Everyone now eats and drinks. Even Jairuth, lost in thought, begins to eat and also to drink quite heartily. As he himself is transformed entirely into love by the most ardent wine of love from the heavens, he says to Me, ‘Lord, a glorious thought has just come to me! If it is possible, I would like vines of a kind whose grapes would let me press wine like this. For if I have such wine in my cellars, I shall fill the whole world with nothing but love upon love! I have now experienced it in myself. Certainly, even otherwise I am a person who has some liking for everything good, right and beautiful; but truly, I could not say that I had ever felt any particular love for people within me.
‘Until now, everything I did, I did from a certain compulsion of law that I imposed upon myself according to my knowledge of the laws. It mattered little to me whether a law was good or bad; I never really entered into such reflections. My motto was: “Law is law, whether from God or from Caesar; if it brings punishment in its wake, one must observe it out of self-love, so as not to bring evil consequences upon oneself by failing to observe it!” But if a law has no sanction, then it is no law either, but merely good advice that one can follow, yet has no obligation enforced by a sanction to follow.
‘Certainly, failure to follow good advice may also cause harm that has almost the same sad face as a legal punishment. Yet failure to follow good advice is not a sin of such a kind that more people could be affected by it than mainly the person alone who does not follow the good advice. But if advice is bad, then I plainly commit a grave sin if I follow it.
‘With a law, however, it is different. Whether it is good or utterly bad, I must obey it because it is a law. If I do not obey it, perhaps because I recognize it as bad, then I sin either against God or against the ruler of the land, and I shall be chastised for it by both! But from this it follows brightly and clearly that I never observe the particular good prescribed by law out of love, but only from the legal must, which is always inwardly repugnant to me. Yet now that I have drunk this most glorious juice of the vine from the heavens, I see nothing but love for love, and already I would like to embrace and kiss the whole earth!
‘Moreover, I see the same effect in everyone who has drunk this truly heavenly wine. Therefore I would like to grow a large garden full of such vines and then give all people this wine to drink. Surely they would then, like me now, turn wholly into love in the shortest time! If it were possible to obtain such vines for me, I would be the happiest person on God’s dear and beautiful earth!’
I say, ‘I can indeed obtain vines for you that will yield the same juice, but with them you will still not bring about the effect you imagine in people. For this wine certainly enlivens love when it is already in a person; but if a person has no love, and only evil in his heart, his evil will be enlivened within him just as love is now within you. Only then will he be transformed into a complete devil, and with great enthusiasm he will put evil into practice just as you now wish to put all good into practice.
‘Therefore, with this juice, one must consider very carefully whom one offers it to for drinking! But I shall nevertheless give you a vineyard full of such vines; only take good care whom you give such juice to drink! Enlivened love may indeed bring about much good; but it is better if it is enlivened through God’s word, because then it remains, whereas when this juice is drunk it lasts only for a time and then evaporates again like the juice itself. So heed this well too, or you will bring about evil instead of good.’
The merchant Jairuth then says, ‘Lord, in that case would it not be inadvisable to grow such wine? For one cannot know whether a person to whom one gives such juice to drink carries love or evil in his heart. And if, with the best intention of enlivening only his love, one enlivened his evil, one would be put in a fine predicament and in danger on top of it! No, no, then I would rather leave off growing such wine!’
I say, ‘It is all the same to Me; I shall do for you what you wish. But I tell you, more or less the same property lies in every kind of wine grown on earth. Let different people drink of your own wines about as much as you have now drunk of My purely heavenly wines, and you will see how some will pass wholly into love; others, however, will begin to rage and rave so that you will have them bound with ropes! But if even earthly wines produce such effects, how much more will heavenly wines!’