Read on line
Listen on line
Main > Fairy tale > All authors > Andersen Hans Christian > Fairy tale "A Story"

A Story

"You're killing him!" cried the preacher, and stretched his protecting hand over the sinner who had already suffered severely.

Then the scene changed. Unseen they glided through rich homes, as well as through the huts of the poor. Wantonness and envy, and all the deadly sins, passed before them.

An angel from the judgment seat appeared, to read to each of them their sins and their excuses. These excuses meant little to God, for He reads the hearts; He knows every hidden sin that dwells there; He knows the temptations that are before us in the outer world as well as in our own hearts, and knows when to show mercy and pitying love.

The preacher's hand trembled, and now he dared not stretch it out to pluck a single hair from the head of any sinner. Tears streamed from his eyes as he thought of the fountain of mercy and love, which can quench even the everlasting fire of hell.

And then the cock crowed!

"All-merciful God, I pray Thee grant her that peace in the grave which I have not been able to produce for her!"

"I have it now," said the dead wife. "It was your hard words and your gloomy belief in God and His creatures that drove me to you. Learn to know mankind. Even the soul of the wicked is a part of God Himself, a part that will conquer and extinguish even hell-fire forever."

The preacher felt a kiss upon his lips, and a light streamed about him. God's bright sunshine shone into the room, and his living wife stood beside him, tender and loving. She had awakened him from a dream sent him by God.

Also read
Read
Read
Read
The Woman with Two Skins
Category: Nigerian folktales
Read times: 80