Pambo laid his hand again tenderly on the weeper’s shoulder.
“Is there no pride here, my brother? Who art thou, to change the fate of nations and the hearts of emperors, which are in the hand of the King of kings? If thou wert weak, and imperfect in thy work—for unfaithful, I will warrant thee, thou wert never—He put thee there, because thou wert imperfect, that so that which has come to pass might come to pass; and thou bearest thine own burden only—and yet not thou, but He who bore it for thee.”
“Why then am I tormented by these nightly visions?”
“Fear them not, friend. They are spirits of evil, and therefore lying spirits. Were they good spirits they would speak to thee only in pity, forgiveness, encouragement. But be they ghosts or demons, they must be evil, because they are accusers, like the Evil One himself, the accuser of the saints. He is the father of lies, and his children will be like himself. What said the blessed Anthony? That a monk should not busy his brain with painting spectres, or give himself up for lost; but rather be cheerful, as one who knows that he is redeemed, and in the hands of the Lord, where the Evil One has no power to hurt him. ‘For,’ he used to say, ‘the demons behave to us even as they find us. If they see us east down and faithless, they terrify us still more, that they may plunge us in despair. But if they see us full of faith, and joyful in the Lord, with our souls filled with the glory which shall be, then they shrink abashed, and flee away in confusion.’ Cheer up, friend! such thoughts are of the night, the hour of Satan and of the powers of darkness; and with the dawn they flee away.”
“And yet things are revealed to men upon their beds, in visions of the night.”
“Be it so. Nothing, at all events, has been revealed to thee upon thy bed, except that which thou knowest already far better than Satan does, namely, that thou art a sinner. But for me, my friend, though I doubt not that such things are, it is the day, and not the night, which brings revelations.”
“How, then?”
“Because by day I can see to read that book which is written, like the Law given on Sinai, upon tables of stone, by the finger of God Himself.”
Arsenius looked up at him inquiringly. Pambo smiled.
“Thou knowest that, like many holy men of old, I am no scholar, and knew not even the Greek tongue, till thou, out of thy brotherly kindness, taughtest it to me. But hast thou never heard what Anthony said to a certain Pagan who reproached him with his ignorance of books? ‘Which is first,’ he asked, ‘spirit, or letter?—Spirit, sayest thou? Then know, the healthy spirit needs no letters. My book is the whole creation, lying open before me, wherein I can read, whensoever I please, the word of God.’ ”
“Dost thou not undervalue learning, my friend?”
“I am old among monks, and have seen much of their ways; and among them my simplicity seems to have seen this—many a man wearing himself with study, and tormenting his soul as to whether he believed rightly this doctrine and that, while he knew not with Solomon that in much learning is much sorrow, and that while he was puzzling at the letter of God’s message, the spirit of it was going fast and faster out of him.”
“And how didst thou know that of such a man?”
“By seeing him become a more and more learned theologian, and more and more zealous for the letter of orthodoxy; and yet less and less loving and merciful—less and less full of trust in God, and of hopeful thoughts for himself and for his brethren, till he seemed to have darkened his whole soul with disputations, which breed only strife, and to have forgotten utterly the message which is written in that book wherewith the blessed Anthony was content.”
“Of what message dost thou speak?”
“Look,” said the old abbot, stretching his hand toward the Eastern desert, “and judge, like a wise man, for thyself!”
As he spoke, a long arrow of level light flashed down the gorge from crag to crag, awakening every crack and slab to vividness and life. The great crimson sun rose swiftly through the dim night-mist of the desert, and as he poured his glory down the glen, the haze rose in threads and plumes, and vanished, leaving the stream to sparkle round the rocks, like the living, twinkling eye of the whole scene. Swallows flashed by hundreds out of the cliffs, and began their air-dance for the day; the jerboa hopped stealthily homeward on his stilts from his stolen meal in the monastery garden; the brown sand-lizards underneath the stones opened one eyelid each, and having satisfied themselves that it was day, dragged their bloated bodies and whip-like tails out into the most burning patch of gravel which they could find, and nestling together as a further protection against cold, fell fast asleep again; the buzzard, who considered himself lord of the valley, awoke with a long querulous bark, and rising aloft in two or three vast rings, to stretch himself after his night’s sleep, hung motionless, watching every lark which chirruped on the cliffs; while from the far-off Nile below, the awakening croak of pelicans, the clang
