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AND so the blessed Archebius thought it best to take us first to
Chaeremon, because he was nearer to his monastery, and because he was
more advanced than the other two in age: for he had passed the hundredth
year of his life, vigorous only in spirit, but with his back bowed with age
and constant prayer, so that, as if he were once more in his childhood he
crawled with his hands hanging down and resting on the ground. Gazing then
at one and the same time on this man's wonderful face and on his walk (for
though all his limbs had already failed and were dead yet he had lost none
of the severity of his previous strictness) when we humbly asked for the
word and doctrine, and declared that longing for spiritual instruction was
the only reason for our coming, he sighed deeply and said: What doctrine
can I teach you, I in whom the feebleness of age has relaxed my former
strictness, as it has also destroyed my confidence in speaking? For how
could I presume to teach what I do not do, or instruct another in what I
know I now practise but feebly and coldly? Wherefore I do not allow any of
the younger men to live with me now that I am of such an advanced age, lest
the other's strictness should be relaxed owing to my example. For the
authority of a teacher will never be strong unless he fixes it in the heart
of his hearer by the actual performance of his duty.
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