The Wisdom of the Desert | Page 2

is for us, perhaps
the man, perhaps the God, at least the One who fed men and healed
them and taught them as none other ever did. Blindly sometimes,
perplexedly always, we hurry to the hovels of the hungry and the
bedsides of those who suffer even loathsomely; we build libraries and
schools, being sure at least of this, that in doing these things we follow
Him.
To all these various ideals Christ has been found entirely responsive.
Each has found in Him a starting-point from which to escape the
bondage of materialism. It has never, of course, been true that one great
purpose has possessed the followers of Christ to the exclusion of every
other. The conception of the gospel liberty lay quite consciously behind
the enthusiasm for pure truth. The most faithful statesmen of the
mediaeval Kingdom of God washed the sores of lepers and cast their
cloaks over the shoulders of beggars on the wayside. The dominating
conception of religion has always been permeated, leavened, tempered
with conceptions of the Master's meaning which were strange to it.
There has always been, besides, one great conception of religion which
has existed along with each of the others in its turn. Christianity has
always involved a hunger and thirst after righteousness. Always and
everywhere Christians have felt the unquenchable desire to be good,
and have seen in Christ the great example of perfection. There has been
no age in the history of the Church in which the idea of imitating Christ
has failed to make an appeal to the souls of the faithful.

Yet even this desire has had its period of special intensity, its peculiar
region where it became for a while the expression of Christianity.
During the fourth and fifth centuries, in, the deserts of Egypt and
Palestine, the craving for perfection was more painful and more
narrowly exclusive than ever elsewhere. Thousands of men and women,
in response to a passionate hunger after righteousness, set themselves
to become perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect. They were not,
indeed, careless about right belief and the holding fast of the faith. The
accusation of heresy was a thing which seemed to them wholly
intolerable. Yet to them the supreme importance of being good was so
felt that it seemed of necessity to bring with it a true faith. "What is the
faith? " asked a brother once. The abbot Pimenion replied to him, "It is
to live always in charity and humility, and to do good to your
neighbonr." Their absorption in the pursuit of holiness made
speculation seem vain and impious. "Oh, Antony," said the heavenly
voice, "turn your attention to yourself. As for the judgments of God, it
is not fitting that you should learn them." Nor must we think of the
hermits as disregarding the claims which the Church made upon their
obedience; still less as neglecting the claims of the poor and suffering.
We shall see, later, how they thought about the Church, and how unjust
it is to call them selfish. Here, first of all, it is necessary to understand
that they were not chiefly theologians, or churchmen, or philanthropists,
but imitators of Christ. Their desire was to be good. That they also
believed rightly and did good followed -- and these things, did follow --
from their being good.
This aim of theirs ought not to be strange to us. Indeed, it cannot be. In
the midst of our multiplied activities there is something in us which
responds to the ideal of being, as well as doing, good. It is the WAY in
which they sought to attain their end, and not the end itself, which is
incomprehensible and generally repulsive to the modern mind. It is so,
I think, mainly because it is so absolutely strange to us. Our
imaginations refuse to aid us in the effort to realize a system of
religious life based upon complete isolation from the world. To us the
activities of life -- the getting and spending, the learning and teaching,
philanthropy, intercourse, and the opportunities for influence --
constitute life itself. It is as difficult for us to form a definite conception

of a life apart from the world, from business, society, and the
movements of human thought, as it is to realize that life of disembodied
waiting which we expect in Paradise. Yet this complete isolation was
what the Egyptian hermits strove to attain; and if we are to appreciate
the value of their teaching we must, first of all, grasp the fact that they
were real men on whom the sun shone and the winds blew, men with
local habitations, and not phantoms or unsubstantial figures in a dream.
If we conceive a fourth-century traveller starting as Palladius did from
Alexandria, we may