A raven brought the aged brothers bread to eat and the hours glided swiftly away.  Anthony returned to get a cloak which Athanasius had given him in which to wrap the body of Paul.  So eager was he to behold again his newly-found friend that he set out without even a morsel of bread, thirsting to see him.  But when yet three days’ journey from the cave he saw Paul on high among the angels.  Weeping, he trudged on his way.  On entering the cave he saw the lifeless body kneeling, with head erect and hands uplifted.  He tenderly wrapped the body in the cloak and began to lament that he had no implements to dig a grave.  But Providence sent two lions from the recesses of the mountain that came rushing with flying manes.  Roaring, as if they too mourned, they pawed the earth and thus the grave was dug.  Anthony, bending his aged shoulders beneath the burden of the saint’s body, laid it lovingly in the grave and departed.

Jerome closes this account by challenging those who do not know the extent of their possessions,—­who adorn their homes with marble and who string house to house,—­to say what this old man in his nakedness ever lacked.  “Your drinking vessels are of precious stones; he satisfied his thirst with the hollow of his hand.  Your tunics are wrought of gold; he had not the raiment of your meanest slave.  But on the other hand, poor as he was, Paradise is open to him; you, with all your gold, will be received into Gehenna.  He, though naked, yet kept the robe of Christ; you, clad in your silks, have lost the vesture of Christ.  Paul lies covered with worthless dust, but will rise again to glory; over you are raised costly tombs, but both you and your wealth are doomed to burning.  I beseech you, reader, whoever you may be, to remember Jerome the sinner.  He, if God would give him his choice, would sooner take Paul’s tunics with his merits, than the purple of kings with their punishment.”

Such was the story circulated among rich and poor, appealing with wondrous force to the hearts of men in those wretched years.

What was the effect upon the mind of the thoughtful?  If he believed such teaching, weary of the wickedness of the age, and moved by his noblest sentiments, he sold his tunics wrought of gold and fled from his palaces of marble to the desert solitudes.

But the monastic story that most strongly impressed the age now under consideration, was the biography of Anthony, “the patriarch of monks” and virtual founder of Christian monasticism.  It was said to have been written by Athanasius, the famous defender of orthodoxy and Archbishop of Alexandria; yet some authorities reject his authorship.  It exerted a power over the minds of men beyond all human estimate.  It scattered the seeds of asceticism wherever it was read.  Traces of its influence are found all over the Roman empire, in Egypt, Asia Minor, Palestine, Italy and Gaul.  Knowing the character of Athanasius, we may rest assured that he sincerely believed all he really recorded (it is much interpolated) of the strange life of Anthony, and, true or false, thousands of others believed in him and in his story.  Augustine, the great theologian of immortal fame, acknowledged that this book was one of the influences that led to his conversion, and Jerome, whose life I will review later, was mightily swayed by it.