d, and you do not know it, for you are not worthy. You have never
felt the blessing of the living hour, the joy that circulates in the
light. Half-dead souls, you would have us all die with you, and when
we stretch out our hands to save you, our sick brothers, you seek to
drag us down with you into the pit_.

_I do not lay the blame on you, poor unfortunates, but on your
masters, our leaders of the hour, our intellectual and political
heads, masters of gold, iron, blood, and thought!... You who rule the
nations, who move armies; you who have formed this generation by your
newspapers, your books, your schools and your churches, and who have
made docile sheep of the free souls of men!... All this enslaving
education, whether lay or Christian, though it dwells with an
unhealthy joy on military glory and its beatitude, still shows its
utter hollowness, for both Church and State bait their hook with
Death_....

_Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, politicians, and
priests, artists, authors, dancers of death; inwardly you are all full
of decay and dead men's bones. Truly you are the sons of them that
slew Christ, and like them you lay on men's shoulders burdens grievous
to be borne, which you yourselves would not touch with the end of your
fingers. Crucifiers are you like them, and those who come among you to
help the suffering peoples, bringing blessed peace in their hands, you
imprison and insult them, and as the Scripture says, persecute them
from city to city until all the righteous blood shed upon the earth
shall fall upon your heads_.

_You work only to provide food for Death; your countries are made to
subdue the future to the past, and bind the living to the putrifying
corpses of the dead. You condemn the new life to perpetuate the empty
rites of the tomb.... Let us rise! The resurrection, the Easter of the
living, is at hand_!

_Sons of men, it is not true that you are, the slaves of the dead and
are chained by them like serfs to the earth. Let the dead past bury
its dead, and itself with them; you are children of the living, and
live in your turn. Souls who are bound to the countries of the past,
shake off the neurasthenic torpor, wracked by outbursts of frenzy,
which weighs you down. Shake it off, my brothers, you who are young
and strong; be masters of the present and the past, fathers and sons
of your works. Set yourselves free! Each one of you is Man;--not flesh
that rots in the tomb, but the b