The Wisdom of the Desert | Page 8

idea of philanthropy is simply one expression of a widespread shrinking from the suffering which is the common lot of humanity. We have almost ceased to speak of this shrinking as cowardice in the case of the individual who dreads pain for himself. We frankly stigmatise as brutal the infliction of pain as punishment, which former generations regarded as an edifying spectacle. It is therefore peculiarly difficult for us to appreciate the position of men who deliberately refused to gratify the cravings of their bodies, who joyfully sought out suffering for themselves, and did not hesitate to encourage others to "crucify" their bodies. It is not to be denied that our position with regard to physical asceticism finds a specious justification. We may ask whether it is believable that the Creator can be pleased with creatures who reject His gifts and nullify the instincts which He implanted in them; whether we can imagine the tender and compassionate Saviour demanding as the price of following Him such renunciation as St. Antony's. Such questions are not easy to answer. They open up the whole problem of the place of asceticism -- asksis, exercise, discipline -- in the Christian life. It is not possible here to enter on such a discussion. There are, however, two considerations which, if they in no way solve the general difficulty, yet may serve to mitigate the prejudice which the special austerities of the Egyptian hermits arouse in us. In the first place, we must remember that these men aimed at perfection, and hoped to attain it by a literal imitation of Christ. Now Christ on one occasion fasted forty days and forty nights. It is quite natural that men who aimed at imitating Him should fast and should try to make their fasts like His in their severity. Christ also lived a virgin life. It is only to be expected that His imitators should determine to be virgin too -- virgin in body and, if we may use the expression, virgin in mind, according to His explanation of the meaning of purity. Christ describes Himself as homeless and poor. He was worse off than the foxes and the birds. We cannot wonder that the desire of imitating Him has led men to renounce their property and to accept homelessness as one of the conditions of living perfectly. Christ's life terminated in the torture of the cross. To "crucify" themselves -- the word is a favourite one with them -- was part of the ideal of the monks. They meant by "crucifixion" every kind of hardship, privation, and pain home voluntarily for Christ's sake. It was nothing else than an attempt at participation in the suferings of Christ. Once, on a feast day, a disciple moistened his master's bread with a few drops of oil. The old hermit burst into tears, and said, "My lord is crucified, and shall I eat oil?" Christ proclaimed that a man could not be His disciple without hating his father and mother and his own life also. The words came as a challenge to those who wished to follow Him, a challenge which the monks accepted literally. Of course, it is possible to say that all such simple acceptance of Christ's teaching and literal following out of His sayings is a narrowing, even a perverting, of the spirit of the gospel, and that it leads to a kind of life quite different from that which the Lord contemplated for His disciples. This may be so. To discuss it is to enter upon that larger question of the place of asceticism in the Christian life which we have already passed by. Whether we are prepared to recognise the monastic ideal as the ultimate and loftiest conception of the teaching of Christ or not does not for our present purpose seem to matter. The hermits' life was certainly an attempt to imitate Christ and obey His commandments. No one who loves the Lord can refuse to sympathise with men who, even mistakenly, have tried very hard to follow Him. The second consideration which I wish to urge in mitigation of our prejudice against the extremity of the hermits' physical asceticism is this. They never regarded it as anything but a discipline, a means to an end. They have been accused of being the slaves of a mechanical theory of virtue, of imagining that religion consisted in outward observances, of teaching that fasting and watching were righteousness. There is hardly any accusation possible which would be more decisively disproved by an appeal to the facts of the case. That it should have been made and repeated, as it has been, is a very curious instance of the confidence with which we are all inclined to dogmatise about things of which we are almost ignorant. Probably