"Here, your Reverence, the ship has to stop. If you wish to go there by all means, you will please go from here in a boat, and we will wait here at anchor."

The hawsers were let out, the anchor dropped, the sails furled, and the vessel jerked and shook. A boat was lowered, the oarsmen jumped into it, and the bishop went down a ladder. He sat down on a bench in the boat, and the oarsmen pulled at the oars and rowed toward the island. They came near to the sh.o.r.e and could see clearly three men standing there: a tall man, all naked, with a mat about his loins; the next in size, in a tattered caftan; and the stooping old man, in an old ca.s.sock. There they stood holding each other's hands.

The oarsmen rowed up to the sh.o.r.e and caught their hook in it. The bishop stepped ash.o.r.e.

The old men bowed to him. He blessed them, and they bowed lower still.

Then the bishop began to talk to them:

"I have heard," he said, "that you are here, hermits of G.o.d, saving your souls and praying to Christ our G.o.d for men. I, an unworthy servant of Christ, have been called here by the mercy of G.o.d to tend His flock, and so I wanted to see you, the servants of G.o.d, and to give you some instruction, if I can do so."

The hermits kept silence, and smiled, and looked at one another.

"Tell me, how do you save yourselves and serve G.o.d?" asked the bishop.

The middle-sized hermit heaved a sigh and looked at the older, the stooping hermit. And the stooping hermit smiled, and said:

"We do not know, O servant of G.o.d, how to serve G.o.d. We only support ourselves."

"How, then, do you pray to G.o.d?"

And the stooping hermit said:

"We pray as follows: There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!"

And the moment the stooping hermit had said that, all three of them raised their eyes to heaven, and all three said:

"There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!"

The bishop smiled, and said:

"You have heard that about the Holy Trinity, but you do not pray the proper way. I like you, hermits of G.o.d, and I see that you want to please G.o.d, but do not know how to serve Him. I will teach you, not according to my way, but from the Gospel will I teach you as G.o.d has commanded all men to pray to Him."

And the bishop began to explain to the hermits how G.o.d had revealed Himself to men: he explained to them about G.o.d the Father, and G.o.d the Son, and G.o.d the Holy Ghost, and said:

"G.o.d the Son came down upon earth to save men and taught them to pray as follows. Listen, and repeat after me."

And the bishop began to say, "Our Father." And one of the hermits repeated, "Our Father," and the second repeated, "Our Father," and the third repeated, "Our Father."

"Which art in heaven." The hermit repeated, "Which art in heaven." But the middle hermit got mixed in his words, and did not say it right; and the tall, naked hermit did not say it right: his moustache was all over his mouth, and he could not speak clearly; and the stooping, toothless hermit, too, lisped it indistinctly.

The bishop repeated it a second time, and the hermits repeated it after him. And the bishop sat down on a stone, and the hermits stood around him and looked into his mouth and repeated after him so long as he spoke. And the bishop worked with them all day; he repeated one word ten, and twenty, and a hundred times, and the hermits repeated after him. They blundered, and he corrected them, and made them repeat from the beginning.

The bishop did not leave the hermits until he taught them the whole Lord's prayer. They said it with him and by themselves. The middle-sized hermit was the first to learn it, and he repeated it all by himself. The bishop made him say it over and over again, and both the others said the prayer, too.

It was beginning to grow dark, and the moon rose from the sea, when the bishop got up to go back to the ship. The bishop bade the hermits good-bye, and they bowed to the ground before him. He raised each of them, and kissed them, and told them to pray as he had taught them, and entered the boat, and was rowed back to the ship.

And as the boat was rowed toward the ship, the bishop heard the hermits loudly repeating the Lord's prayer in three voices. The boat came nearer to the ship, and the voices of the hermits could no longer be heard, but in the moonlight they could be seen standing on the sh.o.r.e, in the spot where they had been left: the smallest of them was in the middle, the tallest on the right, and the middle-sized man on the left. The bishop reached the ship and climbed up to the deck. The anchors were weighed, the sails unfurled, and the wind blew and drove the ship, and on they sailed. The bishop went to the prow and sat down there and looked at the island. At first the hermits could be seen, then they disappeared from view, and only the island could be seen; then the island, too, disappeared, and only the sea glittered in the moonlight.

The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and everything grew quiet on the deck.

But the bishop did not feel like sleeping. He sat by himself at the prow and looked out to sea to where the island had disappeared, and thought of the good hermits. He thought of how glad they had been to learn the prayer, and thanked G.o.d for having taken him there to help the G.o.d's people,--to teach them the word of G.o.d.

The bishop was sitting and thinking and looking out to sea to where the island had disappeared. There was something unsteady in his eyes: now a light quivered in one place on the waves, and now in another. Suddenly he saw something white and shining in the moonlight,--either a bird, a gull, or a white sail on a boat. The bishop watched it closely.

"A sailboat is following after us," he thought. "It will soon overtake us. It was far, far away, but now it is very near. It is evidently not a boat, for there seems to be no sail. Still it is flying behind us and coming up close to us."

The bishop could not make out what it was: a boat, no, it was not a boat; a bird, no, not a bird; a fish, no, not a fish! It was like a man, but too large for that, and then, how was a man to be in the middle of the ocean? The bishop got up and walked over to the helmsman.

"See there, what is it?"

"What is it, my friend? What is it?" asked the bishop, but he saw himself that those were the hermits running over the sea. Their beards shone white, and, as though the ship were standing still, they came up to it.

The helmsman looked around and was frightened. He dropped the helm, and called out in a loud voice:

"O Lord! The hermits are running after us on the sea as though it were dry land!"

The people heard him, and rushed to the helm. All saw the hermits running and holding each other's hands. Those at the ends waved their hands, asking the ship to be stopped. All three were running over the water as though it were dry land, without moving their feet.

Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits came abreast with the ship. They came up to the gunwale, raised their heads, and spoke in one voice:

"O servant of G.o.d, we have forgotten your lesson. So long as we repeated it, we remembered it; but when we stopped for an hour, one word leaped out, and then the rest scattered. We do not remember a thing, so teach us again."

The bishop made the sign of the cross, bent down to the hermits, and said:

"Even your prayer, hermits of G.o.d, reaches the Lord. It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinful men!"

And the bishop made a low obeisance to the hermits. And the hermits stopped, turned around, and walked back over the sea. And up to morning a light could be seen on the side where the hermits had departed.

NEGLECT THE FIRE

And You Cannot Put It Out

1885

NEGLECT THE FIRE

And You Cannot Put It Out

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?

Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants.