Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

104 THE MONASTIC SYSTEM.
familiar with their purport ; alas ! so familiar that we can
hardly realise the startling emphasis with which they would
fall on the unaccustomed but eager ears, which were listening
in those days
to the word of Eternal Life. Men believed
profoundly that those words were spoken on earth by the Lord
of everlasting glory, and they were taught by inspired lips
that His life was the Light of the world. Was it not most
natural, and indeed inevitable, that those on whom the power
of the higher
life descended should take these words in what
seemed to be their simplest sense, and try what would come
of an honest endeavour to work them out as literally in
practice ?
The first Christian ascetics were like men dazzled by the
splendours of the invisible world that had burst suddenly
upon their sight. The higher and eternal interests of their
being seemed so transcendent that the present was eclipsed
and vanished. The world became a prison, and all that they
asked of earth was a lonely wilderness, wherein they might
feel themselves free to think only of heaven. They sought a
gymnasium for spiritual
exercises. Just as the athletes sub
mitted themselves to a special discipline that they might
contend successfully in the arena, so, they thought, the
spiritual
faculties needed to be drawn forth and strained to
their highest tension by some special culture, which should be
quite other than, and apart from, the common duties and
burdens of life.
There is an important sense, surely, in which the ascetic
was right. We are here to train the highest part of us for
lofty service ;
to detach it from its
bondage
to the world and
the flesh, and to stretch its
powers to their full strain, by
exercising them constantly and strenuously in their appropriate
sphere. But that perfect school of discipline is just what
God has provided for us in the scene of our daily callings,
the world of our daily interests, and the home of our daily