And the one addition which is needed to incline the whole weight of that conviction to the better side, and to light up all its blackness, is that little phrase in this text, 'I am a stranger _with Thee_, and a sojourner.' There seems to be an allusion here to remarkable words connected with the singular Jewish institution of the Jubilee. You remember that by the Mosaic law, there was no absolute sale of land in Israel, but that every half century the whole returned to the descendants of the original occupiers. Important economical and social purposes were contemplated in this arrangement, as well as the preservation of the relative position of the tribes as settled at the Conquest. But the law itself assigns a purely religious purpose--the preservation of the distinct consciousness of the tenure on which the people held their territory, namely, obedience to and dependence on God. 'The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine, for ye are _strangers and sojourners with Me_.' Of course, there was a special sense in which that was true with regard to Israel, but David thought that the words were as true in regard to his whole relation to God, as in regard to Israel's possession of its national inheritance. If we grasp these words as completing all that we have already said, how different this transient and unsubstantial life looks! You must have the light from both sides to stereoscope and make solid the flat surface picture. Transient! yes--but it is passed in the presence of God. Whether we know it or no, our brief days hang upon Him, and we walk, all of us, in the light of His countenance. That makes the transient eternal, the shadowy substantial, the trivial heavy with solemn meaning and awful yet vast possibilities. 'In our embers is something that doth live.' If we had said all, when we say 'We are as a shadow,' it would matter very little, though even then it _would_ matter something, how we spent our shadowy days; but if these poor brief hours are spent 'in the great Taskmaster's eye,'--if the shadow cast on earth proclaims a light in the heavens--if from this point there hangs an unending chain of conscious being--Oh! then, with what awful solemnity is the brevity, with what tremendous magnitude is the minuteness, of our earthly days invested! 'With Thee'--then I am constantly in the presence of a sovereign Law and its Giver; 'with Thee'--then all my actions are registered and weighed yonder; 'with Thee'--then 'Thou, God, seest me.' Brethren! it is the prismatic halo and ring of eternity round this poor glass of time that gives it all its dignity, all its meaning. The lives that are lived before God cannot be trifles. And if this relation to time be recognised and accepted and held fast by our hearts and minds, then what calm blessedness will flow into our souls!