far apart as a millennium and a day. There are cheloniae that lengthen out their slow existence to centuries, and there are insects that sport out their little life in an afternoon. Intermediate between these widely distant limits is man with his three score years and ten (Psalms 90:10). This period is his day. Beyond it few may hope, and none expect, to live. To reach it even there must be normal conditions of life within and around. This is not a long time at best, Let the utmost diligence be used, and the work that can be done in it is not much. Take from it the two childhoods, infancy and infirm age, and it becomes greatly shorter still. Not more than fifty active years enter into the longest life. On the most sanguine assumption these are the working hours of our day of life. What we do for God and men is done while they pass. They may not be so many, but they can scarcely be more, and if they are all given us we may thankfully reckon that we have lived our time.
II. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONAL OASES IN WHICH THIS PERIOD IS CUT SHORT. The normal life term is not the actual one. The overwhelming majority never see it. When the septuagenarian has his birthday feast, the friends of his youth are not one in ten among the guests. From childhood till that hour they have been dropping off, and now nine-tenths and more are gone.
1. A moiety of the race die in childhood. Infant mortality is an obscure subject. Whether from the standpoint of equity or economy, there is much in it we cannot explain. Their death before they have transgressed brings up the solemn mystery of original sin, and the suffering of one for the sin of another (Romans 5:14). Then their death before activity begins or consciousness dawns, and so apparently before they have been used, raises the almost equally perplexing question—Is there, so far as this life goes, a single human being made in vain?
2. Many more die before or at maturity. They are healthy till growth is almost complete. The body has acquired the strength and hardness needed for the burden of life's work. The mind has received the training which fits it to solve the problems of existence, and govern and use the body in accomplishing the highest purposes of both. Yet just now, when the tool has been formed and tempered and finished, it is broken before it has once been used at its best in the more serious work of life. Here we are face to face not only with an apparently purposeless creation, but also with what seems an unproductive training.
3. Many also die with their work to all appearance unfinished, or only well begun. Their capacity is growing; their field is widening; their influence is increasing. They are in the full swing of activity and usefulness. Yet at the very moment when the richest fruit of their life work is beginning to form, they are cut down—cut down, too, where their death leaves a permanent blank, and no one is available to take up their work. Their mysterious character and solemn interest prepare a field for faith in the fact that—
III. THESE SUNSETS AT NOON ARE DIVINELY ORDERED. "I will cause," etc. To kill and to make alive are Divine prerogatives. Let the sun set where he will, the event is God's doing. And, in the light of Scripture and observation, a philosophy of such events is not altogether impossible to conceive.
1. Take noon sunsets in sin. These are often untimely and far from unaccountable.
2. Take noon sunsets in grace. These also are not unknown. The good die young. Sometimes they die through the sin of others, sometimes in consequence of sin of their own. These, however, are the occasions only of their removal. The reason of it lies deep in the purposes of God.