-reaching in its effect.

Monasticism was not the creation of Christianity; the religions of the
East had their devotees, like the Jewish Essenes, who abandoned the
common pursuits of men for a life of solitude, idle introspection, and
rapt contemplation. The wildernesses and solitary places of the East had
been made yet more weird by the presence of unhumanlike hermits, even
before the days of John the Baptist. Christian monasticism, also, had
its birth in the dreamy East. Antony, by his example, and Pachomius, by
enthusiastic propaganda of monastic ideas, laid the foundations of that
system which was to honeycomb the whole world with bands of men and
women who repudiated the natural pleasures and the essential duties of
the world.

Of the motive that inspired the monastic life, St. Augustine says: "No
corporeal fecundity produces this race of virgins; they are no offspring
of flesh and blood. Ask you the mother of these? It is the Church. None
other bears these sacred virgins but that one espoused to a single
husband, Christ. Each of these so loved that beautiful One among the
sons of men, that, unable to conceive Him in the flesh as Mary did, they
conceived Him in their heart, and kept for him even the body in
integrity."

We may admit this intense love of God as a moving force, and still claim
that the hermits and anchoresses of the early Church were actuated
largely by the desire to redeem themselves from the wrath to come and to
gain a personal entrance to the paradise of God. Salvation was an
individual responsibility, and it admitted of no compromise with the
world. The road to perfection could be cheered with company only,
providing others were willing to set out upon it by first renouncing all
natural joys, and by despising all human ties. The claims of close
kindred were not allowed to hinder in the personal quest for heavenly
rewards. The tearfully pleaded needs of an aged parent were not
permitted to detain at home the daughter who had consecrated herself as
the bride of Christ; Paula turned her back upon the outstretched hands
of her infant son, in order that in the Holy Land she might spend her
days in ecstatic contemplation of the Jerusalem above. It is recorded to
the high praise of Saint Fulgentius that he sorely wounded his mother's
heart by despising her sorrow at his departure.

True it is that many of the earliest consecrated handmaidens of the
Church continued to reside in their city homes, an