Anthony was born about 251 A.D., in Upper Egypt, of wealthy and noble parentage.  He was a pious child, an obedient son, and a lover of solitude and books.  His parents died when he was about twenty years old, leaving to his care their home and his little sister.  One day, as he entered the church, meditating on the poverty of Christ, a theme much reflected upon in those days, he heard these words read from the pulpit, “If thou wouldst be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me.”  As if the call came straight from heaven to his own soul, he left the church at once and made over his farm to the people of the village.  He sold his personal possessions for a large sum, and distributed the proceeds among the poor, reserving a little for his sister.  Still he was unsatisfied.  Entering the church on another occasion, he heard our Lord saying in the gospel, “Take no thought for the morrow.”  The clouds cleared away.  His anxious search for truth and duty was at an end.  He went out and gave away the remnant of his belongings.  Placing his sister in a convent, the existence of which is to be noted, he fled to the desert.  Then follows a striking statement, “For monasteries were not common in Egypt, nor had any monk at all known the great desert; but every one who wished to devote himself to his own spiritual welfare performed his exercise alone, not far from the village.”

Laboring with his hands, recalling texts of Scripture, praying whole sleepless nights, fasting for several days at a time, visiting his fellow saints, fighting demons, so passed the long years away.  He slept on a small rush mat, more often on the bare ground.  Forgetting past austerities, he was ever on the search for some new torture and pressing forward to new and strange experiences.  He changed his habitation from time to time.  Now he lived in a tomb, in company with the silent dead; then for twenty years in a deserted castle, full of reptiles, never going out and rarely seeing any one.  From each saint he learned some fresh mode of spiritual training, observing his practice for future imitation and studying the charms of his Christian character that he might reproduce them in his own life; thus he would return richly laden to his cell.

But in all these struggles Anthony had one foe—­the arch-enemy of all good.  He suggests impure thoughts, but the saint repels them by prayer; he incites to passion, but the hero resists the fiend with fastings and faith.  Once the dragon, foiled in his attempt to overcome Anthony, gnashed his teeth, and coming out of his body, lay at his feet in the shape of a little black boy.  But the hermit was not beguiled into carelessness by this victory.  He resolved to chastise himself more severely.  So he retired to the tombs of the dead.  One dark night a crowd of demons flogged the saint until he fell to the ground speechless with torture.  Some friends found him the next day, and thinking that he was dead, carried