“Tell me, O Lord! will they escape the scourge, which for so many centuries has weighed down our race?
“Wilt thou pardon me in them? wilt thou punish me in them? Oh, that they might obey the last will of their ancestor!
“Oh, that they might join together their charitable hearts, their valor and their strength, their noble intelligence, and their great riches!
“They would then labor for the future happiness of humanity—they would thus, perhaps, redeem me from my eternal punishment!
“The words of the Son of Man, LOVE YE ONE ANOTHER, will be their only end, their only means.
“By the help of those all-powerful words, they will fight and conquer the false priests, who have renounced the precepts of love, peace, and hope, for lessons of hatred, violence, and despair.
“Those false priests, who, kept in pay by the powerful and happy of this world, their accomplices in every age, instead of asking here below for some slight share of well-being for my unfortunate brethren, dare in thy name, O Lord God, to assert that the poor are condemned to endless suffering in this world—and that the desire or the hope to suffer less is a crime in thine eyes—because the happiness of the few, and the misery of nearly the whole human race, is (O blasphemy!) according to thy will. Is not the very contrary of those murderous words alone worthy of divinity!
“In mercy, hear me, Lord! Rescue from their enemies the descendants of my sister—the artisan as the king’s son. Do not let them destroy the germ of so mighty and fruitful an association, which, with thy blessing, would make an epoch in the annals of human happiness!
“Let me unite them, O Lord, since others would divide them—defend them, since others attack; let me give hope to those who have ceased to hope, courage to those who are brought low with fear—let me raise up the falling, and sustain those who persevere in the way of the righteous!
“And, peradventure, their struggles, devotion, virtue, and grief, may expiate my fault—that of a man, whom misfortune alone rendered unjust and wicked.