Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice that holdeth them fast to their branches.
Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!
Would that there came preachers of SPEEDY death! Those would be the appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with all that is “earthly.”
Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is it that hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers!
Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.
As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death.
Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth—and laughter also!
Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!
But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.
But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death.