On your knees, tribes and nations, before the majesty of God. You fall swiftly to your knees before your brigand chiefs, yet you hesitate to fall before the feet of the Almighty!
You say: will the Lord truly punish us, small as we are? Had He created us greater and stronger, then let Him punish us! But as it is, behold, we are scarcely taller than the thornbushes along the road, set against the roaring universe around us — and you threaten us with the punishment of One beyond all measure Greater than we?
Senseless ones! When your brigand chiefs summon you to an evil at which even the universe trembles, then you do not say that you are too small. Only for deeds of light do you excuse yourselves with smallness and weakness.
Though you are small to the eye, you are inscribed under a great name in the book of destiny. Your forefather had the greatness of an archangel, and shone with an archangel's countenance. Therefore for you also is appointed an archangel's reward or an archangel's punishment.
When the desire crept inaudibly into the heart of your forefather to know things apart from the Creator, his archangelic countenance darkened like earth, and his greatness was shattered into trifles — into you, his seed. For he desired to know trifles, and so he was shattered into trifles, that he might enter into trifles, and taste them, and examine them.
All the trifles, all the tiny, tiniest ones, must join together and turn their face from the earth toward the Creator. That your archangelic forefather may be restored again, and that his face may shine once more with the radiance of a mirror turned toward the sun.
O my Lord and my Creator, restore man such as Thou didst first create him. Man such as he now is, is not Thy work. Man such as he now is, is the creator of his own self. His name is sickness — whence could sickness be in Thy hands? His name is fear — whence could fear come from the Fearless One? His name is malice — whence could malice come from the One without malice?
Fill me with Thyself, O my Health; fill me with Thine eternal morning light, and sickness, fear and malice will evaporate out of me. As the marsh evaporates before the sun, and is transformed into a fruitful field!