on the community and family
to which they belonged, and had fled to the desert, there to strive for a
prize above and beyond this life, when they had of their own free-will
renounced all other effort. In the voiceless desert, far from the
enticing echoes of the world, it might be easy to kill every sensual
impulse, to throw off the fetters of the world, and so bring that
humanity, which was bound to the dust through sin and the flesh, nearer
to the pure and incorporate being of the Divinity.

All these men were Christians, and, like the Saviour who had freely taken
torments upon Himself to become the Redeemer, they too sought through the
purifying power of suffering to free themselves from the dross of their
impure human nature, and by severe penance to contribute their share of
atonement for their own guilt, and for that of all their race. No fear of
persecution had driven them into the desert--nothing but the hope of
gaining the hardest of victories.

All the anchorites who had been summoned to the tower were Egyptians and
Syrians, and among the former particularly there were many who, being
already inured to abstinence and penance in the service of the old gods
in their own country, now as Christians had selected as the scene of
their pious exercises the very spot where the Lord must have revealed
Himself to his elect.

At a later date not merely Sinai itself but the whole tract of Arabia
Petraea--through which, as it was said, the Jews at their exodus under
Moses had wandered--was peopled with ascetics of like mind, who gave to
their settlements the names of the resting-places of the chosen people,
as mentioned in the Scriptures; but as yet there was no connection
between the individual penitents, no order ruled their lives; they might
still be counted by tens, though ere long they numbered hundreds and
thousands.

The threat of danger had brought all these contemners of the world and of
life in stormy haste to the shelter of the tower, in spite of their
readiness to die. Only old Kosmas, who had withdrawn to the desert with
his wife--she had found a grave there--had remained in his cave, and had
declared to Gelasius, who shared his cave and who had urged him to
flight, that he was content in whatever place or whatever hour the Lord
should call him, and that it was in God's hands to decide whether old age
or an arrow-shot should open to him the gates of heaven.

It was quite otherwise with the rest of the anch