He went farther, and came to a superannuated vineyard. It was all empty. The vinestocks were gnarly and crooked, and, as it seemed to Julius, all empty.
“Just like my life,” he said to himself. “If I had come the first time it would have been like the fruit in the first vineyard. If I had come when the second time I started, it would have been like the fruit in the second vineyard; but now here is my life; like these useless superannuated vinestocks, it is good only for firewood.”
And Julius was terrified at what he had done; he was terrified at the punishment awaiting him because he had ruined his life. And Julius became melancholy, and he said: “I am good for nothing; there is no work I can do now.”
And he did not rise from where he sat, and he wept because he had wasted what could never more return to him. And suddenly he heard an old man’s voice—a voice calling him. “Work, my brother,” said the voice. Julius looked around and saw a white-haired old man, bent with years, and scarcely able to walk. He was standing by a vinestock and gathering from it the few sweet bunches remaining. Julius went to him.
“Work, dear brother; work is joyous;” and he showed him how to find the bunches here and there.
Julius went and searched; he found a few, and brought them and laid them in the old man’s basket. And the old man said to him:—
“Look, in what respect are these bunches worse than those gathered in yonder vineyards? ‘Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you,’ said our Teacher. ‘And this is the will of Him that sent me; that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him at the last day.’