you stand-offish and have nothing to do with us? If you do not like us, that means you object to us, and we crush those who object to us.

T h e A n s w e r : Not you, if I had loved your world, I would not have withdrawn from it. I don’t like either you or your world. But I do not interfere with them. For I have different goals, different points have filled my heart; they have left no place in my heart to think of other things. Your duty is to look to the hand, not to the heart. For you seek your government and your public order. So long as the hand does not interfere, what right do you have to interfere in the heart and say, “the heart should love us too,” although you are in no way worthy of it? Yes, just as I desire and long for the spring during this winter, but I cannot will it nor attempt to bring it, so I long for the world to be righted and I pray for it and I want the worldly to be reformed, but I cannot will these things, because I do not have the power. I cannot attempt them in fact, because it is neither my duty, nor do I have the capacity.

F o u r t h S u s p i c i o u s Q u e s t i o n : ‘The worldly’ say: we have experienced so many calamities, we no longer have confidence in anyone. How can we be certain that given the opportunity you won’t interfere as you wish?

T h e A n s w e r : The previous points should give you confidence. In addition, since I did not interfere in your world while in my native region among my students and relatives, in the midst of those who heeded me and of exciting events, for someone who is alone in exile, with no one, a stranger, weak, powerless, turned with all his strength towards the hereafter, cut off from all social relations and correspondence, who has only found a few friends from far afield who are also turned to the hereafter, and who is a stranger to everyone else and whom everyone else regards as a stranger — for such a person to interfere in your fruitless and dangerous world would surely be a compounded lunacy.

FIFTH POINT

This concerns five small matters.

T h e F i r s t : ‘The worldly’ ask me: Why do you yourself not practise the principles of our civilization, our style of life, and our manner of dressing? Does this mean you oppose us?