The brief words kindle the imagination from across the centuries. In that desert solitude, away from the world's hurried happenings, he would turn the new, clear vision upon things alike of the earth and of the heavens. Those who have sensed desert vastnesses can understand its dreams. The ringing silences, the elemental sands, the sweeps of cloud are attuned to the moods of the Infinite, and here more nearly than elsewhere the soul is freed from its shackles of flesh.

and is ready to ascend the voids of blue. Voices heard through the silence are unbroken by human discord. Christ Himself sought the wilderness and that both Master and His mighty disciple should have had dreams and visions unspeakable, is a natural inference. In the soundful silence of the Arabian sands, there was but a trifling distinction between the closed lids of actual slumber and the heavy lids of haunted reverie, both filled with visions of the Unknowable. Later other mystics sought the wilderness for peace. After the monasteries had fallen under the glamour of the world or had developed into mere repositories of secular learning, the monks who wished to lead ascetic lives were drawn to the barren bosoms of the deserts of Egypt and of Palestine, St. Ammon built the first cell in the famous Nitrian Desert, and at the end of the fourth century the Nitrian mountains were dotted over with hermit cells. Here the physical aspects of life were peculiarly harsh. The mountains, rocky and rough, the cold intense and water so scant that the supply must be obtained from collecting the dew as it fell - but the saints held their dreams and their visions. Clairaudience and clairvoyance peculiar to the wastes of the world came to them and we read of mystic voices calling through the air and of sentient dreams, vivid with heavenly hosts and celestial arcana. Southeast of the Nitrian Desert was Coma, the birthplace of St. Antony, regarded as the father of Egyptian monasticism, although Ammon of Nitria was its actual founder. Still to the south lay the Inner Mountain, whither celestial voices led the saint, when, after having parted his possessions amongst his friends, he sought the solitude that they refused him. A rare dreamer, St. Antony, according to the hagiologists.

"Oh Antony," cried the heavenly voice of his vision at one time, "turn your attention to yourself; as for the judgments of God, it is not fit that you should learn them."

To our modern ideas he seems scarcely to have deserved the rebuke even in a dream and his soul is very humble and patient as he sits on his mountain top.

On one occasion he saw some one being carried aloft amid great rejoicings, while an angelic throng met the new arrivals and joined them. Humbly wondering, and blessing such a choir, the saint prayed to be taught the meaning of his vision. Straightway a voice answered that the soul of Ammon was taking flight. Afterwards the fact was confirmed by monks from the Nitrian Desert.

St. Antony's dreams, however, were not entirely devoted to heavenly voices and holy souls. Athanasius mentions that the devil frequently beset the saint in the shape of a woman, and again that as he lay asleep the devil let loose wild beasts and almost all the hyenas in the desert; these came out of their burrows, beset him round and he was in their midst. "And when each gaped on him and threatened to bite him, perceiving the art of the enemy he said to them all: 'If ye have received power against me, I am ready to be devoured by you; but if ye have been set on by daemons delay not to withdraw, for I am a servant of Christ/ And when Antony said this they fled, pursued by his words as by a whip." - Kingsley, The Hermits.

St. Romauld also is described as having been continually in conflict with the devil, who raised memories of his loves and hates in his former life in the world. "Every night for nearly five years the devil lay on his feet and legs and weighted them with the likeness of a phantom weight so that Romauld could scarcely turn on his couch." - Medieval Mind, Taylor.

St. Benedict, the successor of St. Macarius, the Great, was a dreamer of dreams who lived in the Scetic Desert, to the south of the Nitrian wastes; close beside him stand St. Dominic, St. Bernard, and St. Francis, founders respectively of the orders that bear their names. To the Franciscan order especially the world owes many of its dreamers who follow their gentle leader in a sort of apostolic succession.

Like Paul of Tarsus, St. Francis found the guiding light as he pursued a broad and worldly path. His first dream caused him to lay aside his arms as a soldier for earthly kings and to don the garb of a mendicant and, despite family opposition, to part with his worldly possessions and to go forth among the lepers at Gubbio. The second dream directed him to his vocation, commanded him to found the order of Franciscans and enunciated its three rules: Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. The confirmation of the order at Rome gave rise to a curious dream that appeared not to the saint himself, but to Pope Innocent III. The Holy Father, having been greatly harassed by schisms, defections and innovations, delayed seeing the ragged band of mendicants, when lo, as he lay in bed, he dreamed that the huge basilica of St. John Lateran was tottering upon its foundations. The colossal structure would have fallen but for a slender little monk who held it up in both hands. It was the leader of the band of beggars at the gates of the Vatican. The Pope gave them the right to found the order without delay. And it was well for his church that he did so, for the Franciscan monks were the dreamers who carried their hopes and visions far into the fastnesses of the New World. Quietly they bore the cross of their faith along the blood-smeared path of the Conquista-dores whose dream of gold had become a nightmare of avarice. By thousands, uncounted and unknown, they died of torture, paying for the sins of their racial predecessors whose dream was different. All along the Mississippi River and through the Great Lakes they have left the trail of their shining dreams. California's gleaming, golden shores are dotted with the gray adobe churches of their faith and so likewise are the deserts of Texas and New Mexico. Padre Junipero stands out, a brown-clad dreamer against the golden sands of California, his sculptured face tells its story of strength, and legend iterates his dreams. Descended from the proud nobility of Spain, he took the vow of poverty and toiled along the wastes of the Californian shores. Whether shattered hopes sent him thither, or whether his spirit was purely altruistic, we may not know. Time only holds the tradition of the clear-eyed old priest and of his dreams, which he was fond of repeating.