Volume 3 — From The Month. SAINTS OF THE DESERT, BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.

1. Some old men came to Abbot Antony, who, to try their spirits, proposed to them a difficult passage of Scripture.

As each in turn did his best to explain it, Antony said: "You have not hit it."

Till Abbot Joseph said: "I give it up."

Then cried Antony: "He has hit it; for he owns he does not know it."

2. When the Abbot Arsenius was at the point of death, his brethren noted that he wept. They said then: "Is it so? art thou too afraid, O father?"

He answered: "It is so; and the fear that is now upon me has been with me ever since I became a monk."

And so he went to sleep.

3. Abbot Pastor said: "We cannot keep out bad thoughts, as we cannot stop the wind rushing through the door; but we can resist them when they come."

4. Abbot Besarion said, when he was dying: "A monk ought to be all eye, as the cherubim and seraphim."

5. They asked Abbot Macarius how they ought to pray.

The old man made answer: "No need to be voluble in prayer; but stretch forth thy hands frequently, and say, 'Lord, as thou wilt, and as thou knowest, have mercy on me.' And if war is coming on, say, 'Help!' And he who himself knoweth what is expedient for thee, will show thee mercy."

6. On a festival, when the monks were at table, one cried out to the servers, "I eat nothing dressed, so bring me some salt."

Blessed Theodore made reply: "My brother, better were it to have even secretly eaten flesh in thy cell than thus loudly to have refused it."

7. An old man said: "A monk's cell is that golden Babylonian furnace in which the Three Children found the Son of God."

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[ORIGINAL]