IV

“But it is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord God.”

“The Russian proverb is true, which says that ‘man proposes but God disposes,’” said I, as I came back again to my spiritual father. “I thought that by now I should certainly be on my way to Jerusalem. But see how differently things have fallen out. Something quite unlooked for has happened and kept me in the same place here for another three days. And I could not help coming to tell you about it and to ask your advice in making up my mind about the matter.”

It happened like this. I had said good-bye to everybody, and with God’s help started on my way. I had got as far as the outskirts of the town when I saw a man I knew standing at the door of the very last house. He was at one time a pilgrim like me, but I had not seen him for about three years. We greeted one another and he asked me where I was going.

“God willing,” I answered, “I want to go to Jerusalem.”

“Thank God! There is a nice fellow-traveller for you,” he said. 91

"God be with you, and with him too," said I, "but surely you know that it is never my way to travel with other people. I always wander about alone."

"Yes, but listen. I feel sure that this one is just your sort; you will suit each other down to the ground. Now, look here, the father of the master of this house, where I have been taken on as a servant, is going under a vow to Jerusalem, and you will easily get used to each other. He belongs to this town, he's a good old man, and what's more he is quite deaf. So much so that however much you shout, he can't hear a word. If you want to ask him anything you have to write it on a bit of paper, and then he answers. So you see he won't bore you on the road; he won't speak to you; even at home here he grows more and more silent. On the other hand you will be a great help to him on the way. His son is giving him a horse and cart, which he will take as far as Odessa and then sell there. The old man wants to go on foot, but the horse is going as well because he has a bit of luggage, and some things he is taking to the Lord's Tomb. And you can put your knapsack in with them too, of course. Now just think, how can we possibly send an old deaf man off with a horse, all by himself on such a long journey? They have searched and searched for somebody to take him, but they all want to be paid such a lot; besides, there's a risk in sending him with someone we don't know, for he has money and92 belongings with him. Say 'Yes,' brother, it will really be all right; make up your mind now for the glory of God and the love of your neighbour. I will vouch for you to his people, and they will be too pleased for words; they are kindly folk and very fond of me, I've been working for them for two years now." All this talk had taken place at the door, and he now took me into the house. The head of the household was there, and I saw clearly that they were quite a worthy and decent family. So I agreed to the plan. So now we have arranged to start with God's blessing, after hearing the Liturgy two days after Christmas. What unexpected things we meet with on life's journey! Yet all the while, God and His Holy Providence guide our actions and over-rule our plans, as it is written, It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.

On hearing all this my spiritual father said, "I rejoice with all my heart, dear brother, that God has so ordered it that I should see you again, so unexpectedly and so soon. And since you now have time, I want, in all love, to keep you a little longer, and you shall tell me more about the instructive experiences you have met with in the course of your long pilgrimages. I have already listened with great pleasure and interest to what you told me before."

"I am quite ready and happy to do that," I answered, and I began as follows: 93

A great many things have happened to me, some good and some bad. It would take a long while to tell of them all, and much I have already forgotten. For I have tried especially to remember only such matters as guided and urged my idle soul to prayer. All the rest I rarely remember; or rather I have tried to forget the past, as St. Paul bids us when he says, "Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forward to the things that are before, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the high calling." My late starets of blessed memory also used to say that the forces which are against prayer in the heart attack us from two sides, from the left hand and from the right. That is to say, if the enemy cannot turn us from prayer by means of vain thoughts and sinful ideas, then he brings back into our minds good things we have been taught, and fills us with beautiful ideas, so that one way or another he may lure us away from prayer, which is a thing he cannot bear. It is called "a theft from the right hand side," and in it the soul, putting aside its converse with God, turns to the satisfaction of converse with self or with created things. He taught me, therefore, not to admit during times of prayer even the most lofty of spiritual thoughts. And if I saw that in the course of the day time had been spent more in improving thought and talk than in the actual hidden prayer of the heart, then I was to think of it as a loss of the sense of proportion, or a94 sign of spiritual greed. This is above all true, he said, in the case of beginners, for whom it is most needful that time given to prayer should be very much more than that taken up by other sides of the devout life.

Still one cannot forget everything. A matter may have printed itself so deeply in one's mind, that although it has not been actually thought of for a long time, yet it is remembered very clearly. A case in point is the few days' stay that God deemed me worthy to enjoy with a certain devout family in the following manner.

During my wanderings in the Tobolsk Government I happened to pass through a certain country town. My supply of dried bread had run very low, so I went to one of the houses to ask for some more. The householder said, "Thank God, you have come just at the right moment; my wife has only just taken the bread out of the oven, so there is a hot loaf for you. Remember me in your prayers." I thanked him and was putting the bread away in my knapsack, when his wife, who was looking on, said, "What a wretched state your knapsack is in, it is all worn out. I'll give you another instead." And she gave me a good strong one. I thanked them very heartily and went on. On leaving the town I went into a little shop to ask for a bit of salt, and the shopkeeper gave me a small bag quite full. I rejoiced in spirit and thanked God for leading me, unworthy as I was, to such kindly folk. "Now," thought I,95 "without having to worry about food I shall be filled and content for a whole week. Bless the Lord, O my soul!"

Three miles or so from this town the road I was following passed through a poor village, where I saw a little wooden church nicely decked out and painted on the outside. As I was going by it I felt a wish to honour God's house, and going into the porch I prayed for a while. On the grass at the side of the church there were playing two little children of five or six years of age. I took them to be the parish priest's children, for they were very nicely dressed. I finished my prayers and went on my way, but I had not gone a dozen paces from the church when I heard a shout behind me. "Dear little beggar! Dear little beggar! Stop!" The two little ones I had seen, a boy and a girl, were calling and running after me. I stopped and they ran up to me and took me by the hand. "Come along to mummy, she likes beggars."

"I'm not a beggar," I told them, "I'm just a passer-by."

"Why have you got a bag, then?"

"That is for the bread I eat on the way."

"All the same you must come. Mummy will give you some money for your journey."

"But where is your mummy?" I asked.

"Down there behind the church, behind that little wood." 96

They took me into a beautiful garden in the middle of which stood a large country house. We went inside, and how clean and smart it all was! The lady of the house comes hurrying to us. "Welcome, welcome! God has sent you to us; and how did you come? Sit down, sit down, dear." With her own hands she took off my knapsack and put it on a table, and made me sit in a very comfortably padded chair. "Wouldn't you like something to eat? Or a cup of tea? Isn't there anything you need?"

"I most humbly thank you," I answered, "but I have a whole bagful of food. It is true that I do take tea, but as a peasant I am not very used to it. I value your heartfelt and kindly welcome even more than the treat you offer me. I shall pray that God may bless you for showing such love for strangers in the spirit of the Gospels."

While I was speaking, a strong feeling came over me, urging me to withdraw within myself again. The Prayer was surging up in my heart, and I needed peace and silence to give free play to this quickening flame of prayer, as well as to hide from others the outward signs which went with it, such as tears and sighs and unusual movements of the face and lips. I therefore got up, saying, "Please excuse me, but I must leave now; may the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with your dear little children."

"Oh, no! God forbid that you should go away." 97

“I won’t allow it. My husband, who is a magistrate, will be coming back from town this evening, and how delighted he will be to see you! He reverences every pilgrim as a messenger of God. If you go away he will be really grieved not to have seen you. Beside that, to-morrow is Sunday, and you will pray with us at the Liturgy, and at the dinner-table take your share with us in what God has sent. On holy days we always have up to thirty guests, and all of them our poor brothers in Jesus Christ. Come now, why have you told me nothing about yourself, where you come from and where you are going? Talk to me, I like listening to the spiritual conversation of devout people. Children, children! Take the pilgrim’s knapsack into the oratory, he will spend the night there.”

I was astonished as I listened to what she said, and I asked myself whether I was talking with a human being or with a ghost of some sort.

So I stayed, and waited for her husband. I gave her a short account of my travels, and said I was on my way to Irkutsk.

“Why, then, you will have to go through Tobolsk,” said the lady, “and my own mother is a nun in a convent there, she is a skhimnitsa now. We will give you a letter and she will be glad to see you. A great many people go to consult her on spiritual matters. And you will be able to take her a book by St. John of the Ladder which we have98 just ordered from Moscow at her request. How nicely it all fits in!”

Soon it was dinner-time, and we sat down to table. Four other ladies came in and began the meal with us. When the first course was ended one of them rose, bowed to the Ikon,* and then to us. Then she went and fetched the second course and sat down again. Then another of the ladies in the same way went and brought the third course. When I saw this, I said to my hostess, “May I venture to ask whether these ladies are relations of yours?”

“Yes, they are indeed sisters to me; this is my cook, and this the coachman’s wife, that one has charge of the keys and the other is my maid. They are all married, I have no unmarried girls at all in my whole household.”

The more I saw and heard of all this, the more surprised I was, and I thanked God for letting me see these devout people. I felt the prayer stirring strongly in my heart, so wishing to be alone as soon as I could and not hinder the prayer, I said to the lady as soon as we rose from the table, “No doubt you will rest for a while after dinner, and I am so used to walking that I will go for a stroll in the garden.”

“No, I don’t rest,” she replied. “I will come into the garden with you, and you shall talk to me about something instructive. If you go alone, the children will give you no peace, directly they see99 "you, they will not leave you for a minute, they are so fond of beggars, and brothers in Christ, and pilgrims."

There was nothing for me to do but to go with her. In order to avoid doing the talking myself, when we got into the garden I bowed down to the ground before her and said, "Do tell me, please, have you lived this devout life long, and how did you come to take it up?"

"I will tell you the whole story if you like," was the answer. "You see my mother was a great-grand-daughter of St. Joasaph, whose relics rest at Byelgorod. We had a large town house, one wing of which was rented to a man who was a gentleman but not well off. After a while he died; his wife was left pregnant and herself died in giving birth to a child. The infant was left an orphan and in poverty, and out of pity my mother adopted him. A year later I was born. We grew up together and did lessons together with the same tutors and governesses, and were as used to each other as a real brother and sister. Some while later my father died, and my mother gave up living in town and came with us to live on this estate of hers here. When we grew up, she gave me in marriage to her adopted son, settled this estate on us, and herself took the veil in a convent, where she had a cell built for her. She gave us a mother's blessing, and as her last will and testament she urged us to live as good Christians, to say our prayers fervently, and above all try to fulfil the100 greatest of God's commandments, that is, the love of one's neighbour, to feed and help our poor brothers in Christ in simplicity and humility, to bring up our children in the fear of the Lord, and to treat our serfs as our brothers. And that is how we have been living here by ourselves for the last ten years now, trying as best we could to carry out mother's last wishes. We have a guesthouse for beggars, and at the present moment there are living in it more than ten crippled and sick people. If you care to, we will go and see them to-morrow."

When she had ended her story, I asked her where the book by St. John of the Ladder was, which she wished to send to her mother. "Come indoors," she said, "and I will find it for you."

We had just sat down and begun to read it when her husband came in, and seeing me, gave me a warm welcome. We kissed each other as two brothers in Christ, and then he took me off to his own room, saying, "Come, dear brother, let us go into my study, and you shall bless my cell. I expect she (pointing to his wife) has been boring you. No sooner does she catch sight of a pilgrim of either sex, or of some sick person, than she is so delighted that she will not leave them day or night. She has been like that for years and years." We went into the study. What a lot of books there were, and beautiful icons, and the life-giving Cross with the Figure life-sized, and the Gospels lying near it! I101...said a prayer, and then, "You are in God's own Paradise here," I said. "Here is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His most holy Mother, and the blessed Saints! And there," I went on, pointing to the books, "are the divine, living and everlasting words of their teaching. I expect you very often enjoy heavenly converse with them."

"Yes, I admit I am a great lover of reading," he answered.

"What sort of books are they you have here?" I asked.

"I have a large number of religious books," was the answer. "Here you see are the Lives of the Saints for the whole year, and the works of St. John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great, and many other theologians and philosophers. I have a lot of volumes of sermons, too, by celebrated modern preachers. My library is worth about five hundred pounds."

"Haven't you anything on prayer?"

"Yes, I am very fond of reading about prayer. Here is the very latest work on the subject, the work of a Petersburg priest." He took down a book on the Lord's Prayer and we began to read it with great enjoyment. A short while after the lady came in, bringing tea, followed by the children, who dragged in a large silver basket full of biscuits and cakes such as I had never tasted before in my life. My host took the book from me and handed it to his wife, saying, "Now we will get her to read; she reads102 "beautifully, and we will keep our strength up with the tea." So she began reading, and we listened. And as I listened I felt the action of the Prayer in my heart. The longer the reading went on the more the Prayer grew and made me glad. Suddenly I saw something flash quickly before my eyes, in the air as it were, like the figure of my departed starets. I started, and so as to hide the fact I said, "Excuse me, I must have dropped asleep for a moment." Then I felt as though the soul of my starets made its way into my own, or gave light to it. I felt a sort of light in my mind, and a number of ideas about prayer came to me. I was just crossing myself and setting my will to put these ideas aside when the lady came to the end of the book and her husband asked me whether I had liked it, so that talking began again. "Very much," I answered, "the 'Our Father' is the loftiest and most precious of all the written prayers we Christians have, for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave it to us. And the explanation of it which has just been read is very good, too, only it deals for the most part with the active side of the Christian life, and in my reading of the holy Fathers I have come across a more speculative and mystical explanation of the prayer."

"In which of the Fathers did you read this?"

"Well, in Maxim the Confessor, for example, and in Peter the Damascene, in the Philokalia."

"Do you remember it? Tell us about it, please." 103

"Certainly. The first words of the prayer, 'Our Father which art in Heaven' are explained in your book as a call to brotherly love for one's neighbour, since we are all children of the one Father, and that is very true. But in the holy Fathers the explanation goes further and is more deeply spiritual. They say that when we use these words we should lift up our mind to heaven, to the Heavenly Father, and remember every moment that we are in the presence of God.

"The words 'Hallowed be Thy Name' are explained in your book by the care we ought to have not to utter the Name of God except with reverence, nor to use it in a false oath, in a word that the Holy Name of God be spoken holily and not taken in vain. But the mystical writers see here a plain call to inward prayer of the heart; that is, that the most Holy Name of God may be stamped inwardly upon the heart and be hallowed by self-acting prayer and hallow all our feelings and all the powers of the soul. The words 'Thy Kingdom come' they explain thus—may inward peace and quiet and spiritual joy come to our hearts. In your book again, the words 'Give us this day our daily bread' are understood as asking for what we need for our bodily life, not for more than that, but for what is needed for ourselves and for the help of our neighbour. On the other hand, Maxim the Confessor understands by 'daily bread' the feeding of the soul with heavenly bread, i.e., the104 Word of God, and the union of the soul with God, by dwelling upon Him in thought and the unceasing inward prayer of the heart."

"Ah, but the attainment of interior prayer is a very big business and almost impossible for lay folk," exclaimed my host; "we are lucky if we manage to say our ordinary prayers without slothfulness."

"Don't look at it in that way," said I. "If it were out of the question and quite too hard to do, God would not have bidden us all do it. His strength is made perfect in weakness. The holy Fathers, who speak from their own experience, offer us the means, and make the way to win the prayer of the heart easier. Of course, for hermits they give special and higher methods, but for those who live in the world their writings show ways which truly lead to interior prayer."

"I have never come across anything of that sort in my reading," he said.

"If you would care to hear it, may I read you a little from The Philokalia?" I asked, taking up my copy. I found Peter the Damascene's article, part 3, page 48, and read as follows: "One must learn to call upon the Name of God, more even than breathing—at all times, in all places, in every kind of occupation. The Apostle says, 'Pray without ceasing.' That is, he teaches men to have the remembrance of God in all times and places and circumstances. If you are making something you105"...must call to mind the Creator of all things, if you see the light, remember the Giver of it, if you see the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, wonder and praise the Maker of them. If you put on your clothes recall Whose gift they are and thank Him Who provides for your life. In short, let every action be a cause for remembering and praising God, and lo! you will be praying without ceasing and therein your soul will always rejoice.' There, you see, this way of ceaseless prayer is simple and easy and within the reach of everybody so long as he has some amount of human feeling.'

They were extraordinarily pleased with this. My host took me in his arms and thanked me again and again. Then he looked at my Philokalia, saying, 'I must certainly buy myself a copy of this. I will get it at once from Petersburg; but for the moment and in memory of this occasion I will copy out the passage you have just read—you read it out to me.' And then and there he wrote it out beautifully. Then he exclaimed, 'Why, goodness me! Of course I have an ikon of the Damascene!' (It was probably of St. John Damascene.) He picked up a frame, put what he had written behind the glass and hung it beneath the ikon. 'There,' said he, 'the living word of the Saint underneath his picture will often remind me to put his wholesome advice into practice.'

After this we went to supper. As before, the106 whole household, men and women, sat down to table with us. How reverently silent and calm the meal was! And at the end of it we all, the children as well, spent a long while in prayer. I was asked to read the 'Akathist to Jesus the Heart's Delight.' Afterwards the servants went away to bed, and we three were left alone in the room. Then the lady brought me a white shirt and a pair of stockings. I bowed down at her feet, and said, 'The stockings, little mother, I will not take. I have never worn them in my life; we are always so used to omochi.' She hurried off and brought back her old kaftan of thin yellow material, and cut it up into two omochi, while her husband, saying, 'And look, the poor fellow's footwear is almost worn out,' brought me his new bashmaki,⁴⁴   Bashmaki. A kind of shoes. large ones which he wore over his top boots. Then he told me to go into the next room, which was empty, and change my shirt. I did so, and when I came back to them again they sat me down on a chair to put my new footwear on, he wrapping my feet and legs in the omochi and she putting on the bashmaki. At first I would not let them, but they bade me sit down, saying, 'Sit down and be quiet, Christ washed His disciples' feet.' There was nothing to do but obey, and I began to weep, and so did they. After this the lady went to bed with the children, and her husband and I went to a summerhouse in the garden.

For a long while we did not go to sleep, but lay107 talking. He began in this way, "Now in God's name and on your conscience tell me the real truth. Who are you? You must be of good birth, and are only assuming a disguise of simplicity. You read and write well, you speak correctly, and are able to discuss things, and these things do not go with a peasant upbringing."

"I spoke the real truth with a sincere heart both to you and to your wife when I told you about my birth, and I never had a thought of lying or of deceiving you. Why should I? As for the things I say, they are not my own, but what I have heard from my departed starets, who was full of divine wisdom; or what I have gathered from a careful reading of the holy Fathers. But my ignorance has gained more light from interior prayer than from anything else, and that I have not reached by myself, it has been granted me by the mercy of God and the teaching of my starets. And that can be done by anyone. It costs nothing but the effort to sink down in silence into the depths of one's heart and call more and more upon the radiant Name of Jesus. Everyone who does that feels at once the inward light, everything becomes understandable to him, he even catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. And what depth and light there is in the mystery of a man coming to know that he has this power to plumb the depths of his own being, to see himself from within,108 to find delight in self-knowledge, to take pity on himself and shed tears of gladness over his fall and his spoiled will! To show good sense in dealing with things and to talk with people is no hard matter, and lies within anyone's power, for the mind and the heart were there before learning and human wisdom. If the mind is there, you can set it to work either upon science or upon experience, but if the mind is lacking then no teaching, however wise, and no training will be any good. The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles. We think, 'I would very gladly take an interest in spiritual things, and in prayer, but I have no time, the fuss and cares of life give no chance for such a thing.' Yet which is really important and necessary, salvation and the eternal life of the soul, or the fleeting life of the body on which we spend so much labour? It is that that I spoke of, and that leads to either sense or stupidity in people."

"Forgive me, dear brother, I asked not just out of mere curiosity, but from friendliness and Christian sympathy, and even more because about two years ago I came across a case which gave rise to the question I put to you. It was like this: There came to our house a certain beggar with a discharged soldier's passport. He was old and feeble, and so109 poor that he was almost naked and barefoot. He spoke little, and in such a simple way that you would take him for a peasant of the steppes. We took him into the guesthouse, but some five days later he fell seriously ill, and so we moved him to this very summerhouse, where we kept him quiet, and my wife and I looked after him and nursed him. But after a while it was plain that he was nearing his end. We prepared him for it, and sent for our priest for his Confession, Communion and Anointing. The day before he died, he got up and asked me for a sheet of paper and a pen, and begged me to shut the door and to let no one in while he wrote his will, which he desired me to send after his death to his son at an address in Petersburg. I was astounded when I saw him write, for not only did he write a beautiful and absolutely cultured hand, but the composition also was excellent, thoroughly correct and showing great delicacy of touch. In fact, I'll read you that will of his to-morrow. I have a copy of it. All this set me wondering, and aroused my curiosity enough to ask him about his origin and his life.

"After making me solemnly vow not to reveal it to anyone until after his death, he told me, for the glory of God, the story of his life. 'I was Prince X——,' he began. 'I was very wealthy and led a most luxurious and dissipated life. After the death of my wife, my son and I lived together, he being110 happily settled in military service; he was a captain in the Guards. One day when I was getting ready to go to a ball at an important person's house, I was very angry with my valet. Unable to control my temper, I struck him a severe blow on the head and ordered him to be sent away to his village. This happened in the evening, and next morning the valet died from the effects of the blow. This did not affect me very seriously. I regretted my rashness, but soon forgot the whole thing. Six weeks later, though, I began seeing the dead valet; in my dreams to begin with; every night he disturbed me and reproached me, incessantly repeating, 'Conscienceless man! You are my murderer!' As time went on I began seeing him when I was awake also, wide awake. His appearances grew more and more frequent with the lapse of time, till the agitation he caused me became almost constant. And in the end he did not appear alone, but I saw at the same time other dead men whom I had treated very badly, and women whom I had seduced. They all reproached me ceaselessly and gave me no peace, to such an extent that I could neither sleep nor eat nor do anything else. My strength grew utterly exhausted, and my skin stuck to my bones. All the efforts of skilled physicians were of no avail at all. I went abroad for a cure, but after trying it for six months, I was not benefited in the slightest degree, and those torturing apparitions grew steadily worse111 and worse. I was brought home again more dead than alive. I went through the horrors and tortures of Hell in fullest measure. I had proof then that Hell exists, and I knew what it meant!

“While I was in this wretched condition I recognised my own wrong-doing. I repented and made my confession. I gave all my serfs their freedom, and took a vow to afflict myself for the rest of my days with as toilsome a life as possible, and to disguise myself as a beggar. I wanted, because of all my sins, to become the humblest servant of people of the very lowest station in life. No sooner had I resolutely come to this decision than those disturbing visions of mine ceased. I felt such comfort and happiness from having made my peace with God that I cannot adequately describe it. But just as I had been through Hell before, so now I experienced Paradise, and learned what that meant also, and how the Kingdom of God is revealed in our hearts. I soon got perfectly well again and carried out my intention, leaving my native land secretly, furnished with a discharged soldier’s passport. And now for the last fifteen years I have been wandering about the whole of Siberia. Sometimes I hire myself out to the peasants for such work as I can do. Sometimes I find sustenance by begging in the Name of Christ. Ah, what blessedness and what happiness and what peace of mind I enjoy in the midst of all these privations! It can be felt to the full only by112 one who by the mercy of the Great Intercessor has been brought out of Hell into Paradise.”

“When he came to the end of his story he handed me the will to forward to his son, and on the following day he died. And I have a copy of that will in a wallet lying on my Bible. If you would like to read it I will get it for you now.... Here you are.”

“I unfolded it and read thus: ‘In the Name of God the glorious Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

“My dearest Son,

‘It is fifteen years now since you saw your father. But though you have had no news of him, he has from time to time found means to hear of you, and cherished a father’s love for you. That love impels him to send you these few lines from his deathbed. May they be a life-long lesson to you!

‘You know how I suffered for my careless and thoughtless life; but you do not know how I have been blessed in my unknown pilgrimage and filled with joy in the fruits of repentance.

‘I die at peace in the house of one who has been good to me, and to you also; for kindnesses showered upon the father must touch the feeling heart of a grateful son. Render to him my gratitude in any way you can.

‘In bestowing on you my paternal blessing, I adjure you to remember God and to guard your113...conscience. Be prudent, kindly and considerate; treat your inferiors as benevolently and amiably as you can; do not despise beggars and pilgrims, remembering that only in beggary and pilgrimage did your dying father find rest and peace for his tormented soul. I invoke God's blessing upon you, and calmly close my eyes in the hope of life eternal, through the mercy of the Great Intercessor for men, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Your Father X——."

Thus my host and I lay and chatted together; and in my turn I put a question to him. "I suppose you are not without worries and bothers, with this guest-house of yours? Of course there are quite a lot of our pilgrim brotherhood who take to the life because they have nothing to do, or from sheer laziness, and sometimes they do a little thieving on the road; I have seen it myself."

"There have not been many cases of that sort," was the answer. "We have for the most part always come across genuine pilgrims. And if we do get the other sort, we welcome them all the more kindly and try the harder to get them to stay with us. Through living with our good beggars and brothers in Christ they often become reformed characters and leave the guest-house humble and kindly folk. Why, there was a case of that sort not so long ago. He was a man belonging to the lower middle class of our town here, and he went so thoroughly to the bad that it came to the point of everybody driving him away from their doors with a stick and refusing to give him even a crust of bread. He was a drunken, quarrelsome bully, and what is more he stole. That was the sort of person he was when one day he came114 to us, very hungry, and asked for some bread and wine, for the latter of which he was extraordinarily eager. We gave him a friendly reception and said, "Stay with us and we will give you as much wine as you like, but only on this condition, that when you have been drinking, you go straight away and lie down and go to sleep. If you get in the slightest degree unruly or troublesome, not only shall we turn you out and never take you back again, but I shall report the matter to the police and have you sent off to a penal settlement as a suspected vagabond." He agreed to this and stopped with us. For a week or more he certainly did drink a great deal, to his heart's content. But because of his promise and because of his attachment to the wine, which he was afraid of being deprived of, he always lay down to sleep afterwards, or took himself off to the kitchen garden and lay down there quietly enough. When he was sober again the brothers of the guesthouse talked persuasively to him and gave him good advice about learning to control himself, if only little by little to begin with. So he gradually began to drink less, and in the end, some three months later, he became quite115 a temperate person. He has taken a situation somewhere now, and no longer leads a futile life of dependence on other people’s charity. The day before yesterday he came here to thank me.”

“What wisdom!” I thought, made perfect by the guidance of love! and aloud I said, “Blessed be God, who has so shown His grace in the household under your care.” After this talk we slept for an hour or an hour and a half till we heard the bells for Mattins. We got ready and went over to the church. On going in we at once saw the lady of the house, who had been there some time already with her children. We were all present at Mattins, and the Divine Liturgy went straight on afterwards. The head of the house with his little boy and I took our places within the altar,⁵⁵   Altar. In Orthodox churches, altar is the name of that part of the building which is known in the West as the sanctuary. What Westerners call the altar is in the East the throne or holy table. In Orthodox phraseology the throne stands in the altar. while his wife and the little girl stood near the altar window, where they could see the Elevation of the Holy Gifts. How earnestly they prayed as they knelt and shed tears of joy! And I wept to the full myself as I looked at the light on their faces. After the service was over, the gentle-folk, the priest, the servants and the beggars all went off together to the dining-room. There were some forty or so beggars, and cripples and sick folk and children. They all sat down at one and the same table, and how peaceful and silent it all was! I plucked up my courage, and said quietly to my host, “They read the lives of the saints during meals in”116 “monasteries. You might do the same. You’ve got the whole series of books.”

“Let us adopt the plan here, Mary,” said he, turning to his wife; “it will be most edifying. I will begin, and read at the first dinner-time, then you at the next, then the batyushka,⁶⁶   Batjushka. "Little Father," a familiar and affectionate form of address, applied usually to priests. and after that the rest of the brothers who know how to read, in turn.”

The priest began to talk and eat at the same time. “I like listening, but as for reading—well, with all respect I should like to be let off. You have no idea what a whirl I live in when I get home, worries and jobs of all sorts, first one thing has to be done and then another, what with a host of children and animals into the bargain—my whole day is filled up with things to do. There’s no time for reading or study. I’ve long ago forgotten even what I learned at the seminary.” I shuddered as I heard this, but our hostess, who was sitting near me, took my hand and said, “Batyushka talks like that because he is so humble, he always makes little of himself, but he is really a man of most kindly and saintly life. He has been a widower for the last twenty years, and is bringing up a whole family of grandchildren. For all that he holds services very frequently.” At these words there came into my mind the following saying of Nicetas Stethatus in The Philokalia. “The nature of things is judged by the inward disposition of the soul,” that is, a man gets his ideas about his neighbours from what he himself is. And he goes on to117 say, "He who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things: he does not distinguish the righteous man from the sinner, but loves them all equally and judges no man, as God causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust."

We fell silent again. Opposite me sat one of the beggars from the guesthouse who was quite blind. The master of the house was looking after him. He cut up his fish for him, gave him his spoon and poured out his soup.

I watched carefully and saw that this beggar always had his mouth open and that his tongue was moving all the time, as though it were trembling. Surely, thought I, he must be one of those who pray. And I went on watching. Right at the end of dinner an old woman was taken ill. It was a sharp attack, and she began to groan. Our host and his wife took her into their bedroom and laid her on their bed, where the lady stayed to look after her. Her husband meanwhile ordered his carriage and went off at a gallop to the town for a doctor. The priest went to fetch the Reserved Sacrament, and we all went our ways.

I felt as it were hungry for prayer, an urgent need to pour out my soul in prayer, and I had not been in quiet nor alone for forty-eight hours. I felt as though there were in my heart a sort of flood struggling to burst out and flow through all my118 limbs. To hold it back caused me severe, even if comforting, pain in the heart, a pain which needed to be calmed and satisfied in the silence of prayer. And now I saw why those who really practise interior self-acting prayer have fled from the company of men and hidden themselves in unknown places. I saw further why the venerable Iskhii called even the most spiritual and helpful talk mere idle chatter if there were too much of it, just as Ephrem the Syrian says, "Good speech is silver, but silence is pure gold."

As I thought all this over, I made my way to the guest-house, where everyone was resting after dinner. I went up into the attic, where I quietly rested and prayed.

When the beggars were about again I found the blind man and took him off to the kitchen-garden, where we sat down alone and began to talk. "Tell me, please," said I, "do you for the sake of your soul say the Prayer of Jesus?"

"I have said it without stopping for a long while."

"But what sort of feeling do you get from it?"

"Only this, that day or night I cannot live without the Prayer."

"How did God show it you? Tell me about it, tell me everything, dear brother."

"Well, it was like this. I belong to this district and used to earn my living by doing tailoring jobs. I travelled about different provinces going from village to village, and made clothes for the peasants. I119...happened to stay a fairly long time in one village in the house of a peasant for whose family I was making clothing. One day, a holy day it was, I saw three books lying near the ikons, and I asked who it was in the household that could read. “No one,” they answered, “those books were left us by an uncle; he knew how to read and write.” I picked up one of the books, opened it at random, and read, as I remember to this very hour, the following words, “Ceaseless prayer is to call upon the Name of God always, whether a man is conversing, or sitting down, or walking, or making something, or eating, whatever he may be doing, in all places and at all times, he ought to call upon God’s name.” Reading that started me thinking how simple that would be for me. I began to say the prayer in a whisper while I was sewing, and I liked it. People living in the same house with me noticed it, and began to make fun of me. “Are you a wizard or what?” they asked, “going on whispering all the time?” or “What are you muttering charms about?” So to hide what I was doing I gave up moving my lips and went on saying the Prayer with my tongue only. In the end I got so used to the Prayer that my tongue went on saying it by itself day and night, and I liked it. I went about like that for a long while, and then all of a sudden I became quite blind. Almost everyone in our family gets “dark water” in the eyes. So, because I was so poor, our people got me into the120

almshouse at Tobolsk, which is the capital of our province. I am on my way there now, only the gentry have kept me here because they want to give me a cart as far as Tobolsk.

“What was the name of the book you read? Wasn’t it called The Philokalia?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t even look at the title page.”

I fetched my Philokalia and looked out in part 4 those very words of the Patriarch Callistus which he had said by heart, and I read them to him.

“Why, those are the very same words!” cried the blind man. “How splendid! Go on reading, brother.”

When I got to the lines, “One ought to pray with the heart,” he began to ply me with questions. “What does that mean? How is that done?”

I told him that full teaching on praying with the heart was given in this same book, The Philokalia. He begged me eagerly to read the whole thing to him.

“This is what we will do,” said I. “When are you starting for Tobolsk?”

“Straight away,” he answered.

“Very well then, I am also going to take the road again to-morrow. We will go together and I will read it all to you, all about praying with the heart, and I will show you how to find where your heart is, and to enter it.”

“And what about the cart?” he asked. 121

"What does the cart matter! We know how far it is to Tobolsk, a mere hundred miles. We will take it easy, and think how nice it will be going along, just we two together alone, talking and reading about the Prayer as we go." And so it was agreed.

In the evening our host came himself to call us all to supper, and after the meal he told him that the blind man and I were taking the road together, and that we did not need a cart, so as to be able to read The Philokalia more easily. Hearing this he said, "I also liked The Philokalia very much, and I have already written a letter and got the money ready to send to Petersburg when I go into court to-morrow, so as to get a copy sent me by return of post."

So we set off on our way next morning, after thanking them very warmly for their great love and kindness. Both of them came with us for more than half a mile from their house. And so we bade each other good-bye.

We went on, the blind man and I, by easy stages, doing from six to ten miles a day. All the rest of the time we spent sitting down in lonely places and reading The Philokalia. I read him the whole part about praying with the heart, in the order which my departed starets had shown me, i.e., beginning with the writings of Nicephorus the Monk, Gregory of Sinai, and so on. How eagerly and closely he listened to it all, and what happiness and joy it brought him! Then he began to put such questions to me about122 prayer as my mind was not equal to finding answers to. When we had read what we needed from The Philokalia he eagerly begged me actually to show him the way the mind finds the heart, how to bring the Divine Name of Jesus Christ into it, and how to find the joy of praying inwardly with the heart. And I told him all about it thus, "Now you, as a blind man, can see nothing. Yet as a matter of fact you can imagine with your mind and picture to yourself what you have seen in time past, such as a man or some object or other, or one of your own limbs. For instance, can you not picture your hand or your foot as clearly as if you were looking at it, can you not turn your eyes to it and fix them upon it, blind as they are?"

"Yes, I can," he answered.

"Then picture to yourself your heart in just the same way, turn your eyes to it just as though you were looking at it through your breast, and picture it as clearly as you can. And with your ears listen closely to its beating, beat by beat. When you have got into the way of doing this, begin to fit the words of the Prayer to the beats of the heart one after the other, looking at it at all the time. Thus, with the first beat, say or think 'Lord,' with the second, 'Jesus,' with the third, 'Christ,' with the fourth, 'have mercy,' and with the fifth 'on me.' And do it over and over again. This will come easily to you, for you already know the groundwork and the first123 part of praying with the heart. Afterwards, when you have grown used to what I have just told you about, you must begin bringing the whole Prayer of Jesus into and out of your heart in time with your breathing, as the Fathers taught. Thus, as you draw your breath in, say, or imagine yourself saying, "Lord Jesus Christ," and as you breathe out again, "have mercy on me." Do this as often and as much as you can, and in a short space of time you will feel a slight and not unpleasant pain in your heart, followed by a warmth. Thus by God's help you will get the joy of self-acting inward prayer of the heart. But then, whatever you do, be on your guard against imagination and any sort of visions. Don't accept any of them whatever, for the holy Fathers lay down most strongly that inward prayer should be kept free from visions, lest one fall into temptation.

The blind man listened closely to all this, and began eagerly to do with his heart what I had shown him, and he spent a long while at it, especially during the night-time at our halting places. In about five days' time he began to feel the warmth very much, as well as a happiness beyond words in his heart, and a great wish to devote himself unceasingly to this Prayer which stirred up in him a love of Jesus Christ.

From time to time he saw a light, though he could make out no objects in it. And sometimes, when he made the entrance into his heart, it seemed to him as though a flame, as of a lighted candle, blazed up124 strongly and happily in his heart, and rushing outwards through his throat flooded him with light; and in the light of this flame he could see even far-off things; and this did indeed happen once. We were walking through a forest, and he was silent, wholly given up to the Prayer. Suddenly he said to me, "What a pity! The church is already on fire; there, the belfry has fallen."

"Stop this vain dreaming," I answered, "it is a temptation to you. You must put all such fancies aside at once. How can you possibly see what is happening in the town? We are still seven or eight miles away from it."

He obeyed me and went on with his Prayer in silence. Towards evening we came to the town, and there as a matter of fact I saw several burnt houses and a fallen belfry, which had been built with ties of timber, and people crowding around and wondering how it was that the belfry had crushed no one in its fall. As I worked it out, the misfortune had happened at the very same time as the blind man spoke to me about it. And he began to talk to me on the matter. "You told me," said he, "that this vision of mine was vain, but here you see things really are as I saw them. How can I fail to thank and to love the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shows His grace even to sinners and the blind and the foolish! And I thank you also for teaching me the work of the heart." 125

"Love Jesus Christ," said I, "and thank Him all you will. But beware of taking your visions for direct revelations of grace. For these things may often happen quite naturally in the order of things. The human soul is not bound by place and matter. It can see even in the darkness, and what happens a long way off, as well as things near at hand. Only we do not give force and scope to this spiritual power. We crush it beneath the yoke of our passions or get it mixed up with our haphazard thoughts and ideas. But when we concentrate within ourselves, when we draw away from everything around us and become more subtle and refined in mind, then the soul comes into its own and works to its fullest power. So what happened was natural enough. I have heard my departed starets say that there are people (even such as are not given to prayer, but who have this sort of power, or gain it during sickness), who see light even in the darkest of rooms, as though it streamed from every article in it, and see things by it; who see their doubles and enter into the thoughts of other people. But what does come direct from the grace of God in the case of the prayer of the heart, is so full of sweetness and delight that no tongue can tell of it, nor can it be likened to anything material, it is beyond compare. Every feeling is base compared with the sweet knowledge of grace in the heart."

My blind friend listened eagerly to this, and126became still more humble. The prayer grew more and more in his heart, and delighted him beyond words. I rejoiced at this with all my soul, and thanked God from my heart that He had let me see so blessed a servant of His. We got to Tobolsk at last. I took him to the almshouse, and leaving him there with a loving farewell, I went on my own way. I went along without hurrying for about a month with a deep sense of the way in which good lives teach us and spur us on to copy them. I read the Philokalia a great deal, and there made sure of everything I had told the blind man of prayer. His example kindled in me zeal and thankfulness and love for God. The Prayer of my heart gave me such consolation that I felt there was no happier person on earth than I, and I doubted if there could be greater and fuller happiness in the kingdom of Heaven. Not only did I feel this in my own soul, but the whole outside world also seemed to me full of charm and delight. Everything drew me to love and thank God; people, trees, plants, animals. I saw them all as my kinsfolk, I found on all of them the magic of the Name of Jesus. Sometimes I felt as light as though I had no body and was floating happily through the air instead of walking. Sometimes when I withdrew into myself I saw clearly all my internal organs, and was filled with wonder at the wisdom with which the human body is made. Some127

times I felt as joyful as if I had been made Tsar. And at such times of happiness, I wished that God would let death come to me quickly, and let me pour out my heart in thankfulness at His feet in the world of spirits.

It would seem that somehow I took too great a joy in these feelings, or perhaps it was just allowed by God's will, but for some time I felt a sort of quaking and fear in my heart. Was there, I wondered, some new misfortune or trouble coming upon me like what happened after I met the girl again to whom I taught the Prayer of Jesus in the chapel? A cloud of such thoughts came down upon me, and I remembered the words of the venerable John Karpathisky, who says that "The master will often submit to humiliation and endure disaster and temptation for the sake of those who have profited by him spiritually." I fought against the gloomy thoughts, and prayed with more earnestness than ever. The Prayer quite put them to flight, and taking heart again I said, "God's will be done, I am ready to suffer whatever Jesus Christ sends me for my wickedness and pride. And those to whom I had lately shown the secret of entry into the heart and interior prayer had even before their meeting with me been made ready by the direct and secret teaching of God."

Calmed by these thoughts, I went on my way again filled with consolation, having the Prayer with me and happier even than I had been before. It rained128 for a couple of days, and the road was so muddy that I could hardly drag my feet out of the mire. I was walking across the steppe, and in ten miles or so I did not find a single dwelling. At last towards nightfall I came upon one house standing by itself right on the road. Glad I was to see it, and I thought I would ask for a rest and a night's lodging here and see what God sent for the morrow; perhaps the weather would get better. As I drew near I saw a tipsy old man in a soldier's cloak sitting on the zavalina. I greeted him, saying, "Could I perhaps ask someone to give me a night's lodging here?" "Who else could give it you but me?" he shouted. "I'm master here. This is a post-house and I am in charge of it."

"Then will you allow me, sir, to spend the night at your house?"

"Have you got a passport? Give some legal account of yourself."

I handed him my passport, and, holding it in his hands, he again asked, "Where is your passport?"

"You have it in your hands," I answered.

"Well, come into the house," said he.

He put his spectacles on, read the passport through, and said, "All right, that's all in order. Stay the night. I'm a good fellow really. Have a drink."

I129 "I don't drink," I answered, "and never have."

"Well, please yourself, I don't care. At any rate have supper with us."

They sat down to table, he and the cook, a young woman who also had been drinking rather freely, and asked me to sit down with them. They quarrelled all through supper, hurling reproaches at each other, and in the end came to blows. The man went off into the passage and to his bed in a lumber-room, while the cook began to tidy up and wash up the cups and spoons, all the while going on with the abuse of her master. I took a seat, thinking it would be some time before she quieted down. So I asked her where I could sleep, for I was very tired from my journey. "I will make you up a bed," she answered. And she placed another bench against the one under the front window, spread a felt blanket over them, and gave me a pillow. I lay down and shut my eyes as though asleep. For a long while yet the cook bustled about, but at last she tidied up, put out the fire, and was coming over towards me. Suddenly the whole window, which was in a corner at the front of the house, frame, glass and splinters of wood, flew into shivers which came showering down with a frightful crash. The whole house shook, and from outside the window came a sickening groan, and shouts and the noise of struggling. The woman sprang back in terror into the middle of the130 room and fell in a heap on the floor. I jumped up with my wits all astray, thinking the earth had opened under my feet. And the next thing is I see two drivers carrying a man into the house so covered with blood that you could not even see his face. And this added still more to my horror. He was a king's messenger who had galloped here to change horses. His driver had not taken the turn into the gateway properly, the carriage pole stove in the window, and as there was a ditch in front of the house the carriage overturned and the king's messenger was thrown out, cutting his head badly on a sharp post.

He asked for some water and wine to bathe his wound. Then he drank a glass, and cried, "Horses!"

I went up to him and said, "Surely, sir, you won't travel any further with a wound like that?"

"A king's messenger has no time to be ill," he answered, and galloped off.

The drivers dragged the senseless woman into a corner near the stove, and covered her with a rug, saying, "She was badly scared. She'll come round all right." The master of the house had another glass, and went back to bed, and I was left alone. Very soon the woman got up again and began walking across the room from corner to corner in a witless sort of way, and in the end she went out of the house. I felt as though the shock had taken all the strength131 out of me, and after saying my prayers I dropped asleep for a while before dawn.

In the morning I took leave of the old man and set off again, and as I walked I sent up my Prayer with faith and trust and thanks to the Father of all blessing and consolation Who had saved me when I was in such great danger.

Some six years after this happened I was passing a convent and went into the church to pray. The kindly abbess welcomed me in her room after the Liturgy, and had tea served. Suddenly some unexpected guests came to see her, and she went to them, leaving me with some of the nuns who waited on her in her cell. One of them, who was pouring out tea, and was clearly a humble soul, made me curious enough to ask whether she had been in the convent long.

“Five years,” she answered. “I was out of my mind when they brought me here, and it was here that God had mercy on me. The mother abbess kept me to wait on her in her cell and led me to take the veil.”

“How came you to go out of your mind?” I asked.

“It was fright,” said she. “I used to work at a post-house and late one night some horses stove in a window. I was so terrified that it drove me out of my mind. For a whole year my relations took me from one shrine to another, but it was only here that132 I got cured.” When I heard this I rejoiced in spirit, and praised God, Who so wisely orders all things for the best.

“I had a great many other experiences,” I said, speaking to my spiritual father; “but I should want three whole days and nights to tell you everything as it happened. Still there is one other thing I will tell you about.”

One clear summer’s day I noticed a cemetery near the road, and what they call a pogost, i.e., a church with some houses for those who minister in it. The bells were ringing for the Liturgy, and I made my way towards it. People who lived round about were going the same way, and some of them, before they got as far as the church, were sitting on the grass. Seeing me hurrying along, they said to me, “Don’t hurry, you’ll have plenty of time for standing about when the service begins. Services take a very long while here: our priest is in bad health and goes very slowly.”

The service did, in fact, last a very long while. The priest was a young man, but very thin and pale. He celebrated very slowly indeed, but with great devotion and at the end of the Liturgy he preached with much feeling a beautiful and simple sermon on how to grow in love for God. The priest asked me into his house and to stay to dinner.

During the meal I said, “How reverently and slowly you celebrate, Father!” 133

"Yes," he answered, "but my parishioners do not like it, and they grumble. Still, there's nothing to be done about it. I like to meditate on each prayer and rejoice in it before I say it aloud. Without that interior appreciation and feeling, every word uttered is useless both to myself and to others. Everything centres in the interior life, and in attentive prayer! Yet how few concern themselves with the interior life," he went on. "It is because they feel no desire to cherish the spiritual inward light."

"And how is one to reach that?" I asked. "It would seem to be very difficult."

"Not at all," was the reply. "To attain spiritual enlightenment and become a man of recollected interior life, you should take some one text or other of Holy Scripture and for as long a period as possible concentrate on that alone all your power of attention and meditation; then the light of understanding will be revealed to you. You must proceed in the same way about prayer. If you want it to be pure, right and enjoyable, you must choose some short prayer, consisting of few but forcible words, and repeat it frequently and for a long while. Then you will find delight in prayer."

This teaching of the priest pleased me very much. How practical and simple it was, and yet at the same time how deep and how wise. I gave thanks to God, in my thoughts, for showing me such a true pastor of his church. 134

When the meal was over, he said to me, "You have a sleep after dinner while I read the Bible and prepare my sermon for to-morrow." So I went into the kitchen. There was no one there except a very old woman sitting crouched in a corner coughing. I sat down under a small window, took The Philokalia out of my knapsack, and began to read quietly to myself. After a while I heard the old woman who was sitting in the corner ceaselessly whispering the Prayer of Jesus. It gave me great joy to hear the Lord's most holy Name spoken so often, and I said to her, "What a good thing it is, mother, that you are always saying the Prayer. It is a most Christian and most wholesome action."

"Yes," she replied. "The 'Lord have mercy' is the only thing I have to lean on in my old age."

"Have you made a habit of this prayer for long?"

"Since I was quite young; yes, and I couldn't live without it, for the Jesus Prayer saved me from ruin and death."

"How? Please tell me about it, for the glory of God and in praise of the blessed power of the Prayer of Jesus."

I put The Philokalia away in my knapsack and took a seat nearer to her, and she began her story.

"I used to be a young and pretty girl. My parents gave me in marriage, and the very day before the wedding, my bridegroom came to see us. Suddenly, before he had taken a dozen steps, he dropped down135 and died, without a single gasp. This frightened me so that I utterly refused to marry at all. I made up my mind to live unmarried, to go on pilgrimage to the shrines, and pray at them. However, I was afraid to travel all by myself, young as I was, I feared evil people might molest me. But an old woman-pilgrim whom I knew taught me wherever my road took me always to say the Jesus Prayer without stopping, and told me for certain that if I did so no misfortune of any sort could happen to me on my way. I proved the truth of this, for I walked even to far-off shrines and never came to any harm. My parents gave me the money for my journeys. As I grew old I lost my health, and now the priest here out of the kindness of his heart gives me board and lodging."

I was overjoyed to hear this, and I knew not how to thank God for this day, in which I had been taught so much by examples of spiritual life. Then, asking the kindly and devout priest for his blessing, I set off again on my way rejoicing.

Then again, not so long ago, as I was making my way here through the Kazan Government, I had a chance of learning how the power of prayer in the Name of Jesus Christ is shown clearly and strongly even in those who use it without a will to do so, and how saying the Prayer often and for a long time is a sure and rapid way to gaining its blessed fruits. It happened that I was to pass the night at a Tartar village. On reaching it I saw a Russian carriage136 and coachman outside the window of one of the huts. The horses were being fed near by. I was glad to see all this, and made up my mind to ask for a night's lodging at the same place, thinking that I should at least spend the night with Christians.⁷⁷   The Tartars, of course, being Moslems. When I came up to them I asked the coachman where he was going, and he answered that his master was going from Kazan to the Crimea. While I was talking with the coachman his master pulled open the carriage curtains from inside, looked out and saw me. Then he said, "I shall stay the night here, too, but I have not gone into the hut, Tartar houses are so uncomfortable. I have decided to spend the night in the carriage." Then he got out and as it was a fine evening, we strolled about for a while and talked. He asked me a lot of questions and talked about himself also, and this is what he told me. "Until I was sixty-five I was a captain in the navy, but as I grew old I became the victim of gout—an incurable disease. So I retired from the service and lived, almost constantly ill, on a farm of my wife's in the Crimea. She was an impulsive woman of a volatile disposition, and a great card-player. She found it boring living with a sick man, and left me, going off to our daughter in Kazan, who happened to be married to a civil servant there. My wife laid hands on all she could, and even took the servants with her, leaving me with nobody but an eight-year-old boy, my godson. So I lived alone for about three years. The boy who137

...served me was a sharp little fellow, and capable of doing all the household work. He did my room, heated the stove, cooked the gruel and got the samovar ready.⁸⁸   Samovar. A sort of urn heated with charcoal to supply hot water for tea. But at the same time he was extraordinarily mischievous and full of spirits. He was incessantly rushing about and banging and shouting, and playing and up to all sorts of tricks, so that he disturbed me exceedingly. And I, being ill and bored, liked to read spiritual books all the time. I had one splendid book by Gregory Palamas, on the Prayer of Jesus. I read it almost continuously, and I used to say the Prayer to some extent. But the boy hindered me, and no threats and no punishment restrained him from indulging in his pranks. At last I hit upon the following method. I made him sit on a bench in my room with me, and bade him say the Prayer of Jesus without stopping. At first this was extraordinarily distasteful to him, and he tried all sorts of ways to avoid it, and often fell silent. In order to make him do my bidding, I kept a cane beside me. When he said the Prayer I quietly read my book, or listened to how he was saying it. But let him stop for a moment, and I showed him the cane; then he got frightened and took to the Prayer again. I found this very peaceful, and quiet reigned in the house. After a while I noticed that now there was no need of the cane; the boy began to do my bidding quite willingly and eagerly. Further I observed a complete change in his mischievous138 character, he became quiet and taciturn and performed his household tasks better than before. I was glad of this, and began to allow him more freedom. And what was the result? Well, in the end he got so accustomed to the Prayer that he was saying it almost the whole time, whatever he was doing, and without any compulsion from me at all. When I asked him about it, he answered that he felt an insuperable desire to be saying the Prayer always.

"And what are your feelings while doing so?" I asked him.

"Nothing," said he, "only I feel that it's nice to be saying it."

"How do you mean—nice?"

"I don't know how to put it exactly."

"Makes you feel cheerful, do you mean?"

"Yes, cheerful."

He was twelve years old when the Crimean War broke out, and I went to stay with my daughter at Kazan, taking him with me. Here he lived in the kitchen with the other servants, and this bored him very much. He would come to me with complaints that the others, playing and joking among themselves, bothered him also, and laughed at him and so prevented him saying his Prayer. In the end, after about three months, he came to me and said, "I am going home, I'm unbearably sick of this place and all this noise."

"How can you go alone for such a distance and139"⁹⁹   Samovar. A sort of urn heated with charcoal to supply hot water for tea.: [unclear]

...in winter, too?' said I. 'Wait, and when I go I'll take you with me.' Next day my boy had vanished.

'We sent everywhere to look for him, but nowhere could he be found. In the end I got a letter from the Crimea, from the people who were on our farm, saying that the boy had been found dead in my empty house on the 4th of April, which was Easter Monday. He was lying peacefully on the floor of my room with his hands folded on his breast, and in that same thin frockcoat that he always went about my house in, and which he was wearing when he went away. And so they buried him in my garden.

'When I heard this news I was absolutely amazed. How had the child reached the farm so quickly? He started on Feb. 26th, and he was found on April 4th. Even with God's help you want horses to cover 2,000 miles in a month! Why, it is nearly seventy miles a day! And in thin clothes, without a passport and without a farthing in his pocket into the bargain! Even supposing that someone may have given him a lift on the way, still that in itself would be a mark of God's special providence and care for him. That boy of mine, mark you, enjoyed the fruits of prayer,' concluded this gentleman, 'and here am I, an old man, still not as far on as he.'

Later on I said to him, 'It is a splendid book, sir, 140 the one by Gregory Palamas, which you said you liked reading. I know it. But it treats rather of the oral Prayer of Jesus. You should read a book called The Philokalia. There you will find a full and complete study of how to reach the spiritual Prayer of Jesus in the mind and heart also, and taste the sweet fruit of it.' At the same time I showed him my Philokalia. I saw that he was pleased to have this advice of mine, and he promised that he would get a copy for himself. And in my own mind I dwelt upon the wonderful ways in which the power of God is shown in this Prayer. What wisdom and teaching there was in the story I had just heard! The cane taught the Prayer to the boy, and what is more, as a means of consolation it became a help to him. Are not our own sorrows and trials which we meet with on the road of prayer in the same way the rod in God's hand? Why then are we so frightened and troubled when our heavenly Father in the fullness of His boundless love lets us see them, and when these rods teach us to be more earnest in learning to pray, and lead us on to consolation which is beyond words?

When I came to the end of the things I had to tell, I said to my spiritual father: 'Forgive me, in God's name. I have already chattered far too much. And the holy Fathers call even spiritual talk mere babble if it lasts too long. It is time I went to find my fellow-traveller to Jerusalem. Pray for me, a 141 "miserable sinner, that of His great mercy God may bless my journey."

"With all my heart I wish it, dear brother in the Lord," he replied. "May the all-loving Grace of God shed its light on your path, and go with you, as the Angel Raphael went with Tobias!" 142