The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^6. The “end” he speaks of, is that which the Apostle fixed his eye upon, in his course; and made confession of his own infirmity, perceiving in himself a different state of things from that which he looked for elsewhere. For he says, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended.” And that you might not say, “If the Apostle has not apprehended, have I apprehended? If the Apostle is not perfect, am I perfect?”...

7. “And the number of my days, what it is.” I ask of “the number of my days, what it is.” I can speak of “number” without number, and understand “number without number,” in the same sense as “years without years” may be spoken of. For where there are years, there is a sort of “number” at all events, also. But yet, “You are the same, and Your years shall not fail.” “Make me to know the number of my days;” but “to know what it is.” What then? That number in which you are, think you that it “is” not? Assuredly, if I weigh the matter well, it has no being; if I linger behind, it has a sort of being; if I rise above it, it has none. If, shaking off the trammels of these things, I contemplate things above, if I compare things that pass away with those that endure, I see what has a true being, and what rather seems to be, than really is. Should I say that these days of mine “are;” and shall I rashly apply this word so full of meaning to this course of things passing away? To such a degree have I my own self almost ceased to “be, failing” as I am in my weakness, that He escaped from my memory, who said, “I AM HE THAT IS.” Hath then any number of days any existence? In truth it has, and it is “number without end.”...Everything is swept on by a series of moments, fleeting by, one after the other; there is a torrent of existences ever flowing on and on; a “torrent,” of which He “drank in the way,” who has now “lift up His Head.” These days then have no true being; they are gone almost before they arrive; and when they have come, they cannot continue; they press upon one another, they follow the one the other, and cannot check themselves in their course. Of the past nothing is called back again; what is yet to be, is expected as something to pass away again: it is not as yet possessed, while as yet it is not arrived; it cannot be kept when once it has arrived. He asks then concerning “the number of his days, which is;” not that which is “not:” and (which confounds me by a still greater and more perplexing difficulty) at once “is,” and “is not.” We can neither say that “is,” which does not continue; nor that it “is not,” when it has come and is passing. It is that absolute “IS,” that true “IS,” that “IS” in the true sense of the word, that I long for; that “IS;” which “is” in that “Jerusalem” which is “the Bride” of my Lord; where there will not be death, there will not be failing; there will be a day that passes not away, but continues: which has neither a yesterday to precede it, nor a tomorrow pressing close upon it. This “number of my days, which is,” this (I say), “make Thou me to know.”

8. “That I may know what is wanting to me.” For while I am struggling here, “this” is wanting unto me: and so long as it is wanting unto me, I do not call myself perfect. So long as I have not received it, I say, “not that I have already attained, either am already perfect; but I am pressing towards the prize of God's high calling.” This let me receive as the prize of my running the race! There will be a certain resting-place, to terminate my course; and in that resting-place there will be a Country, and no pilgrimage, no dissension, no temptation. Make me then to know “this number of my days, which is, that I may know what is wanting unto me;” because I am not there yet; lest I should be made proud of what I already am, that “I may be found in Him, not having my own righteousness.”...

9. “Behold, you have made my days old”. For these days are “waxing old.” I long for new days “that never shall wax old,” that I may say, “Old things have passed away; behold, things have become new.” Already new in hope; then in reality. For though, in hope and in faith, made new already, how much do we even now do after our old nature! For we are not so completely “clothed upon” with Christ, as not to bear about with us anything derived from Adam. Observe that Adam is “waxing old” within us, and Christ is being “renewed” in us. “Though our outward man is perishing, yet is our inward man being renewed day by day.” Therefore, while we fix our thoughts on sin, on mortality, on time, that is hastening by, on sorrow, and toil, and labour, on stages of life following each other in succession, and continuing not, passing on insensibly from infancy even to old age; while, I say, we fix our eyes on these things, let us see here “the old man,” the “day that is waxing old;” the Song that is out of date; the Old Testament; when however we turn to the inner man, to those things that are to be renewed in place of these which are to be changed, let us find the “new man,” the “new day,” the “new song,” the “New Testament;” and that “newness,” let us so love, as to have no fears of its “waxing old.”...This man, therefore, who is hasting forward to those things which are new, and “reaching forward to those things which are before,” says, “Lord, make me to know mine end, and the number of my days, which really is, that I may know what is wanting unto me.” See he still drags with him Adam; and even so he is hasting unto Christ. “Behold,” says he, “you have made my days old.” It is those days that are derived from Adam, those days, I say, that you have made old. They are waxing old day by day: and so waxing old, as to be at some day or other consumed also. “And my substance is as nothing before You.” “Before You, O Lord, my substance is as nothing.” “Before You;” who see this; and I too, when I see it, see it only when “before You.”

When “before men” I see it not. For what shall I say? What words shall I use to show, that which I now am is nothing in comparison of That which truly “IS”? But it is within that it is said; it is within that it is felt, so far as it is felt. “Before You, O Lord,” where Your eyes are; and not where the eyes of men are. And where Your eyes are, what is the state of things? “That which I am is as nothing.”

10. “But, verily, every man living is altogether vanity.” “But, verily.” For what was he saying above? Behold, I have already “leaped beyond” all mortal things, and despised things below, have trampled under foot the things of earth, have soared upwards to the delights of the law of the Lord, I have been afloat in the dispensation of the Lord, have yearned for that “End” which Itself is to know no end, have yearned for the number of my days that truly “is,” because the number of days like these has no real being. Behold, I am already such a one as this; I have already overleaped so much; I am longing for those things which abide. “But verily,” in the state in which I am here, so long as I am here, so long as I am in this world, so long as I bear mortal flesh, so long as the life of man on earth is a trial, so long as I sigh among causes of offense, as long as while I “stand” I am in “fear lest I fall,” as long as both my good and my ill hangs in uncertainty, “every man living is altogether vanity.”...