THE OLD MAN.

Colonist, Issue 12, 1 December 1857, Page 4

THE OLD MAN.

The annexed passage is intended to convey a description of a man when suffering under the infirmities of old age, and his body is metaphorically described as a house. It is thus beautifully commented on by the Rev. Dr. Adam Clarke:—

* The keepers of the house shall tremble.' — Another sign of old age; the hands and arms, the means of averting danger, shall become paralytic. • The strong men shall bow themselves.'— The legs, formerly robust and able to support the body, shall totter with extreme weakness.

' The grinders shall cease, because they are few.' —The teeth which grind the food, as the mill stone grinds the corn, shall become loose and fall out.

* Those that look out of the windows be darkened.'—The eyes shall lose their faculty of sight. Obscurity of vision is an invariable accompaniment of old age. ' The doors shall be shut in the streets, ivhen the sound of the grinding is low.' —The doors represent the lips, and the cavity of the mouth is called the street, because it is the way by which the food passes to the stomach. The meaning of the expression is, that the teeth being' gone, the old man no longer chews, but noiselessly mumbles his food, and closes his lips in the act, to preserve the particles from falling out. This is the usual mode of mastication in the very aged. • The sound of the grinding is very low.'— No noise is made in eating, because the teeth are lost, or become so infirm as not to suffer their being closed together, and the mouth being kept shut to hinder the food ■ from falling out, the sound in eating is hardly heard. « "' And he shall rise up at the sound of the bird.'-— So great is the wakefulness of old age that its sleep is disturbed even by the : chirping of the sparrow. ' And all the daughters of music shall be brought low.' —The voice becomes tremulous and feeble, and the hearing becomes ob- [ tuse. 'The daughters of music is a Hebraism for the voice and ear, the organs used in the production or enjoyment of musical sounds.'

' They shall be afraid of that which is high.' —Those heights which, in the days of their youth, they would have ascended with ease and alacrity, the aged now look upon with hesitation and fear.

* And fears shall be in the way' —They are filled with apprehension of imaginary dangers, which they have neither the sight to avoid nor the strength to overcome. * The almond tree shall flourish' —The hair shall become grey. The flowers of the almond tree are white, and hence, when the tree is flourishing, and full of them, it is compared to the hoary head of age. *. The grasshopper shall be a burden.'—To the imbecility of old age, the lightest thing, even a grasshopper, becomes an oppressive burden.

'And desire shall fail'—The appetites and desires of nature cease with the departure of youth. • Man goeth to. his. long home. —Literally •to the house of his age'—the grave, which is the last house and shelter for the material body. ' The mourners, go about, the streets' — : This refers to the eastern custom of employing official mourners, who made public lamentation in the streets for the dead.

'The silver cord shall be loosed.' —The spinal marrow is called the silver cord, from its silvery whiteness. The loosening of the silver cord is the cessation, of all nervous sensibility. ' The golden bowl he broken.'- —The brain is called the golden bowl, from its yellow colour. Death approaching, it is unfit to perform its functions. The pitcher be broken at the fountain.'—. The pitcher means the vena cava, or great vein, which carries the blood to the right ventricle of the heart, here called the fountain.

'The wheel broken at the cistern.' —-By the wheel is meant the aorta, or great artery, which, receiving its blood from the left ventricle of the heart, or cistern, distributes it through the body; and thus • The dust shall return to the earth as it was, and tlie spirit to (rod who gave it.'