The Wisdom of the Desert | Page 9

never, except in the age of the apostles, has the purely spiritual aim of all religion been kept more steadily in view than it was by the hermits. The best of them -- and it is only from its best men that the true spirit of a movement can be learned -- never for one single instant let slip the truth that no practice or discipline is of any use at all except in so far as it helps towards the attainment of the perfection which is in Christ Jesus. No one will be inclined to deny that it is possible to pick out of the literature stories of excesses which seem to us monstrous. There were many among the hermits who never rose above the idea that asceticism was an end in itself. But the excesses were discouraged and the mistaken idea condemned by the leaders of the movement. Fasting, virginity, labour, the reading and recitation of Holy Scripture, vigils, meditation, and even prayer itself, were looked upon simply as ways of arriving at a perfect life. There is no need to discuss whether or not they mistook the way. Even supposing that they did, at least the end they had in view was one which we must recognise as very great. It is possible, in spite of the evidence of accumulated Christian experience, that a man is hindered, and not helped on the road which leads to union with God, by fasting and watching and poverty, yet since this union is a thing which we also seek, we should, at least, approach with sympathy the study of the teaching of men who made for the goal by a way which was neither broad nor easy.
One more prejudice remains to be noticed, and this is one which has most to do with alienating our sympathy from the early monks. It has been said -- there is no comment on monasticism which we hear more frequently -- that the hermit life was a selfish one, and therefore essentially remote from the spirit of Christ. There is a very obvious retort to this accusation which, in spite of its obviousness, is not so superficial as it seems. The charge is directed against men who gave up everything that is usually counted as desirable. Renunciation like that of the hermits is not usually a symptom of selfishness. It comes from the lips of a generation who have found the service of Christ not incompatible with the full enjoyment of all life's comforts and most of life's pleasures. Perhaps, however, this retort, like most others of its kind, misses the real true point of the charge. The hermits are called selfish because they aimed at being good and not at being useful. The charge derives its real force from the fact that philanthropy, that is, usefulness to humanity, is our chief conception of what religion is. We appeal to the fact that Christ went about doing good, and we hold that the true imitation of Him consists in doing as He did rather than in being as He was. The hermits thought differently. Philanthropy was, in their view, an incidental result, as it were, a by-product of the religious spirit. Here, no doubt, there is a great gulf fixed between us and them. There is a difference of ideal. It is possible to aim at doing good, and snatch now and then, as opportunity offers, a space for the culture and of spirituality, for the "making" of the soul. It is possible also to shape life for the attainment of perfection, welcoming, as it may happen to offer itself, the chance of usefulness. The latter was the ideal of the hermits. Is the former ours? Surely the purest altruism will decline to accept it. We recognise, when we are at our best, that what we ought to aim at is that good should get done, and not that we ourselves should do it. The faithful soul, even when most pitiful of suffering, will still desire less to be useful than to be used in the cause of humanity. Impatience, that glorious impatience to be up and doing which we cannot but admire, rebels against delay and indirect approach. The evil around us is so clamorous for amendment that it seems like a betrayal to spend our strength any way but in the combat with it. Yet it remains, at least for the student of history, a question whether in the end, there is not more good accomplished for humanity through the agency of those who, in the first instance, only aim at being good. The case of the Egyptian hermits is an illustration of what I mean. They did not aim at doing good. This is why we call them selfish. Yet certainly