, in pure and unselfish living, and not in disfigurements
and in misery. Dreariness and fear are not the proper manifestations of
that perfect love which casteth out fear.

The influence of monasticism upon the doctrine of atonement for sin
was, in many respects, prejudicial to the best interests of religion.
The monks are largely responsible for the theory that sin can be atoned
for by pecuniary gifts. It may be said that they did not ignore true
feelings of repentance, of which the gold was merely a tangible
expression, but the notion widely prevailed that the prayers of the
monks, purchased by temporal gifts, secured the forgiveness of the
transgressor. The worship of saints, pilgrimages to shrines, and
reverence for bones and other relics, were assiduously encouraged.

Thus the monkish conception of salvation and of the means by which it is
to be obtained were at variance with any reasonable interpretation of
the Scriptures and the dictates of human reason. "It measured virtue,"
says Schaff, "by the quantity of outward exercises, instead of the
quality of the inward disposition, and disseminated self-righteousness
and an anxious, legal, and mechanical religion[K]."

[Footnote K: Appendix, Note K.]

The doctrine of future punishment reached its most repulsive and
abnormal developments in the hands of the monks. A vast literature was
produced by them, portraying, with vivid minuteness, the pangs of hell.
Volcanoes were said to be the portals of the lower world, that heaved
and sighed as human souls were plunged into the awful depths. God was
held up as a fearful judge, and the saving mercy of Christ himself paled
before the rescuing power of his mother. These fearful caricatures of
God, these detailed, revolting descriptions of pain and anguish, could
not but have a hardening effect upon the minds of men. "To those," says
Lecky, "who do not regard these teachings as true, it must appear
without exception, the most odious in the religious history of the
world, subversive of the very foundations of Christianity."

Finally, the greatest error of monastic teaching was in its false and
baneful distinction between the secular and the religious.
Unquestionably the Christian ideal is founded on some form of
world-renunciation. The teachings and example of Jesus, the lives of the
Apostles, and the characters of the early Christians, exhibit in varying
phases the ideal of self-crucifixion. The doctrine of the cross, with
a