the world--that he wanted to eat his
cake and still keep it. By a sort of divine right he took control of
affairs, and insisted that his companions should go to work with him,
and plant a garden and raise vegetables and fruits, instead of depending
upon charity or going without.

The man who insists that all folks shall work, be they holy or secular,
learned or illiterate, always has a hard road to travel. Benedict's
companions declared that he was trying to enslave them, and one of them
brewed a poison and substituted it for the simple herb tea that Benedict
drank. Being discovered, the man and his conspirators escaped, although
Benedict offered to forgive and forget if they would go to work.

Benedict adhered to his new inspiration with a persistency that never
relaxed--the voice of God had called to him that he must clear the soil
of the brambles and plant gardens.

The thorn-bush through which he had once rolled his naked body, he now
cut down and burned. He relaxed the vigils and limited the prayers and
adorations to a few short exercises just before eating, sleeping and
going to work. He divided the day into three parts--eight hours for
work, eight hours for study, eight hours for sleep. Then he took
one-half hour from each of these divisions for silent prayer and
adoration. He argued that good work was a prayer, and that one could
pray with his heart and lips, even as his hands swung the ax, the sickle
or the grub-hoe. All that Benedict required of others, he did himself,
and through the daily work he evolved a very strong and sturdy physique.
From the accounts that have come to us he was rather small in stature,
but in strength he surpassed any man in his vicinity.

Miraculous accounts of his physical strength were related, and in the
minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which
shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not
high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very
deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream.
Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion.
Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his
monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax
into the lake. Benedict smiled, his lips moved in prayer and the ax came
to the surface. The story does not say that Benedict dived to the bottom
and brought up the ax, which he probably did. The n