“I’ve come here to drive out your visitors, the unclean devils. I’ve come to see how many have gathered here while I have been away. I want to sweep them out with a birch broom.”
“You cast out the evil spirit, but perhaps you are serving him yourself,” Father Païssy went on fearlessly. “And who can say of himself ‘I am holy’? Can you, Father?”
“I am unclean, not holy. I would not sit in an armchair and would not have them bow down to me as an idol,” thundered Father Ferapont.
“Nowadays folk destroy the true faith. The dead man, your saint,” he turned to the crowd, pointing with his finger to the coffin, “did not believe in devils. He gave medicine to keep off the devils. And so they have become as common as spiders in the corners. And now he has begun to stink himself. In that we see a great sign from God.”
The incident he referred to was this. One of the monks was haunted in his dreams and, later on, in waking moments, by visions of evil spirits. When in the utmost terror he confided this to Father Zossima, the elder had advised continual prayer and rigid fasting. But when that was of no use, he advised him, while persisting in prayer and fasting, to take a special medicine. Many persons were shocked at the time and wagged their heads as they talked over it—and most of all Father Ferapont, to whom some of the censorious had hastened to report this “extraordinary” counsel on the part of the elder.
“Go away, Father!” said Father Païssy, in a commanding voice, “it’s not for man to judge but for God. Perhaps we see here a ‘sign’ which neither you, nor I, nor any one of us is able to comprehend. Go, Father, and do