yourselves so much trouble to see a fool ? "• They explained, perhaps ironically, that they took him rather for a wise man. He replied : " If you take me for a fool, your labor is lost ; but if I am a wise man, you should imitate me, and be Christians, as I am." At another time, when taunted with his ignorance, he asked: "Which is older and better, mind or learning?" The mind, was the answer. "Then," said the hermit, "the mind can do without learning." "My book," he remarked on a similar occasion, " is the whole creation, which lies open be- fore me, and in which I can read the word of God as often as I will." The blind church-teacher, Didymus, whom he met in Alexandria, he comforted with the words : " Trouble not thy- self for the loss of the outward eye, with which even flies see ; but rejoice in the possession of the spiritual eye, with which also angels behold the face of God, and receive his light." ' Even the emperor Constantino, with his sons, wrote to him as a spiritual father, and begged an answer from him. The her- mit at first would not so much as receive the letter, since, in any case, being unable to write, he could not answer it, and cared as little for the great of this world as Diogenes for Alex- ander. When told that the emperor was a Christian, he dic- tated the answer : " Happy thou, that thou worshippest Christ. Be not proud of thy earthly power. Think of the future judg- ment, and know that Christ is the only true and eternal king. Practise justice and love for men, and care for the poor." To ' This is not told indeed by Athanasius, but by Rufinus, Jerome, and Socrates (Hist. Eccl. iv. 25). Comp. Tillemout, 1. c. p. 129. 1 i § 35. PAUL OF THEBES AND ST. ANTHONY. 187 his disciples lie said on this occasion : " Wonder not that the emjieroi" writes to me, for he is a man. Wonder much more that God has written the law for man, and has spoken to us by his own Son." During the last years of his life the patriarch of monasti- cisni withdrew as much as possible from the sight of visitors, but allowed two disciples to live with him, and to take care of him in his intirm old age. When he felt his end approaching, he commanded them not to embalm his body, according to the Egyptian custom, but to bury it in the earth, and to keep the spot of his interment secret. One of his two -sheejiskins he , jyS^*^ bequeathed to the bishop Serapion, the other, with his under- \ clothing, to Athanasius, who had once given it to him new, and now received it back worn out. What became of the robe woven from palm leaves, which, according to Jerome,