Frederick W Grant

Death is upon every thing; and the more precious any thing is, the more terrible to know that it must pass away. Whether lost wholly and at once, or filched away little by little by the flying moments, still all that we prize is doomed; and we are doomed. To every thing there is a time, and for every thing the time goes by. And God has fixed the place and time of all in this cycle of things that pass and return, among the generations which yet do not return. Eternity, too, is set in man's heart, compassed as he is by that which is for the moment; but eternity no wisdom of his can pierce: it is the wisdom of which death is the price paid, and it cannot elude or look beyond it. Death brings down all to its level — wise and fool, and man and beast: what difference? save that the beast can fill his place for a time with no regrets and no anticipations, and man cannot. Death he hates and dreads, and conscience forebodes judgment.