Ecclesiastes 12:4

The doors shall be shut in the streets.

Doors

Literally, “double deers.” This occurs in the description of the decrepitude of an old man: “The keepers of the house (the arms) shall tremble, and the strong men (the legs) shall bow themselves, and the grinders (the teeth) cease because they are few, and those that leek out of the windows (our natural interest in the world) be darkened, and the double doors shall be shut in the street.” By “double doors” is meant those bodily functions which have double organs--eyes, cars, nostrils, lips, the openings of sense and communication with the world. It is a great thing to have the house of the soul stored with good, with true thoughts, bright hopes, sweet loves, comfortable conscience, the various feed of Divine promises, and best of all is to have God, the source of all good, inside with us when the double doors no longer open. I once heard a man cursing with screeching rage his coming blindness, and a paralytic swearing at his fate with half-palsied tongue, struggling impotently like a convict resisting the shutting of the doors of his cell. But, on the other hand, some of the sweetest-tempered persons are blind or deaf. Beethoven was full of music though deaf; the music was stored there in his knowledge of harmony through previous study. Milton’s mind was full of light, though he was blind; the vast stores of knowledge were laid in before the doers were closed. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)