Verse 20
20. From morning to evening So short is their life that they may be called ephemeral.
They perish forever That is, from this present life.
Without any regarding it So insignificant is man, that though thousands perish, the face of society remains the same. The landscape shines no less brightly though many a blade of grass may have withered; and the ocean rolls no less majestically after it has dashed its long line of surf against the shore. Of as little account in the estimate of man is man himself. It is of infinite moment to man how he shall have lived, not so much what others shall think of him (if they think of him at all) when once he is dead. This verse has such a human look that we might imagine the spirit that speaks to have once been of our race, one of life’s great actors, his name already blotted out from human remembrance. It is more profitable to reflect that the oft-recurring event of death has so little power to affect the human heart. Its visitations, really more ghastly than those of a ghost, elicit this strange feature of the heart, that the frequent repetition of that which is most terrible renders us correspondingly indifferent if not insensible. The shafts of death are for the most part powerless to turn the infatuated children of men from the pursuit of folly. The subject shows in its true light the desperate perverseness of the heart of man.
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