Section 17

My sons! See that you are not hinters and that your eyes make no suggestions [sc. to women]. For the hinters and wink-givers will be assigned to the guard-stations. To the guard-stations will they be assigned and be judged with stern justice. My sons! See that you eat not up interest and interest on interest, else in the dark mountain will you receive judgment. My sons! See that you pay no homage to the idols, the satans and demons, to the worship of idols and to the lusts of this world; for on the godlings and satans will a stern judgment fall, and they who pray to them will not ascend to Life's house and not look on Light's region. Give heed to what I have charged you, and let no evidence be given of crime and of lying; on evidence of crime and of lying you will be haled to account 'fore the judge. You will be haled to p. 93 account 'fore the judge who judges all worlds. He judges each one according to his works and his merit. My sons! All that is hateful to you, do not to your neighbours; for in the world into which you have come, is a heavy justice and judgment. Heavy justice and judgment is there therein, and every day will minds made secure in it be chosen. For everyone who is laden, mounts upward; but he who is empty is judged here. Woe to the empty, who stands empty there in the house of the collectors of taxes. When he had it in his hand, he gave nothing; there will he search in his pocket and he will find nothing. The wicked and liars will be hurled into the Darkness. They will into the blazing fire cast, into the blazing fire will they cast him into whose ears the call has been made, but he woald not give ear. I showed it him unto his eye, but he would not see; I showed it him, but he would not see with his eye. Life is victorious, and victorious is the Man who has come hither. The Mandæans possess a rich collection of liturgical songs and hymns which Lidzbarski has translated for the first time in his excellent edition of them (Mandäische Liturgien, Berlin, 1920). From these 236 hymns we choose one of the most typical as a specimen, and as perhaps of more than ordinary interest to the general reader who may have puzzled over the unqualified beatitude "Blessed are the poor." It is taken from the Oxford Collection (Bk. I., No. lvi.) and may be entitled: THE SONG OF THE POOR'S EXALTATION. In the Name of Great Life may hallowed Light be glorified.