e world, in order that a
greater glory shall appear.

Six hundred years before Benedict's day, on the site of the cloister of
Monte Cassino stood a temple to Apollo, and just below was a grove
sacred to Venus.

Two hundred years before Benedict's time the Goths had done their work
so well that even the walls of the temple to Apollo were razed, and the
sacred grove became the home of wild beasts.

To this deserted place came Benedict and eleven men, filled with a holy
zeal to erect on this very spot an edifice worthy of the living God.
Here the practical builder and the religious dreamer combined. If you
are going to build a building, why not build upon the walls already laid
and with blocks ready hewn and fashioned!

The Monte Cassino monastery of Benedict rivaled in artistic beauty the
temple that it replaced.

Man is a building animal, and the same Creative Energy that impelled the
Greeks and later the Romans to plan, devise, toil and build, now played
through the good monk Benedict. His desire to create was a form of the
great Cosmic Urge, that lives eternally and is building in America a
finer, better and nobler religion than the world has ever seen--a
Religion of Humanity--a religion of which at times Benedict caught vivid
passing glimpses, as one sees at night the landscape brilliantly
illumined by the lightning's flash.

* * * * *

The motto of Benedict was "Ecce Labora." These words were carved on the
entrance to every Benedictine Monastery.

The monastic idea originated in the Orient, where Nature placed no
special penalty on idleness. Indeed, labor may have been a curse in
Asia. Morality is crystallized expediency, and both, as we are told, are
matters of geography, as well as time.

And truth it is, that north of the Mediterranean idleness is the curse,
not labor.

The rule of Benedict was not unlike that of the Shakers, for near every
monastery was a nunnery. The association of men and women, although
quite limited, was better for both than their absolute separation, as
with the Trappists, who regard it as a sin even to look upon the face of
a woman.

The thrift and industry of the Benedictines was worthy of Ann Lee and
our friends at Lebanon. A man who works eight hours, with fair
intelligence, and does not set out to make consumption and waste the
business of his life, grows rich. Thoreau was right--an hour a day will
support you. But Thoreau was wrong in suppo