I talked with one of the monks about Father Seraphim. What a character the Russian hermit was; there is material in his life for the pen of another Carlyle writing a new Past and Present. He was silent all those thirty-five years, and then opened his mouth. Alas! no one could tell me the first words that he spoke. He was actually silent all the time that Napoleon was ravaging Russia, during the time when he was in occupation of the holy mother of Russian cities, Moscow. Napoleon was popularly understood in Russia as Antichrist, and when the news of the terrible French sacrilege spread over Russia there were all manner of extravagant rumours about the end of the world. By this time Seraphim had obtained a name of great sanctity. Sick men had been restored to health by drinking from the hermitage well, the leprous had discharged their disease by touching the garments of the holy but silent man. So when Napoleon came to Moscow, the crowd appealed to Seraphim to work a miracle. “They are burning our sacred shrines,” they cried, “they are using our cathedrals as places of execution, they are murdering our priests and our pilgrims. Is it naught to thee, Father?” But Seraphim was silent. And others said, “He is called Napoleon, but he is in reality Antichrist. Lead us, O Seraphim, against him in the name of the Lord.” But Seraphim was silent. His face retained unchanged its look of exaltation; his uplifted eyes still seemed bent on some unearthly vision; his attentive ears seemed to be listening to some other voices. The old monk never spoke a word. Napoleon and the world had no power to shatter his vision. Napoleons might come and go, but the truth to which he was a witness remained unchanging, unchanged. And if Napoleon had come to Sarof and pulled the hermitage down about Seraphim’s ears, the old monk would still have prayed on in silence. Almost every characteristic of the Father and every circumstance of his life had something in it that is emblematic and suggestive. In his old age, when he became so famous, he received thousands of letters, most of which, however, he answered without opening! It is told how in his old age the light of sainthood shone from his brow, and on one occasion a holy man coming to visit him in his cell found the light too strong for his eyes and shielded them with his hands. “What is the matter?” said Father Seraphim. “The light shines from your head, O holy one.” “Do not be afraid,” said the Father. “You also are bright as I am or you could not have seen me thus. I see you also a shining one. Thank God that it has been given to miserable Seraphim to see a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.” The Father during his hermitage scooped out of the trunk of a lightning-stricken oak the coffin that should hold his remains when he died, and he pulled it in at the door of his hut, slept in it at night, and prayed beside it by day.