Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the GreatCharles, Elizabeth Rundle
History
Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great
Charles, Elizabeth Rundle
Attila, -453 -- Fiction; Christian fiction; Rome -- History -- Empire, 284-476 -- Fiction
“As we pray night and morning for the slaves,” she said, “that they may
be gathered into the Church as brothers beloved by Christ and by us.”
Then he told her that his cave was supposed to be a haunted cave.
“The peasants think it is the oracle of a faun,” he said, “one of their
old forest gods. And still sometimes they come to consult the old deities
here. They seek to know the future, if perchance there is any escape for
them out of their miseries, which are many. They think they are seeking
the old dethroned gods whom their fathers worshipped, in what they think
were happier times. But their poor hearts are really thirsting, not for
the dead heroes, but for the living God; not for the unhuman fauns, but
for the human Saviour. And often they will listen to me when I speak to
them of the Christ Who died and is not dead. And I tell them His words,
‘Come unto Me, all that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest.’ And they, being often wearied sore, and overladen, come, and
coming, they find rest, for they find Him.”
“I also came here to-day weary and heavy-laden,” she said, “and I go away
comforted and at rest.”
“Thou hast not only come to Him, my daughter,” he said, “but thou hast
taken His yoke upon thee, which is ‘not my will but Thine!’ His yoke,”
he added, “is not indeed always easy, but it is always good. It is the
yoke of the plough which shall make thy fields fruitful; the yoke of the
water-carrier who brings refreshment wherever he goes. His burdens are
not always light, as we understand lightness; but they are burdens which
do not hinder, but help. They make the feet ‘swifter,’ not slower, on His
ways.”
He spoke with a Greek accent that reminded her of Damaris.
“Thou, like myself, art not of this land,” she said.
“I was from Athens,” he replied. “My mother-tongue was the language in
which the great Paul wrote.”
“Thou speakest the words of the gospels as in a mother-tongue,” she said.
“From thy lips they seem to drop into my heart fresh from the fountain,
with no aqueduct between.”
And as she rose to go away, he said—
“I shall pray constantly for thy little Paul, and for thy husband, and
for thee.”
When she returned, Damaris rejoiced at the light in her face.
“Thou hast been among thy fountains!” she said with a smile.
“I have been among _thy_ fountains,” Ethne replied. “I have had water
given me to drink from the fountain of thy mother-tongue.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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