MONASTICISM
4T7
MONASTICISM
It perished finally, not from sacrilegious hands nor Protestant animosities, but from its own inherent vices.
jM. de Montalembert, the latest and perhaps ablest de- fender of monachism, breaks ground with a vindication of monasteries from the charge of being the asylums of broken hearts ; for weak, exhausted, and disap- pointed energies; for men and women tired of the world, and unfit for the strife and battle of life ; main- taining that they were peopled rather by the young and the brave, and bj' those who, as far as this world is concerned, had everything to lose in assuming mo- nastic vows ; by those who had a large surplusage of dauntless energy for the conquest of nature, for indus- trious grappling with the barrenness of the desert, or the riotous prodigality of the prima3val forest. He also asserts that these mysterious precursors of civili- zation and order, these men of praj'er and faith, solved the mysterj' of life, and showed to a barbaric and selfish world the secret of real happiness ; and urges that, so far from wishing to escape from their vows, or from the fellowship of the cloister, thcj' conceived a passionate attachment for each other and to their self- imposed restraints ; that their mutual aftection was stronger than death ; and that, instead of morose and hopeless abnegation of humanity— benignitas, sim- plicitas, hilaritas — gayetj' and songs of joy transformed their exile from the world into the paradise of God. But "monasticism," Dr. Schatf has well said, "is not the normal form of Christian pietj'. It is an abnormal phenomenon, a humanly devised service of God (conip. Colos. ii, lG-23), and not rarely a sad enervation and repulsive distortion of the Christianitj'^ of the Bible. It is to be estimated, therefore, not by the extent of its self-denial, not by its outward acts of self-dis- cipline (which may all be found in heathenism, Juda- ism, and Mohammedanism as well), but by the Chris- tian spirit of humilitj'^ and love which animated it. For humility is the groundwork, and love the all-ruling principle of the Christian life, and the distinctive char- acteristic of the Christian religion. "Without love to God and charitj' to man, the severest self-punishment and the utmost abandonment of the world are worth- less before God (comp. 1 Cor. xiii, 1-3). . . . Even in the most favorable case monasticism falls short of har- monious moral development, and of that symmetry of virtue which meets us in perfection in Christ, and next to him in the apostles. It lacks the finer and gentler traits of character, which are ordinarilj' brought out onlj' in the school of daily family life and under the social ordinances of God. Its morality is rather neg- ative than positive. There is more virtue in the tem- perate and thankful enjoyment of the gifts of God than in total abstinence; in charitable and well-seasoned speech than in total silence; in connubial chastity than in celibac3^; in self-denying practical labor for the Church than in solitary asceticism, which only pleases self and profits no one else." Believing this, we are constrained to maintain further that, although the monastic orders have done much to promote the good of man, the ideal which they have proposed to themselves is no more that of genuine sacrifice than a collection of probable statements is history. The high- est forms of self-surrender are those of which the world knows nothing, and whose beauty is derived not from the halo of sacerdotal sentiment, but from the quiet discharge of unromantic and, it may be, irksome duties.
Montalembert also makes light of the charges brought against monasticism, even in its decline, and repu- diates the right of any layman to cast a stone at the accumulations of wealth and luxury under which at length it succumbed. In an introductory chapter on the decline of monastic institutions, he admits that their corruption and abuses were denounced by the monks themselves, that the shield which religion had thrown over them was pierced and shattered from within, and that the most eff"ective instrument in their downfall was what he terms the infamous "com-