e of
God than his fellow-mortals. When dead, he was worshiped as a saint and
regarded as an intercessor between God and his lower fellow-creatures.
His hatred of the base world easily passed over into a sense of
superiority and ignoble pride.

"True social life," says Martensen, "leads to solitude." This truth the
monks emphasized to the exclusion of the converse, "true life in
solitude leads back to society." John Tauler, the mystic monk, realized
this truth when he said: "If God calls me to a sick person, or to the
service of preaching, or to any other service of love, I must follow,
although I am in the state of highest contemplation." The hermits of the
desert, and too often the monks of the cloister, escaped from all such
services, and selfishly gave themselves up to saving their own souls by
contemplation and prayer. Ministration to the needy is the external side
of the inner religious life. It is the fruit of faith and prayer. The
monk sought solitude, not for the purpose of fitting himself for a place
in society, but for selfish, personal ends. Saint Bruno, in a letter to
his friend Ralph le Verd, eulogizes the solitude of the monastic cell,
and among other sentiments he gives expression to the following: "I am
speaking here of the contemplative life; and although its sons are less
numerous than those of active life, yet, like Joseph and Benjamin, they
are infinitely dearer to their Father.... O my brother, fear not then to
fly from the turmoil and the misery of the world; leave the storms that
rage without, to shelter yourself in this safe haven."

Thus sinful and sorrowing humanity, needing the guidance and comfort
that holy men can furnish, was forgotten in the desire for personal
peace and future salvation.

Another baneful result of isolation was the strangulation of filial
love. When the monk abandoned the softening, refining influence of women
and children, one side of his nature suffered a serious contraction. An
Egyptian mother stood at the hut of two hermits, her sons. Weeping
bitterly, she begged to see their faces. To her piteous entreaties, they
said: "Why do you, who are already stricken with age, pour forth such
cries and lamentations?" "It is because I long to see you," she replied.
"Am I not your mother? I am now an old and wrinkled woman, and my heart
is troubled at the sound of your voices." But even a mother's love could
not cope with their fearful fanaticism., and she went away with their