Monasticism

The Christian creeds, different as they may be from one another, unite in demanding that faith must exhibit itself in a Christ-like life: that, in fact, Christianity only comes by its own where it issues in a characteristic life. A genuinely Christian life is the common ideal of Christendom. But what is the nature of that life to be? Here the ways part. The diversity of creeds among us is, in the last analysis, as much due to the difference of beliefs as to that of the ideals of life engendered by the belief. All other distinctions, in a religious sense, are unessential, or derive from hence their importance and their meaning. It is not only theological 10wrangling, nor priestly lust of power, nor national diversities, to which schism in the Church is due—they have had their share, it is true, in originating it, and still help to maintain it; but what has really divided the Church, and given permanence to that division, is the variety of answers to the question,—What is the ideal of life? It is with the relations of groups not otherwise than with those of individuals. Not theoretic opinions, but feelings and aims, sunder and unite.

If we ask either the Roman or the Greek Church wherein the most perfect Christian life consists, both alike reply: in the service of God, to the abnegation of all the good things of this life—property, marriage, personal will, and honour; in a word, in the religious renunciation of the world, that is, in Monasticism. The true monk is the true and most perfect Christian. Monasticism, then, is not in the Catholic Churches a more or less accidental phenomenon alongside of others; 11but, as the Churches are to-day, and as they have for centuries understood the Gospel, it is an institution based on their essential nature; it is the Christian life. We may therefore be allowed to expect that in the ideals of monasticism the ideals of the Church will be expressed, and in the history of monasticism the history of the Church.

But is it possible for monasticism to have varying ideals? Is a history of monasticism possible? Is it not condemned to pass through history in the everlasting repetition of a grand monotony? Of what variety are the ideals of poverty, chastity, and resolute flight from the world capable? What sort of development can they experience or introduce who have turned their back not on the world only, but on its changing forms—that is, on its history? Is not the renunciation of the world essentially the abnegation of all development and of all history? Or, if it has not been so in fact, is not a history of monkish ideals from the very first a protest against the 12 very conception of monasticism? It appears so—and it perhaps not merely appears so. But the history of the West shows even the most careless observer that monasticism has had its history, not only external but internal, full of the mightiest changes and the mightiest results. What a chasm divides the silent anchorite of the desert, who for a lifetime has looked no man in the face, from the monk who imposed his commands upon a world! And between these extremes are the hundreds of figures, peculiar and distinct, and yet monks, all inspired and dominated by the idea of a renunciation! And yet more, all stirrings of the heart, the most passionate and the most delicate, meet us in that world of renunciation. Art, poetry, science, have found in it a foster-mother; nay, the beginnings of our civilisation are a chapter from the history of monasticism. Was all this only possible to a monasticism that abandoned its ideals, or do its most special ideals admit of such effects? Does 13renunciation constitute a second world and a second history, like the usual world and the usual history, but purer and greater, or must it transform the world into a wilderness? Is the true monasticism that which sees in the world the temple of God, and which perceives with rapture in silent nature the breath of the divine spirit; or is that the true monasticism which maintains that the world with its nature and its history is the devil’s? Both these watchwords resound to us from the kingdom of renunciation: which of them is authentic, having the sanction of historical truth? In monasticism the individual has been released from the bonds of society and custom, and raised to a noble self-reliance and humanity; in monasticism, again, it has been enslaved to narrowness, empty barrenness, and servile dependence. Is the original ideal to be blamed for the one or praised for the other?

Such questions, and others like them, arise here. The evangelical Christian has in their 14correct answer no merely historical interest. Even if he be convinced that Christian perfection is not to be sought in the forms of monasticism, he has yet to test that system and establish its true character. Only then is it in truth overcome when a better can be set above the best it has to offer. But he who disparagingly casts it aside understands it not. He who understands it will recognise how much there is to learn from it. Nay, he will be able to learn from it not as from an opponent but as from a friend; not only not to the injury of his evangelical standpoint, but rather to its advantage. Let us then seek to gain a true appreciation of monasticism by means of an historical survey.