"My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,
As the channel of brooks that pass away."
For my part, I know no cry that paints pain with surer pathos than a passage now to be quoted.
I see and hear the lonely sufferer, and watch beside his bed as if to subdue his pain.
"Is there not warfare to man upon the earth?
Are not his days like the days of a hireling?
As a servant that earnestly desireth the shadow,
And as a hireling that looketh for his wages?
So am I made to possess months of vanity,
And wearisome nights are appointed to me.
When I lie down, I say,
When shall I arise? But the night is long;
And I am full of tossings to and fro until the dawning of the day.
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
And are spent without hope."
"I would not live alway:
Let me alone; for my days are vanity."
In a passage now to be adduced is sublimity passing the sublimity of
Milton the sublime:
"God, which removeth the mountains, and they know it not
When he overturneth them in his anger;
Which shaketh the earth out of her place,
And the pillars thereof tremble;
Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not;
And sealeth up the stars;
Which alone stretcheth out the heavens,
And treadeth upon the waves of the sea;
Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades,
And the chambers of the South;
Which doeth great things, past finding out;
Yea, marvelous things without number:
He breaketh me with a tempest."
Before words like these one may well stand dumb, with the finger of silence on the lips. Hear Job wail:
"Now my days are swifter than a post:
They are passed away as the swift ships,
As the eagle that swoopeth on the prey,
My soul is weary of my life."
"Thou shalt forget thy misery:
Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away."