in a very threatening manner, “Didst thou not hear well what was being said that thou didst fall asleep?” Then immediately the man awoke from his sleep, and told us in the Greek tongue what he had seen.
Now whilst our brother was relating this dream to us, a certain villager was found to be standing there before him bearing upon his shoulders a bucket of sand, and he was waiting there to hear the end of his story; and we begged him to tell us why he was carrying the sand, and why he stood there, and what he wanted. Then Abbâ Copres answered and said unto us, “My sons, it is not seemly for us to boast, but it is fitting that we should declare before you the triumphs of the fathers, so that we may not be unduly exalted in our minds, and so lose our reward. Nevertheless, because of the earnestness, and for the sake of the welfare of you who have come unto us from a distance, we will not deprive you of benefit, and we will relate before your brotherhood whatsoever God hath wrought by our hands. At one time the land which is about us produced nothing, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the villagers who owned it were able to gather from it as much again as they sowed, for the worms were produced in the ears, and they destroyed all their harvest. Now some of those husbandmen had been converted by us, and they begged us to pray for their harvest, and we said unto them, ‘If ye have faith in God even this desert sand shall bring forth crops for you’. Then, without any doubt whatsoever, they filled their bosoms with the sand which is trodden under our feet, and they entreated us to bless it, and when we had prayed that it might be unto them even according to their faith, they went and mixed it with the wheat and sowed it in their fields, and immediately their land produced for them abundant crops, and they were larger than the crops obtained from the other lands in Egypt. Thus it became the custom for them [to bring sand] each year, and to trouble us [to bless it].”
And he also related unto us a certain wonderful thing which the Lord had wrought for us when large numbers of the brethren were gathered together, and he said, “On one occasion I went down to the city, and I found there a certain Manichean who was leading the multitudes into error, and because I was unable to rebuke and convince him openly I turned towards the multitudes, and said unto them, ‘Kindle ye a large fire, and let the two of us go into it when it is burning brightly, and he who remaineth in the fire without being burnt shall be the man who possesseth the true faith.’ And when this had been done, and the crowd had lit a fire with ready zeal, I urged the Manichean to go with me
