f
matter, to rise above the wants of the body, to exterminate animal
passions and appetites, to hide from a world which luxury corrupted. The
Christian recluses were thus led to bury themselves in cells among the
mountains and deserts, in dreary and uncomfortable caverns, in isolated
retreats far from the habitation of men,--yea, among wild beasts,
clothing themselves in their skins and eating their food, in order to
commune with God more effectually, and propitiate His favor. Their
thoughts were diverted from the miseries which they ought to have
alleviated and the ignorance which they ought to have removed, and were
concentrated upon themselves, not upon their relatives and neighbors.
The cries of suffering humanity were disregarded in a vain attempt to
practise doubtful virtues. How much good those pious recluses might have
done, had their piety taken a more practical form! What missionaries
they might have made, what self-denying laborers in the field of active
philanthropy, what noble teachers to the poor and miserable! The
conversion of the world to Christianity did not enter into their minds
so much as the desire to swell the number of their communities. They
only aimed at a dreamy pietism,--at best their own individual salvation,
rather than the salvation of others. Instead of reaching to the beatific
vision, they became ignorant, narrow, and visionary; and, when learned,
they fought for words and not for things. They were advocates of subtile
and metaphysical distinctions in theology, rather than of those
practical duties and simple faith which primitive Christianity enjoined.
Monastic life, no less than the schools of Alexandria, was influential
in creating a divinity which gave as great authority to dogmas that are
the result of intellectual deductions, as those based on direct and
original declarations. And these deductions were often gloomy, and
colored by the fears which were inseparable from a belief in divine
wrath rather than divine love. The genius of monasticism, ancient and
modern, is the propitiation of the Divinity who seeks to punish rather
than to forgive. It invented Purgatory, to escape the awful burnings of
an everlasting hell of physical sufferings. It pervaded the whole
theology of the Middle Ages, filling hamlet and convent alike with an
atmosphere of fear and wrath, and creating a cruel spiritual despotism.
The recluse, isolated and lonely, consumed himself with phantoms,
fancied devils, an