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Updated: June 14, 2025
The roads became silent and solitary, and the villages, as they passed through them, were sunk in repose, unless, perhaps, where some sorrowing family were kept awake by the watchings that were necessary at the bed of sickness or death, as was evident by the melancholy steadiness of the lights, or the slow, cautious motion by which they glided from one apartment to another.
The holy man, with a serious air, replied: "My friend, there is nothing which disconcerts the devil so much, and attracts the graces of God, more than fasting and prayerful watchings." His life, it may be truly said, was one incessant prayer and vigil. A simple peasant has beautifully said: "It is not astonishing that he works miracles. He is a servant of God. God obeys his servants."
Men's fears, solicitudes, cares, labours, and watchings would all perish in the same moment with the value of money; even poverty itself, for the relief of which money seems most necessary, would fall. But, in order to the apprehending this aright, take one instance:
Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,
All their faculties appeared to be engrossed with keen and anxious watchings of the forest, out of which it would seem they expected momentarily to see issue a band of ferocious and ruthless savages: but symptoms of returning levity began to be apparent, as confidence and a feeling of security increased, with the quiet passage of the hours.
As they rode along that pleasant September morning he was pleasing himself with thinking how that intelligent old man, starved all his life for mental food, would delight himself amid the intellectual wealth of his new life. They were approaching the turn-stile at the cross-roads, memorable for the weary watchings of Lady Hurstmonceux.
To relieve rich misers of half of those cares which only scare golden sleep from their eyelids; to force hoarded coin into circulation; to restore the equalization of property; in one word, to bring back the golden age; to relieve Providence of many a burdensome pensioner, and so save it the trouble of sending war, pestilence, famine, and above all, doctors that is what I call honesty, d'ye see; that's what I call being a worthy instrument in the hand of Providence, and then, at every meal you eat, to have the sweet reflection: this is what thy own ingenuity, thy lion boldness, thy night watchings, have procured for thee to command the respect both of great and small!
Well I knew the prediction conveyed by those sounds. Long watchings by the bedside of a slowly-dying mother had made me fearfully familiar with them. Through the lingering hours of that night I sat listening to them with an agonized ear, and in my bitterness I almost cursed Heaven for providing the doom I anticipated.
Frequent watchings, fasts, bleedings, and scourgings, for the purpose of mortifying the body; abstinence from conversation or laughter; habits of perpetual devotion, laborious exertion, and humble obedience to the abbot, were the main features of the system.
Thrice I have been scourged with rods, once I have been stoned, thrice I have suffered shipwreck, a whole night and day I have passed in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own countrymen, in perils from the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils on the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labour and travail, in watchings often, in fastings frequently, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness; and beside all these things from without, that accumulated burden which cometh on me daily, the care of all the churches.
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