Job 7:1 Is there not an appointed time to man on earth? are not his days also like the days of an hireling?… Our brains are seventy year clocks. The angel of life winds them up at once for all, then closes the cases, and gives the key into the hand of the angel of resurrection. "Tic-tac, tic-tac!" go the wheels of thought. Our will cannot stop them, madness only makes them go faster. Death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our aching foreheads. If we could only get at them as we lie on our pillows, and count the dead beats of thought after thought, and image after image, jarring through the overtired organ. Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple their pinion, cut the string which holds those weights? What a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest, that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, might have but one brief holiday! (J. Holmes.) Parallel Verses KJV: Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days also like the days of an hireling?WEB: "Isn't a man forced to labor on earth? Aren't his days like the days of a hired hand? |
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