come_to_think

Listened to Hamlet say

   O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
   Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
   Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
   His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.

and thought, as I usually do, that the epithet Everlasting was not just there for the rhythm, but was meant to cap the blasphemy of imagining that God chose whimsically the things He called sins. Namely, there is a hint that He forbade suicide out of envy---that he resented our ability to kill ourselves as He could not. So also, Mark Twain says somewhere: The Bible tells us that God came down the earth twice. The first time, to punish us, He brought death, but the second time, seeing His mistake, He brought Hell.