To Be Once A Man and Twice A Child

FOWLER

Posted By: Volunteer: Sherri
Date: 1/24/2014 at 20:50:53

TO BE ONCE A MAN AND TWICE A CHILD
(By L.W. Fowler)

"Once a man and twice a child" is nature's fiat to mankind. Nay more, it is nature's benefaction conceded in holy writ, as follows: "Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. All of which is conclusive, even mandatory.

After passing life's meridian the journey inclines downard toward a final setting. Mother earth seems closer, more familiar, more friendly. One concedes more, knows less of the fundamentals beyond the horizon, possibly up among the stars, beyond the one way ride surely; and so the child in this case has infinitely the advantage over maturity.

Hence the second childhood is nature's kindness benediction. The very old invariably lose most of their intellectual faculties even get lost in their own baliwick and have to be led like infants. At this stage he neither knows nor cares; He is back where he started. "A little child shall lead them." "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven." Let us pray for just such an ending.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast" is sweet but still is no panacea for the sin sick soul. Every man, however great, however small knows he is a failure and pleads for another chance. This may be the origin of the better world idea where one may right the wrongs of the nether world.

The common remark "old and childish" is a truism, not a fiction. Nature ever kind to her children, eliminates their faculties one at a time, thus he receives his five warnings. Still undaunted, he pleads for another try somewhere, sometime to right the wrongs committed by the wayside.

This is a universal yearning common to old age, probably the originof the after life idea. Aside from physical facts, "hope springs eternal in the human breast, man never is but always to be blest."

"Scrapbook of Unknown Origin"