# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1860_S130
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

130 How the Simple, and Especially the Sick, Are to Be Instructed in Christianity, etc.

...being, he desires but one thing more: to live for God and to please Him. A few days later, with his rector's consent, he entered the Franciscan monastery there. There, after a fervent prayer, the first night brings him in a dream a picture of what was to befall him. He dreams that he finds himself in a dreadful wilderness. After long wandering he at last leans, exhausted and faint, against a rock, awaiting death, commending his spirit into God's hands. Then a man steps up to him, in whom he recognizes the apostle Paul, who encourages him and bids him follow. Since his dying body cannot do this, the guide takes hold of him and carries him off. Suddenly he sees a paradisal valley lying before him, in sunlit splendor, a wealth of color, and fragrant blossom, more beautiful than any thought could conceive. Having arrived in the valley — it seemed to him to be ten or eleven o'clock — he bends down to the pleasantly murmuring, crystalline brook to refresh himself. But the guide does not permit it; instead he brings him to the spring with the command to drink from there. He first thanks God upon his knees and then bends over the marble rim. But quickly he draws back again and sinks to his knees in reverence. He had seen that the water in the spring welled up from the wounds of the Crucified One, more radiant than ruby, and then suddenly turned into crystal-clear water. Then the guide takes hold of him and plunges him into the spring. Here, his head upon the Lord's breast, the sweetest draught pervades his whole being, but at the same time shame fills him that so great a sinner should be offered such support and refreshment. The guide lifts him out and, after a brief rest, bids him gird himself and follow him. After an hour's walk — it now seemed to him to be one o'clock — he comes to a wheat field which, like the wilderness before, appeared to him as vast as the world. "Here you must labor and reap!" says the guide. There he sees a venerable man, of mighty strength and busy reaping with great zeal, and so like the guide that he could not tell whether it was one man or two. In the name of the Lord Jesus he takes up the sickle and labors, and the overseer, to whom he had been given as helper and fellow-worker, assisted him whenever he fell behind. When they had come to a rise of ground and the field stretched out immeasurably, and he cried out, "Good God, when shall we bring in this immeasurable harvest?" he caught sight of people coming from afar and beginning work at various places. For many days he labored on in this way, feeling as if in heaven, and refreshed himself, when weary, with food and drink in fellowship with the others at the clear brook. At last, however, his strength sank, and although he had labored on for a while longer, strengthened by his helpers, he finds himself after some days sick and weary upon the bed of his sleeping chamber. His flesh is withered down to the bone, yet his spirit is of good cheer, troubled only that, before the onset of winter, the harvest of the good householder might not be entirely...