ligious, set in motion all these spiritual desires and ascetic beliefs
tending toward monasticism. One was the corrupted state, of Roman
society and the approaching overthrow of the Roman Empire. The other was
the secularization of the church.

Men naturally cling to society as long as there exists any well-founded
hope for its regeneration, but when every expectation for the survival
of righteousness yields to a conviction that doom is inevitable, then
the flight from the world begins. This was precisely the situation in
the declining days of Rome and Alexandria, when Christian monasticism
came into being. The monks believed that the end of the world was nigh,
that all things temporal and earthly were doomed, and that God's hand
was against the empire. "That they were correct in their judgment of the
world about them," says Kingsley, "contemporary history proves
abundantly. That they were correct, likewise, in believing that some
fearful judgment was about to fall on man, is proved by the fact that it
did fall."

So they fled to escape being caught in the ruins of society's tottering
structure,--fled to make friends with the angels and with God. If one
cannot live purely in the midst of corruption, by all means let him live
purely away from corruption, but let him never forget that his piety is
of a lower order than that which abides uncorrupted in the midst of
degenerate society. There is much truth in the observation of Charles
Reade in "The Cloister and the Hearth": "So long as Satan walks the
whole earth, tempting men, and so long as the sons of Belial do never
lock themselves in caves but run like ants, to and fro corrupting
others, the good man that sulks apart, plays the Devil's game, or at
least gives him the odds."

But the early Christian monks believed that their safety was only in
flight. It was not altogether an unworthy motive; at least it is easy to
sympathize with these men struggling against odds, of the magnitude of
which the modern Christian has only the faintest conception.

The conviction that the only true and certain way to secure salvation
is by flight from the world, continued to prevail during the succeeding
centuries of monastic history, and it can hardly be said to have
entirely disappeared even at the present time. Anselm of Canterbury, in
the twelfth century, wrote to a young friend reminding him that the
glory of this world was perishing. True, not monks only are saved,
"but," says he