While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: (3) In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, (4) And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; (5) Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
I detain the Reader to admire the wonderful beauty, as well as the great elegance in stile and figure, of those several expressions in the description of the desolated winter of old age. The sun, and moon, and stars of heaven, how bright soever they shine, have no lustre to the blind eyes of the aged. The clouds returning after the rain, is uncommonly striking to denote that unceasing infirmity of the aged, where, when one disease somewhat abates, there is a return, and the recurrence of another. The trembling of the head, the weakness of the limbs, and the tottering state of decrepit nature, through all, are strikingly represented under these several images. It would be to hold a faint taper of the night to aid the light of the sun, the attempt to heighten the beauties by description. What I beg the Reader to observe with me in the perusal, and which the Preacher seems particularly to have had in view, is, that if age be thus necessarily oppressed from the common and unavoidable infirmities incident to such seasons, what must it be to have the pressure of unpardoned sin, an unawakened state of unrenewed nature added to the load. Oh! what a wretched old age is that which is full of transgression, without God and without Christ: ignorant of Jesus and his salvation, unregenerated, unwashed in Christ's blood, and, as to any saving knowledge, of his grace and power, unconscious whether there be any Holy Ghost. Isaiah 65:20.