Hosea 7:9 Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knows it not: yes, gray hairs are here and there on him, yet he knows not. I. GREY HAIRS ARE A SIGN OF DECAY. God has for wise purposes given distinctive features to the different periods of human life, from the cradle onwards to the grave. Human life between the ages of forty and fifty is a sort of tableland. Growth has ceased, but decay has not begun. After that time decay begins. In this text grey hairs are not associated either with parental honours, or with the ripe wisdom of age, or with the piety of the venerable Simeon. They are here but the tokens of decay, marks of age, the premonitory symptoms of dissolution. The truth it announces is, that men may live in ignorance and act in disregard of signs that should warn and alarm them. II. THIS APPEARS IN THE HISTORY OF STATES. The words were first spoken of the kingdom of Israel. In the oppression of the poor and the sighing of the needy, in the corruption of morals and the decline of true religion, the prophet saw the signs of his country's decay — these the grey hairs that were here and there upon them, which they knew not. Nor is that uncommon. III. THE TEXT APPLIES TO THE FALSE SECURITY OF SINNERS. Be our profession what it may, if we have habits of sin — these are the grey hairs that, unless grace convert and mercy pardon, foretell our doom. Thick as those grey hairs on the head of age, some men's lives are full of sin. They are going to hell as plainly as one whose form is bent and whose head is hoary is going down to his grave. IV. THIS APPEARS IN MEN'S INSENSIBILITY TO THE LAPSE AND LESSONS OF TIME. Our minds are formed to adapt themselves to the circumstances of advancing years. Indeed, we often glide down so gently as to be little disturbed with the premonitions of life's close. Men with furrows on their brow, and grey hairs on their head, often find it difficult to remember that they are old. Death seems to flee before us, like the horizon which we ever see, but never reach. Where then is the hope of those who have trusted to turning religious when they become old, and attending to the concerns of a better world when they have ceased to feel any interest in this? Death and a man, so runs the story, once made a bargain — the man stipulating, lest he might be taken unawares, that death should send him so many warnings before he came. Well, one day, years thereafter, to his great amazement, the king of terrors stood before him. "He had broken the bargain, so said the man, who clung to life. Death, he alleged, had sent him no warnings. No warnings? His eyes were dim; his ears were dull; his gums were toothless; and spare and thin were the hoar locks on his bent and palsied head; these, death's heralds, had come, not too late, yet all in vain. Amid warnings which were, however, unnoticed or despised; his salvation was neglected, and his soul lost. And every setting sun, every nodding hearse, every passing Sabbath, warn us that days of darkness come, and opportunities of salvation go. Time has but one lock of hair on his forehead. If we would seize time, we must seize him by the forelock. ( T. Guthrie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. |
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