The inscription on the binding: "New Testament" is erased so that it can hardly be read; the gold edge has faded; the paper has turned yellow; the leather of the binding has decayed, the spine has fallen behind, the leaves are crumbling and in some places they have also decayed, worn out at the edges, curled up in the corners into a tube. I should have given it to me to bind again, but it's a pity, and, to tell you the truth, it's scary to part with a book even for a few days.

IV

Just as I, a man, have read it, mankind has read it, and perhaps it will say in the same way as I do: "What shall thou put with me in the grave? Her. What will I get up from the grave with? With her. What did I do on earth? I read it." This is terribly much for man and, perhaps, for all mankind, but for the Book itself it is terribly small.

Why do you say to Me: "Lord! Lord!" and do not do what I say? (Luke 6:46).

And even stronger, more terrible, in the "unwritten", agraphon, not included in the Gospel, unknown word of Jesus the Unknown:

If you are one with Me,

and lie on my bosom;

but ye do not do my words;

I will reject you. [3]

This means: it is impossible to read the Gospel without doing what it says. And who of us does? That is why it is the most unreadable of books, the most unknown.

V

The world as it is and this Book cannot be together. He or she: the world needs not to be what it is, or this Book needs to disappear from the world.

The world has swallowed it as a healthy man swallows poison, or a sick man swallows medicine, and struggles with it in order to take it into itself, or to vomit it out forever. He has been fighting for twenty centuries, and for the last three centuries he has been struggling in such a way that even the blind can see that they will not be together; or this Book, or this world is finished.

VI