Exult, my soul: your infant has grown, and has girded himself with strength stronger than the earth. The destroyer of all your towers of smoke has grown up in the world, and the world perceived him not and knew him not.
The wilderness was his company, and thought and prayer his bond with heaven, his homeland.
Behold him now, moving freely to visit your dark brood. In his eyes shines Eternity; and on his face Eternity is read; and in his hands Eternity abides. Stronger than the world, behold, he goes forth to battle with the world — with all your shadowy worlds, O captive soul. Exult, my soul, behold your infant: how he has grown, unheard by the world, and girded himself with strength stronger than the world.
Calm as every hero, conscious of his invincible might and of the impotence of his adversary, conquered in advance, my beloved strides among the beasts, and the beasts make way for him, filled with fear.
Verily, nature knew him before men did, and gave herself over to him as a true servant to her true master.
But among men only one knew him, and cried aloud, and his cry remained the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which men soon smothered with violence and blood. For violence is the weapon of the impotent, and blood is the way of impotence, from Cain to Herod.
The father of all men of violence from the beginning of the world met him, and offered him all the treasures of this world, if only he would spare and not trample his sowing in the world.
The ruler of this world beheld my darling, as the shadow of night at daybreak watches the coming of the sun and, watching, dies.
As an envoy of the living and eternal Trinity my darling stood before the ruler of the world of delusions. And the king of darkness sought to sow disharmony, and to confound the embodied trinity in unity. And after his custom, after his craft well-tried upon the human race, he first flattered the stomach of my knight. That he might first ensnare the stomach and give it eldership over the heart and the mind, and make these the shadow and the servants of the stomach.
But the lower man remained in unbroken harmony with the middle and the upper man. The stomach of my knight remained faithful to the unitary trinity, in which the three are equal and one.
Then the ruler of darkness and evil struck with flatteries at the heart of my darling. But his heart, brighter than light, received no darkness into itself, but, like the stomach, remained faithful to the threefold harmony.
At last the ruler of darkness, with all the powers of darkness, assailed the mind of my savior, to lead him to tempt God with senseless and headlong wonders.
But the mind of my Only-Begotten was like a torch of the sun, which burns up every impurity and casts it out of itself. And so neither did the mind depart from the sweet harmony of the holy tri-unity.
Thus my victor won the first victory over the king of smoke and ashes, who came forth to bargain with my captain, offering him everything — except dominion over the world.