those seasons to gratify, fail them, so that they no longer experience any pleasure in the most beautiful months of the year. And so they consider the spring as described by the blossoming of the almond-tree, Jer. i. 11. and the summer by the fatness of the grasshopper. Others interpret it of an aversion of sensual desires and pleasant fruits, as we read in Vatablus and Cajetan: Omnis cibus suavis reprobabitur: flocci faciet coitum ob multam debilitatem. But Solomon seems to prosecute the allegory, and to compare the speed with which old age overtakes us, to the almond-tree, which puts forth her blossoms before any other; as, therefore, the flowers of the almond are evident forerunners of approaching summer, so is old age the harbinger of death. The most natural as well as commonly received meaning of this figure is, of grey hairs, which are beautifully compared to the white flowers of the almond-tree, called flores cameter. So is xxga, in Sophocles, a white hoary head.

"And the grasshopper shall be a burden." The lightest pressure of so small a creature shall be uncomfortable to the aged, as not able to bear any weight. It may be allegorically understood as referring either to the bowing down of his back, or to the weakness of his legs, which, though formerly as nimble as those

of a grasshopper, shall now be heavy and swelled with gouts and evil humours: so the Chaldee phrase; but the former sense is most natural.

"And desire shall fail;" i. e. the desire of meat, drink, marriage, and of every other pleasure which is delightful to the eyes, ears, taste, &c. shall fail, so that a man shall abhor those gratifications to which he was so stongly inclined in the season of youth. Symmachus renders it, dia, shall be dissolved, as referring to the mutual confederation between the soul and body, which will be loosened and broken. The Septuagint reads it, darnedadñ ý názwagis; which word the Vulgate Latin retains, being a shrub whose fruit, according to Galen, is good for a weak appetite; which interpretation is supported by the Chaldee paraphrase. Athenæus numbers capparis amongst other hot and salacious herbs.

"Because man goeth to his long home:" domus seculi; the long home is the grave, from which there is no return to this world. It is called a man's own and proper house, Isai. xiv. 18. The children of this world promise themselves houses for ever here, Ps. xlix. 11; but they have no abiding home but in the grave. The body is domus pernoctationis, but the domus æternitatis.

grave

"And the mourners go about the streets;" accompany- the hearse or bier to the grave, Jer. ix. 17: or the friends that have visited the deceased, go from him mourning, and expecting his funeral. So we read of wailing in all streets, Amos v. 16. Varro, lib. vi. de lingua Latina, speaks of those hired mourners who were accustomed with music to celebrate the dead, to which the evangelist alludes, Matt. ix. 23.

From these infirmities we should learn to be solicitous, that amidst our own fears we may be guarded by angels, and upheld by the Lord's right hand, who has promised to give his angels charge over us, to keep us in all our ways, to make his way plain before us, that we may have straight paths for our feet, and every mountain and hill be made low, Ps. xxxiv. 7; Gen. xlviii. 16; Ps. xci. 11; Ps. xxxvii. 24; Prov. xv. 19; Ps. xxvii. 11; Ps. v. 8; Heb. xii. 13; Isai. xl. 4; Luke iii. 4, 6; 2 Cor. x. 5. We are further instructed to be trees of righteousness, and then we shall bring forth fruit and flourish even in old age, Ps. xcii. 12-14. If the Lord be our shepherd, we may cast all our burdens on him who careth for us, and who will sustain us, Ps. lv. 22: and when all other desires fail, let us labour to be so prepared for death, that we may say with old Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in

peace," Luke ii. 29; and with Paul the aged, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better," Phil. i. 23. And since the grave is our long home, let it be our principal care to have that a house of rest and of hope by union to Christ, who, by lying in it, has sweetened it to believers; and let us so live that we may die without fear, and that those who bewail our loss, may not sorrow as others which have no hope, 1 Thess. iv. 13.

6. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Some interpreters understand this verse literally: first, of the ornaments: secondly, of the more needful instruments of life, whether they are more obvious and easily to be obtained, as to draw water out of a fountain with a pitcher; or more remote, and which are not acquired without labour and cost, as the drawing of water out of a deep well with a wheel and chain. And so the meaning of the wise man is, Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth: First, before God strip thee of thy ornaments in which thou now rejoicest, thy plate, chains, rings, jewels, and bracelets, which will

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then be too heavy to wear; nec sufferre potes majoris pondera gemma. Secondly, before he spoil thee of all the commodities and conveniences of life, and render both thy extraordinary ornaments and thy ordinary utensils alike useless. Others carry on the allegory, considering these terms as figurative and elegant expressions of death, and of those evils that immediately precede it, as the dissolution of the vital parts of the body for death, as in the storming or battering of a garrison, first assaults and weakens the outworks, the limbs and senses, and then attacks the inworks and vitals. The present life is here compared to a fountain or well, out of which water is drawn with a cord, a bowl or bucket, a pitcher, and a wheel: and as when these are broken, we can no longer draw water, so when the vital parts of the human frame arę decayed, there is no hope of continuing to draw life into the body, which is the cistern. The preciousness of life is represented by the epithets silver and gold, its weakness and fragility by the pitcher, and its instability and unsettledness by the wheel.

But besides this general correspondence between life and these figurative terms, interpreters consider the preceding particulars as answering to some peculiar vital parts of the body.

First, by the silver cord they understand the