annoyances that spoil that very pleasure and change it into bitterness? How long does laughter last without being disturbed by tears and sighs? Heat and cold, hunger and thirst, toil and labor, countless illnesses and diseases of the body, fear, anguish, disturbance, care and sorrow in the mind, constant dangers and temptations in the soul, treachery and unfaithfulness in friends, misfortunes in temporal affairs, troubles from masters, servants, neighbors, false brethren, one’s own children, ourselves, and a thousand other trials and crosses; it is in these things that human life mostly consists. Go through the wide world, and find me out one of the most fortunate of men who can say with truth, as far as the comfort and pleasure of the body are concerned: I am always well off; I have everything I desire; I want nothing more. You will not find one to say that, unless some faithful servant of God, who in all circumstances and occurrences is satisfied with the divine will and continually rejoices in the Lord; otherwise, I say, you will not find even amongst the most fortunate one who is not unhappy in many respects, and I almost believe in what Seneca says, although he was a heathen: “No one would receive the gift of life if he knew what it is.”[1] His meaning is, that if each one before entering on life could look out from his nothingness into the world and see how things will be with him in life, and how many sour morsels he will have to swallow, “no one would receive the gift of life.”
Hence we should wish for the end of our lives. How comes it, then, that we are so afraid of that which puts an end to such a miserable and wretched life? It is death alone that frees us from this misery; why should we be so frightened at it? “Wo is me!” exclaims David, that great king, in his eagerness to be free from this life; “wo is me, that my sojourn ing is prolonged;…my soul hath been long a sojourner.”[2] Ah, when shall my misery end? O wished-for moment in which I shall go hence and see my God! “My soul hath thirsted after the strong, living God: when shall I come and appear before the face of God?”[3] But we, if the least sign of sickness threatens us with removal from this scene of misery, are more inclined to cry out: Wo is me, that my sojourning is shortened! Ah, must I die so soon? Must I now appear before the face of God? “Arise ye,
