“Not three minutes did ye spend there, but three whole years,” replied the Lord. “As it was in the first well, so will it be in the other world with the rich moujik! But as it was in the second well, so will it be in that world with the poor widow!”
Sometimes our Lord is supposed to wander by himself, under the guise of a beggar. In the story of “Christ’s Brother”[436] a young man—whose father, on his deathbed, had charged him not to forget the poor—goes to church on Easter Day, having provided himself with red eggs to give to the beggars with whom he should exchange the Pascal greeting. After exhausting his stock of presents, he finds that there remains one beggar of miserable appearance to whom he has nothing to offer, so he takes him home to dinner. After the meal the beggar exchanges crosses with his host,[437] giving him “a cross which blazes like fire,” and invites him to pay him a visit on the following Tuesday. To an enquiry about the way, he replies, “You have only to go along yonder path and say, ‘Grant thy blessing, O Lord!’ and you will come to where I am.”
The young man does as he is told, and commences his journey on the Tuesday. On his way he hears voices, as though of children, crying, “O Christ’s brother, ask Christ for us—have we to suffer long?” A little later he sees a group of girls who are ladling water from one well into another, who make the same request. At last he arrives at the end of his journey, finds the aged mendicant who had adopted him as his brother, and recognizes him as “the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.” The youth relates what he has seen, and asks:
“Wherefore, O Lord, are the children suffering?”
“Their mothers cursed them while still unborn,” is the reply. “Therefore is it impossible for them to enter into Paradise.”
“And the girls?”
“They used to sell milk, and they put water into the milk. Now they are doomed to pour water from well to well eternally.”
After this the youth is taken into Paradise, and brought to the place there provided for him.[438]
Sometimes the sacred visitor rewards with temporal goods the kindly host who has hospitably received him. Thus the story of “Beer and Corn”[439] tells how a certain man was so poor that when the rest of the peasants were brewing beer, and making other preparations to celebrate an approaching feast of the Church, he found his cupboard perfectly bare. In vain did he apply to a rich neighbor, who was in the habit of lending goods and money at usurious rates; having no security to offer, he could borrow nothing. But on the eve of the festival, when he was sitting at home in sadness, he suddenly rose and drew near to the sacred painting which hung in the corner, and sighed heavily, and said,
“O Lord! forgive me, sinner that I am! I have not even wherewith to buy oil, so as to light the lamp before the image[440] for the festival!”