h a deep breath, "you know not what joys you would
sacrifice for the sake of worthless things. Long ere the Lord, calls
the pious man to Heaven, the pious has brought Heaven down to earth in
himself."

Hermas well understood what the anchorite meant, for his father often
for hours at a time gazed up into Heaven in prayer, neither seeing nor
hearing what was going on around him, and was wont to relate to his son,
when he awoke from his ecstatic vision, that he had seen the Lord or
heard the angel-choir.

He himself had never succeeded in bringing himself into such a state,
although Stephanus had often compelled him to remain on his knees
praying with him for many interminable hours. It often happened that
the old man's feeble flame of life had threatened to become altogether
extinct after these deeply soul-stirring exercises, and Hermas would
gladly have forbidden him giving himself up to such hurtful emotions,
for he loved his father; but they were looked upon as special
manifestations of grace, and how should a son dare to express his
aversion to such peculiarly sacred acts? But to Paulus and in his
present mood he found courage to speak out.

"I have sure hope of Paradise," he said, "but it will be first opened
to us after death. The Christian should be patient; why can you not wait
for Heaven till the Saviour calls you, instead of desiring to enjoy its
pleasures here on earth? This first and that after! Why Should God
have bestowed on us the gifts of the flesh if not that we may use them?
Beauty and strength are not empty trifles, and none but a fool gives
noble gifts to another, only in order to throw them away."

Paulus gazed in astonishment at the youth, who up to this moment had
always unresistingly obeyed his father and him, and he shook his head as
he answered,

"So think the children of this world who stand far from the Most High.
In the image of God are we made no doubt, but what child would kiss the
image of his father, when the father offers him his own living lips?"

Paulus had meant to say 'mother' instead of 'father,' but he remembered
in time that Hermas had early lost the happiness of caressing a mother,
and he had hastily amended the phrase. He was one of those to whom it is
so painful to hurt another, that they never touch a wounded soul unless
to heal it, divining the seat of even the most hidden pain.

He was accustomed to speak but little, but now he went on eagerly:

"By so much as God i