p. 83 | A Beautiful Legend

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 5, 1878

A Beautiful Legend

There was once a good religious man who thought he should find the time long in paradise. God showed him plainly that he was mistaken. One day he was in the garden of the monastery, and perceived a little bird hopping from branch to branch, which seemed more and more beautiful as he looked at it. At last, it was so very beautiful that the monk could not take his eyes off it; he began to pursue it. However, he stopped, thinking he must have been half an hour running after his bird. He returned to the monastery, but was very much surprised to find at the door a brother whom he had never seen, and the brother did not know him either; his surprise was still greater when he saw nothing in the house but strange faces and new people. The others looked at him in astonishment. At last he told them his name; and they looked in the registers, and found that it was a hundred years since he went away. . . . Thus God showed him that the time does not seem long in paradise.—Selected.