rt to obtain some closer
knowledge of the Being and Will of God. We know, in any available
clearness, neither what they suffered, nor what they learned. We
cannot estimate the solemnizing or reproving power of their examples
on the less zealous Christian world; and only God knows how far their
prayers for it were heard, or their persons accepted. This only we may
observe with reverence, that among all their numbers, none seemed to
have repented their chosen manner of existence; none perish by
melancholy or suicide; their self-adjudged sufferings are never
inflicted in the hope of shortening the lives they embitter or purify;
and the hours of dream or meditation, on mountain or in cave, appear
seldom to have dragged so heavily as those which, without either
vision or reflection, we pass ourselves, on the embankment and in the
tunnel.

31. But whatever may be alleged, after ultimate and honest scrutiny,
of the follies or virtues of anchorite life, we are unjust to Jerome
if we think of him as its introducer into the West of Europe. He
passed through it himself as a phase of spiritual discipline; but he
represents, in his total nature and final work, not the vexed
inactivity of the Eremite, but the eager industry of a benevolent
tutor and pastor. His heart is in continual fervour of admiration or
of hope--remaining to the last as impetuous as a child's, but as
affectionate; and the discrepancies of Protestant objection by which
his character has been confused, or concealed, may be gathered into
some dim picture of his real self when once we comprehend the
simplicity of his faith, and sympathise a little with the eager
charity which can so easily be wounded into indignation, and is never
repressed by policy.

32. The slight trust which can be placed in modern readings of him, as
they now stand, may be at once proved by comparing the two passages in
which Milman has variously guessed at the leading principles of his
political conduct. "Jerome began (!) and ended his career as a monk of
Palestine; he attained, _he aspired to_, no dignity in the Church.
Though ordained a presbyter against his will, he escaped the episcopal
dignity which was forced upon his distinguished contemporaries."
('History of Christianity,' Book III.)

"Jerome cherished the secret hope, if it was not the avowed object of
his ambition, to succeed Damasus as Bishop of Rome. Is the rejection
of an aspirant so singularly unfit for the station, from his