hy
thoughts not stray from this group of Essenes whom thou hast known
always or from me who found thee in Nazareth and took thee by the hand.
Why think of me? It is enough to remember that all good and all evil
(that concern us) proceeds from ourselves. Hast not said to me that God
has implanted a sense of good and evil in our hearts and that it is by
this sense that we know him rather than through scrolls and miracles?
Abide by thy own words, Jesus. Be not led away again by an impulse, and
go not forth again, for it is by going forth, as thou knowest, that we
fall into sin. Wouldst try once more to make others according to thine
own image and likeness, to make them see and hear and feel as thou
feelest, seest and hearest; but such changes may not be made by any man
in another. We may not alter the work of God, and we are all the works
of God, each shaped out of a design that lay in the back of his mind for
all eternity. We cannot reshape others nor ourselves, and why do I tell
things thou knowest better than I? The thoughts that I am teaching now
are thine own thoughts related to me often on thy return from the hills
and collected by me in faithful memory. Hast forgotten, Jesus, having
said to me, the world cannot be remoulded, all men may not be saved,
only a few, by the grace of God? I said these things to thee, Hazael,
but what did I say but my thoughts, and what are my thoughts? Lighter
than the bloom of dandelion floating on the hills. It is not to our own
thoughts we must look for guidance but God's thoughts, which are deep in
us and clear in us, but we do not listen and are led away by our reason.
My sin was to have preached John as well as myself. I strayed beyond
myself and lost myself in the love of God, a thing a man may do if he
love not his fellows. My sin was not to have loved men enough. But we
are as God made us, and must do the best we can with ourselves.

Jesus waited for Hazael to answer him, but Hazael made no answer, but
sat like a stone, his head hanging upon his chest. Why dost thou not
answer, Hazael? he said, and Hazael answered: Jesus, my thoughts were
away. I was thinking of last night, of our talk together in that
balcony--I was thinking, Jesus, how sweet life is in the beginning, and
how it grows bitter in the mouth; and the end seems bitter indeed when
we think of the gladness that day when we walked through the garlanded
streets of our first day together in Nazareth. It was in the springti