ivisible God, and compelled them to sacrifice to the heathen
gods.
10. They made common soldiers of those who had been men of rank; the
women became their prey, and the common people, reduced to slavery, were
carried away by thousands over the sea.
11. The children were slain, and soon, in the whole land, there was
naught heard but weeping and lamentation.
12. In this extreme distress, the Israelites once more remembered their
great God, implored his mercy and prayed for his forgiveness. Our
Father, in his inexhaustible clemency, heard their prayer.
IV.
1. At that time the moment had come for the compassionate Judge to
reincarnate in a human form;
2. And the eternal Spirit, resting in a state of complete inaction and
supreme bliss, awakened and separated from the eternal Being, for an
undetermined period,
3. So that, in human form, He might teach man to identify himself with
the Divinity and attain to eternal felicity;
4. And to show, by His example, how man can attain moral purity and free
his soul from the domination of the physical senses, so that it may
achieve the perfection necessary for it to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,
which is immutable and where bliss eternal reigns.
5. Soon after, a marvellous child was born in the land of Israel. God
himself spoke, through the mouth of this child, of the miseries of the
body and the grandeur of the soul.
6. The parents of the infant were poor people, who belonged to a family
noted for great piety; who forgot the greatness of their ancestors in
celebrating the name of the Creator and giving thanks to Him for the
trials which He had sent upon them.
7. To reward them for adhering to the path of truth, God blessed the
firstborn of this family; chose him for His elect, and sent him to
sustain the fallen and comfort the afflicted.
8. The divine child, to whom the name Issa was given, commenced in his
tender years to talk of the only and indivisible God, exhorting the
strayed souls to repent and purify themselves from the sins of which
they had become guilty.
9. People came from all parts to hear him, and marvelled at the
discourses which came from his infantile mouth; and all Israel agreed
that the Spirit of the Eternal dwelt in this child.
10. When Issa was thirteen years old, the age at which an Israelite is
expected to marry,
11. The modest house of his industrious parents became a meeting place
of the rich and illustrious, who were anxious
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