It is so, reader, whether you like it or not. It is not my fault that the truth is bitter.
63. The eagerness of your desire makes you ask of God for purity of air and an abundance of the fruits of the earth. It is well. But to whose hands do you owe this abundance? Who ought to cultivate the ground? Is it you, or some other one?
Can it be I, with my white hands? you answer. Truly it is to you, laborers, that this work belongs. I would rather die of hunger than to gather a blade of straw or a grain of wheat.
64. You should ask, before meals, for a blessing upon your food, not from God, but from us, the laborers; and after your repast you should thank us for it, and not God.
If God sent you manna from heaven as he did to the Israelites in the Wilderness, you should thank him; but since it is from our hands that you receive your manna, you should thank us, because we nourish you as though you were infants or invalids.
65. When I had written this much, some laborers said to me: "All this is useless. Do you believe you can make the rich man labor for his bread? If the prophets and the masters of all wisdom came to urge it upon him, he would not listen to them. If God should cry in his ears with the trumpet of doom, 'You are about to die, and to present yourself to me for judgment, and your disobedience to my com-
