9This short translated story about the life of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, the miracle-worker, was first printed by the Cloister of Sarov in 1893. It was then re-written by N. Puretzki and published by the printer I. D. Sytin in Moscow in 1903. The illustration used for the cover is the photo of one of the miraculous representations of Saint Seraphim in the Russian Orthodox Church in the name of Saint Mary of Magdala in The Hague. The icon was presented to the church by the last Russian tzar, Nicolas II, a martyr and a saint; the reason being that the church was originally the domestic chapel of Queen Anna Paulowna, who was a member of the royal Romanov house, and the wife of the Dutch king, Willem II. This icon has another particular characteristic: it is not a strictly formal representation of a saint, but one of the two portraits of Saint Seraphim. Saint Seraphim is one of the most venerated saints of Russia, and has greatly influenced the spiritual life, not only of the entire Russian clergy, but also the thousands of laymen and mystics who were drawn to Christian mysticism. One of the best known was a landlord from Nizhni Novgorod called Nikolai Motovilov, whom Saint Seraphim healed of a three year paralysis, by prayer and a short conversation. Motovilov became one of the worldly disciples of Saint Seraphim and noted his conversations with the Staretz, in which Saint Seraphim, inspired by God, formulated the purpose and the ways of Christian life in simple words, understandable to all those seeking God.