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Page 40 The Southern Israelite How To Number Our Days And Years Albany Exchange National Bank ALBANY, GA. CAPITAL SURPLUS $150,000 $200,000 P. J. Brown, Pres. II. K. I)nvis, V. Pres. & (’ash. E. II. Kalinon, Viee-Prc*. A. J. Lippitt, Vice-Pres. Extends To Our Many Jewish Friends and Patrons A Happy and Prosperous New Year By KABISI JACOB S. RAISIN, Charleston, S. C. Among the most beautiful and in spiring chapters of that most beauti ful and inspiring book of our Bible, the Book of Psalms, is undoubtedly Psalm Ninety. It is a sigh from the depth of the heart over the transito riness of life, a cry from an anguished soul for hope, and light, and love, in a world where nothing is permanent, and everything is subject to change and decay. It begins with an appeal to the Eternal, the Only One “Who Was, and is, and is to be for aye the same;” in Whose sight a thousand years are “like yesterday that is past, and a watch in the night.” In contrast with Him how insignificant is the life of man which is made of such stuff “as dreams are made on,” and whose years are spent like a tale that is told. But the sacred poet does not despair. He was a Jew, and a Jewish heart may be bowed down, but there is some thing in it which immediately buoys it up. He knows of a way whereby the ravages of time may be repaired, and a definite being may render himself a little lower than the infinite God. It is to apply the lessons of the past to our labors in the future; to im prove the hours to come in the light of our experiences, individual and ra cial, in the years gone by. And so in a passionate outburst of hope he rings out the old note of sadness and brings in a new note of gladness. “O teach us,” he implores, “so to number our days that we may get us a heart of wisdom. O satisfy us in the morn ing with Thy kindness, and then we will rejoice and be glad all our days.” Jewish tradition has it that this Psalm was composed by no other than Moses, “the man-of-God,” and though modern critics challenge his authorship, I prefer to accept it as the product of the inspired soul of our first and greatest law-giver. And I love to contemplate how he wrote it at a moment of exaltation, at the end of his long and blessed life, as he stood at the peak of mount Pisgah. It was t here and then, midst a pano rama which commanded a view of the sandy desert behind him and the Land of Promise which stretched out in pensive silence before him, that he grasped more clearly than ever the pathos and sublimity of existence, the mystery anu the miracle and the meaning of creation, and that his gi gantic mind could best find an answer to the everlasting question: “What is man, 0 Lord, that Thou art mindful of him; and the son-of-man that Thou visitest him? Yet hast Thou made him but little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor!” Most of us number our days by the revolutions of the sun or the moon, or by the various changes which we all undergo, the stages, or “the Seven Ages” as Shakespeare calls them, which we meet on our journey through life as we start from “the cradle with its lullaby of love, to the low and quiet way-side inn where all at last must sleep, and where the only salu tation is ‘Good night’!” Yet, if this be the only means whereby we are to measure our days it would be sad in deed. W hat is the span of three-score and ten, compared to the eternal hills of which the Psalmist speaks ? How insignificant the lives of even an Vj am or Methuselah if counted by geologk ages or sidereal cycles ? Even on this earth of ours there are monuments made by human hands which Were thousands of years old when Moses first wrote the Ten Commandments and on our own continent there are trees by the life-time of which our lives are indeed “like yesterday that is past, and as a watch in the night” The only standard by which we are to measure our days is by the stand ard of knowledge, by the yard-stick of wisdom. Thus alone can we find consolation for the inevitable flight of time, and the swift passing of our days and years. The tiniest pebble may outlast the mightiest man. It may even grow, by constant accre tion, into a stone, and develop into a boulder, and ultimately attain the strength and proportions of the Rock of Gibraltar, defying, as it were, time and tide, and the most destructive im plements invented by human ingenu ity. Yet neither magnitude of size, nor strength of body, nor length of days, affects its essence. A pebble it was; a pebble it will remain to the last of days, only on an infinitely larger scale. Not so man. He, too, must change; but he may, if he be so mind ed, develop, and become not only big ger in body and older in years, but better in texture and nobler in being if he but number his days so as to get him a heart of understanding. This then be our resolution on this sacred season, the Pisgah-peak of the year on which, as members of the faith of Moses, we now stand, and while our hearts are filled and sad dened with the “Memory of what has been. And never more will be.” Let our aim henceforth be not to live by bread alone, but by that which eometh out of the mouth of the Lord. In Madras, India, there is an observa tory from which all the time-pieces of the great British empire are regu lated every twenty-four hours; and for about two minutes every day, the 9,000 telegraph offices, which control 72,000 miles of telegraph lines, and 287,000 miles of telegraph wire, cease their operation to receive and transmit messages in all directions, so that every wayward clock may be set aright with the sun. Our Rosh Hashanah is such an observatory, on ly infinitely superior, and surpassing ly more beautiful. More distant in time than Madras is in space, it is > e t very'near us in our hearts and our souls. It has transmitted its beneficent messages to a thousand generations o our people, and set aright with Source of life and light. It strikes • responsive cord in millions of eWl - souls today, and w’ill radiate hope an happiness long after the famous n ish observatory will have crum into dust. It tells us: You have Uvea another year, you have cons . twelve more months of those a to you on earth. Whether } ou are ^ scious of it or not, you are 1 e now’ that you welcome the new 5690 from you were when you corned the now old but the.. • 5689. Even if there be no laic nr additional fn