St. Augustine's Dream

St. Augustine in His Study by Vittore Carpaccio, 1502.

      When St. Augustine determined to give three days and nights to prayer and meditation concerning the deep mystery of the Trinity, on the third night he was very naturally overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamed that he was walking by the sea, where a child had made a hole in the sand with his tiny heel and then pouring water into it from a shell he held in his little hand. "What dost thou?" said St. Augustine. "I am pouring the sea into this hole," said the boy. "That cannot be done, my child," said the saint, with a pitying smile. Then all at once a gleam of heaven shone in the child's eyes it was no longer a child. "I can do that, Augustine," he said, with a mighty voice, "as readily as thou canst understand the nature of thy thoughts and of the Trinity." 

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