the body, and which were universal, were a hindrance to the enjoyment of
that spiritual life which Christianity unfolded. As the soul was
immortal and the body was mortal, that which was an impediment to the
welfare of what was most precious was early denounced. In order to
preserve the soul from the pollution of material pleasures, a strenuous
protest was made. Hence that defiance of the pleasures of sense which
gave loftiness and independence of character soon became a recognized
and cardinal virtue. The Christian stood aloof from the banquets and
luxuries which undermined the virtues on which the strength of man is
based. The characteristic vices of the Pagan world were unchastity and
fondness for the pleasures of the table. To these were added the lesser
vices of display and ornaments in dress. From these the Christian fled
as fatal enemies to his spiritual elevation. I do not believe it was the
ascetic ideas imported from India, such as marked the Brahmins, nor the
visionary ideas of the Sufis and the Buddhists, and of other Oriental
religionists, which gave the impulse to monastic life and led to the
austerities of the Church in the second and third centuries, so much as
the practical evils with which every one was conversant, and which were
plainly antagonistic to the doctrine that the life is more than meat.
The triumph of the mind over the body excited an admiration scarcely
less marked than the voluntary sacrifice of life to a sacred cause.
Asceticism, repulsive in many of its aspects, and even unnatural and
inhuman, drew a cordon around the Christians, and separated them from
the sensualities of ordinary life. It was a reproof as well as a
protest. It attacked Epicureanism in its most vulnerable point. "How
hardly shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of God?" Hence
the voluntary poverty, the giving away of inherited wealth to the poor,
the extreme simplicity of living, and even retirement from the
habitations of men, which marked the more earnest of the new believers.
Hence celibacy, and avoidance of the society of women,--all to resist