I.

Monasticism is not as old as the Church. It is true that the Church of the fourth century, in which it took shape, thought it 15 found even in the apostolic age essentially similar institutions; but the models which some persons have invoked, and still invoke, as precedents belong chiefly to legend. Yet the ancient Church was not wholly in error in its view. The idea of detachment, of forming close associations within the congregation, and of practising a special renunciation, could obviously not occur to individuals in the earliest decades of the Church’s existence. But those who felt themselves driven by the Spirit of God to dedicate their whole life to the spread of the Gospel, as a rule gave up all their possessions, and wandered in voluntary poverty from one city to another as Apostles or Evangelists of Christ. Others, renouncing property and marriage, devoted themselves wholly to the service of the poor and needy of the congregation. These apostolic men were doubtless, when monasticism sought for its origins in the apostolic age, again remembered. And further, all Christians, so far as they were 16serious, were equally dominated by the belief that the world and its history had but a short span allowed before the end. Where this expectation is a living force, life, as usually lived, can no longer maintain an independent value, however conscientiously a man may recognise the calls of duty. The Apostle Paul, under special circumstances, repeatedly and expressly drove these home to the hearts of his congregations. For this reason he has been claimed on the Evangelical side as an opponent of monkery and all ascetic forms of Christianity; for he was the champion of Christian freedom. But we must not forget that even he has laid it down, in reference to worldly goods, that it is more advantageous to the Christian to renounce them, and that such is also the teaching of the Gospels. Yet by this that which has developed itself as monasticism is neither recommended nor commanded. Christ laid on us no heavy burdens as a new and painful law; and still less did He see 17salvation in asceticism as such. He Himself did not live as an ascetic; but He set before us a perfect simplicity and purity of thought, and a detachment of heart which, in abnegation and tribulation, in the possession and use of earthly goods, should remain unalterably the same. The simplest and hardest command in the Law—the love of God and of our neighbour—He set at the head of all, and opposed to all ceremonial sanctity and to all over-refined morality. He bade us take up each his own cross, that is, the sufferings which God appoints, and follow Him. The following of Jesus, in which is realised the search for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, includes in itself the renunciation of all that clogs or hinders. But monasticism in later times tried so to adapt itself to the decisive Evangelical command ‘Deny thyself,’ that it fixed the bounds of denial without regard to individual disposition or calling.

When, in the first century and in the beginning of the second, Christianity took 18up its mission in the Græco-Roman world, it was welcomed by those susceptible to its influence as the message of renunciation and of resurrection. The latter offered the delivering hope, and the former demanded the severance from the world of sin and sensuality. The first Christians saw in heathendom, in its idolatry, in its public life, even in its political constitution, the Kingdom of Satan actually realised; and they demanded therefore renunciation of that world. But to them it was no irreconcilable contradiction that the earth is the Lord’s, guided and ruled by Him, and that it yet lies at the same time under the devastating rule of Satan. Again, they knew themselves as citizens of a world to come, upon which they were soon to enter. One who thus believes may easily make light of all that is around him, without falling into the attitude which is called pessimism, and which at best is the mental habit of the disappointed and wearied hero. He will keep the joy of ‘life’; 19for he wishes for nothing more earnestly than to live, and he will gladly surrender himself to the death which leads to life. There is no room for the abnegation of joy where there is a living belief that God made and rules the world, or where it is clearly realised that not a sparrow falls without our Father. True it is that the imagination was then most actively stirred by the conception that the present course of the world stands forfeit to judgment, inasmuch as the trail of the serpent is over the whole creation which thus deserves destruction; but this world was nevertheless recognised as the sphere of God’s kingdom, and thus worthy of a transforming renewal. Christianity had to take up the struggle alike with the gross and with the refined sensuality of heathenism; and Christianity, as has been well said, exhausted all her energies in proclaiming the great message: “Ye are not animals, but immortal souls; not the slaves of the flesh and of matter, but the lords of your flesh, and 20servants of the living God only.” All ideals of culture must fall into the background till this message is believed. Better that man should regard marriage, eating and drinking, nay, his human side in itself as impure, than that he should make these things impure by sensual degeneracy. No new principle can assert itself in this world of sluggishness and custom unless it applies the keenest criticism to the condition of the present time and makes the most exacting demands upon us. Such demands the oldest Christianity did make; but soon arose the question what their theoretic foundations were to be, and to what extent they were to be binding.