The apple trees in the garden were in full bloom.They want to get the flowers out before the green leaves are ready.All the ducklings in the yard ran out, and the cat ran out with him; he was licking the real sunbeams--licking the sunbeams off his paws.If you look into the field, you can see a field of green wheat.All the little birds were chirping, as if it were a great festival.Indeed, you could also say it's a holiday, because it's Sunday.
The church bells are ringing.All went to church in their best clothes, and all looked very happy.Yes, all things show a cheerful look.It is indeed a warm and happy day.People can say, "Our God is so good to us!"
But in the church, the pastor standing on the platform was yelling and very angry.He said: People don't believe in God, God must punish them; after they die, the bad ones will be thrown into hell, and in hell they will be burned forever.He also said that their consciences will never cease, their flames will never be quenched, and they will never find rest and tranquility.
It was frightening to hear him preach, and he spoke with such certainty.
He described hell as a putrid burrow into which all the filth of the world flows; there is no air in it but phosphorous fire; it is a bottomless pit, sinking silently and forever. sink.Just listening to this story is enough to make people frightened.But the pastor's words came from the heart, and the audience in the church were terrified out of their wits.
But many birds outside sang very happily, and the sun was very warm. Every little flower seemed to say, God is so good to us all.Yes, the situation outside was not at all as bad as the priest described.
At night, when he was about to go to bed, the pastor saw his wife sitting silently, as if she had something on her mind.
"What are you thinking?" he asked her.
"What am I thinking?" she said, "I don't think I can figure it out, I can't agree with what you're saying. You talk so much about sinners, and you say they're going to burn forever. Forever, oh, forever When? Even a sinful woman like me can't bear to let the worst of the wicked burn at the stake forever. How can our God? He is so merciful that He knows that there are internal causes of sin as well as external ones. .No, although what you said is absolutely true, I can't believe it."
It was autumn and the leaves were falling from the trees.The stern and earnest priest sits beside a dead man, whose eyes are closed in pious faith.This is the pastor's wife.
"If there is one person in the world who deserves God's mercy and rest in the tomb, it's you!" said the pastor.He folded his hands and read a hymn over the dead man's body.
She was carried to the grave, and two tears rolled down the face of the prim priest.His house was silent now, the sun was gone, because she was gone.
It was night, and a cold wind blew over the minister's head, and he opened his eyes; it was as if the moon had shone into his room, but there was no moon to shine.In front of his bed stood a human figure.This is the ghost of his dead wife.She looked at him with a very sad look, as if she had something to say.
He half straightened up, and stretched out his hand towards her: "Have you not found eternal rest? Are you suffering? You—the kindest, most pious person!"
The dead man lowered his head as an affirmative answer.She pressed her hands to her chest.
"Can I find a way to make you rest in peace in the grave?"
"Yes!" replied the ghost.
"How can it be?"
"All you have to do is give me one hair, one hair from the head of a sinner burned by an unquenchable fire—a sinner God will send to hell to suffer forever!"
"You, pure and pious one, how easy it is for you to be saved!"
"Follow me!" said the dead man. "God has given us this power. You can fly away from me wherever your heart desires. We can fly to the place where mortals can't see us." In secret corners. You must point out with a sure hand the one who is doomed to suffer forever, and you must point this out before the cock crows."
They seemed to be carried by the wings of thought, and soon they flew to a big city.On the walls of all the houses burned in flames the names of the great sins: pride, avarice, drunkenness, self-will—in short, a whole rainbow of sins of seven colors.
"Yes," said the parson, "in these houses I believe—and I know—dwell those who are doomed to burn forever."
They stood at a beautifully lit gate.The broad steps were carpeted and filled with flowers, and dancing music wafted from the joyous halls.
The waiters were dressed in silk and velvet and carried silver-clad canes.
"Our balls are comparable to the emperor's balls," he said.He glanced at the crowd in the street; and from his whole body—from head to toe—shot this thought: "You poor creatures, look in the door; you're a bunch of beggars compared to me! "
"It's pride!" said the dead man. "Did you see him?"
"See him?" the priest repeated her words. "He's just a fool, a fool. He won't suffer eternal fire and pain."
"He's just a fool!" cried the whole Pride room.They're all in there.
They flew inside the four walls of Greed.Here is a thin old fellow, hungry and thirsty, shivering with cold, but he holds his gold with all his heart.They saw how he jumped down from a ragged couch in a fever, and removed a movable stone in the wall, for in it lay hidden his many gold coins in a sock.He stroked the tattered blouse, for it too had gold coins sewn into it; his damp fingers trembled.
"He's sick. He's suffering from a madness, a joyless madness full of horrors and nightmares."
They hurried away.They stood beside the plank beds of a group of convicts.These people sleep next to each other in a row.One of them sprang up from his sleep like a wild beast, and uttered a terrible scream.He pushed the man next to him a few times with his bony elbow.The man turned over in his sleep and said:
"Shut up, you bastard, and go to sleep! You do this every night!"
"Every night?" he repeated. "Yes, he always comes every night and yells at me and tortures me. When I lose my temper, I do this and that. I was born with a bad temper. This is the second time I have been locked up. Here it is. But if I have done wrong, I have been punished. There is only one thing I have not confessed. When I came out of the prison last time, I walked by my master's farm, and I didn't know why. All of a sudden there was an awkwardness. I struck a match on the wall--I struck too close to the grass top, and it caught fire at once. The flames took hold just as if my temper had flared up on me. I helped save the house as much as I could. nothing alive but a flock of pigeons that flew into the fire, and a watchdog on a chain. I did not think of the dog, which could be heard howling—I I can still hear it howling when I am sleeping now. As soon as I fell asleep, this big hairy dog came. It lay on me and howled, pressing me down and making me breathless. Let me tell you: you I can snore all night long, but I can only sleep for a quarter of an hour."
Blood shot from the man's eyes.He fell on top of his friend and punched him in the face with a clenched fist.
"The madman is attacking again!" The people around said in unison.The rest of the criminals seized him and huddled with him.They bent him so that his head was between his legs, and tied him tightly again.His eyes and the pores of his whole body almost spurted blood.
"You'll kill him that way," cried the minister, "poor thing!"
He stretched out a protective hand over the tortured sinner; and at that moment the scene changed.They fly over rich halls, they fly over poor rooms. "Wildness," "jealousy," and other major "sins" walk by them.An angel who acts as a magistrate reads the guilt and defense of these things.In the presence of God, this is not an important matter, because God can read the heart; He knows all sins in and out of the heart;The pastor's hands trembled, and he dared not reach out and pluck a single hair from the sinner's head.Tears flowed from his eyes like waters of mercy and love, and quenched the eternal fire in hell.
Then the rooster crowed.
"Merciful God! Only You can let her rest in her grave, and I can't do that."
"I have now rested in peace," said the deceased. "Because you speak such horrible words, and you feel so pessimistic about him and his creatures, I am compelled to come to you! Get acquainted with man, for there is a little of God in even the worst man Ingredient—the element that can overcome and quench the fires of hell."
There was a kiss on the priest's mouth, and the sun was shining around him.The bright sun of God shone into the room.His living, tender, kind wife awakened him from a dream sent by God.
① European medieval Christian monks divided the natural sins of human beings into seven categories, generally referring to these seven items: pride, sullenness, envy, lust, gluttony, greed and laziness.Andersen's several are slightly different from this standard, maybe he forgot.
