2. I have seen him, I confess: my seeing him is due to his merits: I saw him in such sort in the body as to believe him to be out of the body: I saw the image of him who, knowing not whether it was in the body or out of the body, saw himself transported to Paradise. With such rapid speed had he traversed every region, Constantinople, Achaia, Epirus, and Italy, that younger men could not keep pace with him. Men of stronger bodies yielded to him, knowing that he was free from the shackles of the body, so that he used it more as a covering than as an instrument, at all events that it was his slave not his helpmate, for he had so trained his body that he crucified the world in it, and himself to the world. Sidenote: S. Matt. xii. 48. Sidenote: 2 Chron. ix. 21. Sidenote: Ps. lxviii. 14. 3. Blessed is the Lord, and blessed was His youth which He passed in the tabernacle of the God of Jacob, abiding in a monastery, in which, when sought after by His parents and relations He said, _Who is My mother, and who are My brethren?_ I know not father, nor mother, nor brethren, save those _who hear the Word of God, and do it_. Blessed also were his maturer years, wherein he was elected to the chief priesthood, having given proof of his virtue by a long service. He came like David to restore peace to the people. He came like that ship bringing with him spiritual treasure, and cedar wood, and precious stones, and those _silver wings of a dove_, with which, lying _in the midst of the lots_, she slept the sleep of tranquillity and peace. Sidenote: Cant. v. 2. Sidenote: Gen. xxviii. 13. 4. For even the sleep of the saints is operative, as it is written, _I sleep, but my heart waketh_, and as holy Jacob saw in sleep divine mysteries, which waking he saw not, even a passage opened for the saints between earth and heaven, and the Lord regarding him and promising to him the possession of that land. Thus by a brief sleep he attained that which his successors afterwards won by great toil. The sleep of the saints is free from all bodily pleasures, from all perturbation of mind, it brings tranquillity to the mind and peace to the soul, so that, freed from the fetters of the body, it raises itself aloft, and is united to Christ. Sidenote: Wisd. iv. 9. 5. This sleep is the life of the saints, the life which holy Acholius lived, whose old age was also blest. That old age is truly venerable which is hoary not with gray hairs but in good deeds; for those hoar hairs are reverent which belong to the soul, whose works and thoughts are, as it were, white and shining. For what is true old age, but that unspotted life, which lasts not for days or months but for ages, whose continuance is without end, whose length of years is without weakness? For the longer it lives the stronger it waxes; the longer its life lasts the more vigorously does it grow unto a perfect man. Sidenote: Isa. lx. 8. Sidenote: 2 Chron. ix. 21.