Thou hast heard my story, Hazael; nothing remains now but to bid farewell to thy old friend.  To say farewell, Jesus, Hazael repeated, why should we say farewell?  Hazael, the rule of our order forbids me to stay, Jesus answered; those who commit crimes like mine are cast out and left to starve in the desert.  But, Jesus, Hazael replied, thou knowest well that none here would put thee beyond the doors.  Thy crimes, whatever they may have been, are between thee and God.  It is for thee to repent, and from hill-top to hill-top thou hast prayed for forgiveness, and through all the valleys.  All things in the end rest with him.  Speak to us not of going.  But if God had forgiven me, Jesus answered, and my blasphemies against him, he would not have sent this man hither.  And what dost thou propose to do?  Hazael asked, raising his head from his beard and looking Jesus in the face.

To go to Jerusalem, Jesus answered, and to tell the people that I was not raised from the dead by God to open the doors of heaven to Jews and infidels alike.  But who will believe thee to be Jesus that Pilate condemned to the cross?  Hazael asked.  Twenty years have gone over and they will say:  a poor, insane shepherd from the Judean hills.  Be this as it may, my repentance will then be complete, Jesus muttered.  But thou hast repented, Hazael wailed in his beard.  But, Jesus, all religions, except ours, are founded on lies, and there have been thousands, and there will be thousands more.  Why trouble thyself about the races that cover the face of the earth or even about thine own race.  Let thy 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