, "who attains to salvation in the most certain, who in
the most noble way, the man who seeks to love God alone, or he who seeks
to unite the love of God with the love of the world?... Is it rational
when danger is on every side, to remain where it is the greatest?"

The Christian church set up an ideal of life which it was impossible to
realize within her borders, and one which differed in many respects from
the teachings of Jesus. Her demands involved a renunciation of the
world, a superiority to all the enticements of bodily appetites, a lofty
scorn of secular bonds and social concerns. A vigorous religious faith
had conquered a mighty empire, but corruption attended its victory. The
standard of Christian morals was lowered, or had at least degenerated
into a cold, formal ideal that no one was expected to realize; hence
none strove to attain it but the monks. When Roman society with its
selfishness, lust and worldliness, swept in through the open doors of
the church and took possession of the sanctuary, those who had cherished
the ascetic ideal gave up the fight against the world, and the flight
from the world-church began. They could not tolerate this union of the
church with a pagan state and an effete civilization. In some respects,
as a few writers maintain, many of these hermits were like the old
Jewish prophets, fighting single-handed against corruption in church and
state, refusing to yield themselves as slaves to the authority of
institutions that had forsaken the ideals of the past.

Thus the conviction that the end of human society was nigh, and that the
church could no longer serve as an asylum for the lovers of
righteousness, with certain philosophical ideas respecting the body, the
world and God, united to produce the assumption that salvation was more
readily attainable in the deserts; and Christian monasticism, in its
hermit form, began its long and eventful history.

_Causes of Variations in Monasticism_

Prominent among the causes producing variations in the monastic type was
the influence of climatic conditions and race characteristics.

The monasticism as well as the religion of the East has always differed
from the monasticism and the religion of the West. The Eastern mind is
mystical, dreamy, contemplative; the Western mind loves activity, is
intensely practical. Representatives of the Eastern faiths in the recent
Parliament of Religions accused the West of materialism, of loving the
body