o.'

'None to the penitent, burdened with the guilt of many sins.'

'Recollect what the blessed Anthony used to say--"Trust not in thine own
righteousness, and regret not that which is past."'

'I do neither, Pambo.'

'Do not be too sure of that. Is it not because thou art still trusting
in thyself, that thou dost regret the past, which shows thee that thou
art not that which thou wouldst gladly pride thyself on being?'

'Pambo, my friend,' said Arsenius solemnly, 'I will tell thee all. My
sins are not yet past; for Honorius, my pupil, still lives, and in him
lives the weakness and the misery of Rome. My sins past? If they are,
why do I see rising before me, night after night, that train of accusing
spectres, ghosts of men slain in battle, widows and orphans, virgins of
the Lord shrieking in the grasp of barbarians, who stand by my bedside
and cry, "Hadst thou done thy duty, we had not been thus! Where is that
imperial charge which God committed to thee?"'.... And the old man hid
his face in his hands and wept bitterly.

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,
w