Chapter 14

Again, then, Josaphat said: May it go well with you from the Lord God, O wisest of men. For you have gladdened my soul with your fitting and excellent words. Therefore sketch for me yet another image of the emptiness of the world, and how one might pass through it in peace and safety. Taking up the discourse, Barlaam said: Hear also the likeness of this problem. I have learned of a certain great city whose citizens had from of old this custom: that they would take some stranger, a man unknown, who knew nothing at all of the laws and traditions of the city, and set him up as their king, who enjoyed all authority and held to his own will unhindered until the completion of a year's time. Then, suddenly, while he was in complete freedom from care, living in luxury and reveling without fear, and thinking that the kingship would abide with him forever, they rose up against him, and stripping off the royal robe, and parading him naked through the whole city, they sent him into exile to a great island far away and remote, where, with no supply of food or clothing, he was dreadfully worn down by hunger and nakedness—the luxury and gladness given to him beyond hope being changed again into grief, beyond all hope and expectation. Now, according to the custom that prevailed among those citizens, a certain man was put forward to the kingship who had a mind richly furnished

with much understanding, who at once was not carried away by the abundance that had suddenly fallen upon him, nor did he envy the carefree state of those who had reigned before him and had been wretchedly cast out, but kept his soul anxious and earnest as to how he might arrange his affairs well. By constant reflection he made careful inquiry, and learned through a most wise counselor the custom of the citizens and the place of perpetual exile; and he was taught without error how he ought to make himself secure. When, then, he knew this, and that he must very soon reach that island and leave again to others this acquired and alien kingship, he opened his treasuries—of which until then he had free and unhindered use—and taking a quantity of money, gold and silver and a most weighty mass of precious stones, he handed them to his most trusted servants and sent them ahead to that island to which he was to be led away. And when the appointed year was completed, the citizens rose up and sent him, naked like those before him, into exile. So the rest of the foolish and short-lived kings starved dreadfully;

but he, having laid up that wealth beforehand, lived in perpetual abundance and had luxury without cost, and, having shaken off all fear of the disorderly and wicked citizens, counted himself blessed for his most wise good counsel. Understand, then, by the city this vain and deceitful world; by the citizens, the principalities and powers of the demons, the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, who allure us with the smoothness of pleasure, and lead us to think of the corruptible and perishable things as though they were incorruptible—as if the enjoyment of them abided with us and existed together with us immortally. So when we have been deceived and have taken no thought for those abiding and eternal things, nor stored up anything for ourselves for the life beyond, the ruin of death stands suddenly upon us. Then indeed, then, the wicked and bitter citizens of darkness receive us, stripped of the things here, as those who spent all their time on them, and lead us away into a dark and gloomy land, into a land of eternal darkness, where there is no light, nor the sight of the life of mortals. And by the good counselor, who made known all the truth and taught the saving practices to the prudent and most wise king, understand my own cheap and lowly self, who have come to point out to you the good and unerring way, leading you to the eternal and unending things and counseling you to lay up everything there, but leading you away from this deceitful world,

which I too, unhappily, used to love, and to whose delights and enjoyments I clung. But considering with the unerring eyes of the mind how the whole life of men is worn away among these things—some arriving, others departing, and none having what is fixed and secure: neither the rich in their wealth, nor the powerful in their strength, nor the wise in their wisdom, nor again the prosperous in their prosperity, nor those who live in luxury in their reveling, nor those who think they live securely in their vain and most feeble security, nor in any other of the things here praised, but the matter resembles the passage of torrents falling into the measureless deep of the sea (for so fleeting and short-lived are all present things)—I understood that such things are all empty and that there is no benefit in them, but, just as all former things are hidden in forgetfulness—whether you speak of glory, or kingship, or the splendors of high offices, or the weight of dominion, or the boldness of tyrants, or any of such things—so too the present things will be dimmed in the times that follow and come after. And I, being one of these, will surely fall under the customary change, and just as those before me were not allowed to delight in present things for an age, so will it be with me also. For I saw what this tyrannical and tumultuous world does to men, removing them from here to there—

some from wealth to poverty, others from poverty to glory; leading these out of life, and again bringing in others in their place; rejecting some who are wise and prudent, and making the honored and conspicuous dishonored and cheap, while seating others, unwise and unprudent, on the throne of glory, and showing the honorable to all as dishonored and obscure. And one may see the race of men in no way at all standing fast before the face of its cruel tyranny; but, as when a dove, fleeing from an eagle or a hawk, changes place after place, now to this tree, now to that bush, then dashing herself at once against the clefts of the rocks and all kinds of thorns, and finding nowhere a safe refuge, is worn out with perpetual tossing and trembling, so are those who are agog after present things—laboring wretchedly under an unreasoning impulse, having nothing at all firm or secure, neither knowing to what end they come, nor where this vain life is leading them, to which they have subjected themselves most unhappily and wretchedly, choosing evil things instead of good, taking up wickedness instead of goodness—or who it is that inherits the cold fruit of their many and toilsome labors, whether one of their own household or a stranger; and often it is not even a friend or acquaintance at all, but an enemy and foe. All these things and what follows from them I judged in the tribunal of my soul, and I hated my whole life, spent in vain things, which I passed clinging to the labors of earth.

But when I cast off from my soul the attachment to these things and threw it away, the things that are truly good shone forth: to fear God and to do his will. For I knew this to be the sum of all good things; this is also called the beginning of wisdom and wisdom made perfect; for it is a life free of grief and of harm to those who hold to it, and secure to those who lean upon it as upon the Lord. So, having set my thought upon the most unerring way of the Lord's commandments, and knowing exactly that there is nothing crooked or tangled in it, nor is it full of ravines and crags and thorns and briers, but that the whole is smooth and even, delighting the eyes of those who travel it with the brightest sights, and making beautiful the feet, and shoeing them with the readiness of the gospel of peace, that they may walk securely and swiftly—this way I rightly preferred to all, and I began to build up the fallen and ruined house of my soul. While I was thus arranging my affairs and setting right the unsteadiness of my mind, I heard the words of a certain wise teacher crying out to me thus: Come out, he said, all you who long to be saved;

depart from the emptiness of the world; for its fashion is passing away in a very little while, and behold, it will not be. Come out without turning back—yet not for nothing and without reward, but bearing provisions of eternal life; for you are about to walk a long road that has much need of provisions from here. And you will reach the eternal place that has two regions, each having many dwellings within it: one of which God has prepared for those who love him and keep his commandments, filled with all kinds of good things, in which those counted worthy will live perpetually in incorruption, enjoying undying immortality, where pain and grief and groaning have fled away; the second, full of darkness and affliction and pain, has been prepared for the devil and his angels, into which will also be cast those who by their wicked works procured it for themselves—those who exchanged the present things for the incorruptible and eternal, and made their whole selves food for the eternal fire. When I heard this voice and recognized its truthfulness, I made it my work to reach that lodging which is free of all pain and grief, and is full of such great security and such good things—the knowledge of which is now in me only in part, since I am an infant in spiritual stature and see the things there as through a glass and in riddles;

but when the perfect comes, and I know face to face, then what is in part will be done away. I give thanks, then, to God through Jesus Christ our Lord; for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death, and has opened my eyes to see without error that the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. And just as I, having recognized the emptiness of present things, hated them with a perfect hatred, so I counsel you too to know concerning these things, that you may be disposed toward them as toward things alien and quickly passing away; and, taking everything from here, may lay up for yourself in the incorruptible age a treasure that cannot be plundered, a wealth that cannot be spent, where you must go without delay, so that, when you depart, you may not be in want, but laden with wealth—just as I set before you above the most fitting image of these things.