CHAPTER 13: How, while preaching to the people, he foresaw that the devil would send a phantom fire, and how he put it o
CHAPTER 13
How, while preaching to the people, he foresaw that the devil would send a phantom fire, and how he put it out
HE suddenly realized, while preaching the words of life to a great crowd in a small village, that the ancient enemy, the devil, was present, come to hinder his work of salvation. He set out at once in his sermon to forestall the plot he knew to be hatching. He suddenly interrupted his discourse with this warning:
‘My dear brethren, whenever you hear the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven being preached, you must be on your guard to listen with complete attention and not let the devil distract you with foolish worries from hearing what concerns your eternal salvation: for he has a thousand crafty ways of harming you.’
He immediately took up the thread of the sermon. All at once that wicked enemy sent down mock fire on to a nearby house. Sheets of flame, fanned by the wind, seemed to sweep through the whole village, and the noise of their crackling rent the air. Cuthbert managed, with outstretched hands, to restrain a few of the villagers, but the rest, almost the whole crowd, leaped up and vied with each other in throwing water on the flames. But real water has no effect on phantom fire, and the blaze raged on, until through Cuthbert’s prayers the father of lies fled, taking his false fire with him, into the empty air. The crowd came to their senses, knelt before Cuthbert and, red in the face with shame, begged pardon for their fickleness, saying that they knew now that the devil did not cease for even an hour in his warfare against man’s salvation. Cuthbert strengthened the weak and irresolute and carried on with his exhortations.