Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE MONACHISM OF THE WEST. 109
and his constant contemplation of the unseen, won such iniiuence
in the world that multitudes flocked around his
pillar, and bishops, archbishops, even emperors, listened to
his words with reverence, as if to a special organ of the
voice of God. The life which he lived would not have been
intense conviction :
possible for any man unless sustained by
and that life manifested at any rate remarkable power of
self-denial, shaming by its simplicity and purity
the world s
glaring vices, gluttony, dishonesty,
and lust. Fantastic as it
was, it occupied itself evidently with unseen eternal things,
and in this way did actually bring down to earth influence
out of the invisible world. The power which these ascetics
were winning was one before which the forces of the world
trembled : in some way or another, men in a lonely wilder
ness had won an authority before which monarchs quivered
on their thrones. These men were absolutely incorruptible
in an age when every one had his price, and though they
constantly erred in their judgments, they had respect in
these judgments every body knew it to truth and righteous
ness. They made their influence felt on the side of mercy,
gentleness, and charity ; they were always against the op
pressor and on the side of the poor.
Here then was a new power, which, when organised and
developed in the more rational and manly West, had in it
the germs of a very lofty and potent influence on the develop
ment of society. In the East, however, it was soon, like the
East itself, exhausted and doomed to decay. Self-enfolded
nothing can live. And age by age
grew more boneless and bloodless ;
and
this Eastern monachisrn
now probably the
dullest and dirtiest sloths that are slinking about Christendom,
are these monks of the Eastern Church.
The monachism of the West looked out of itself and lived.
There is a clear, bold, working aspect about it from the first.