ness, the foulness and
purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood,
fierceness, and tenderness, that battle in the restless heart of man."

A careful and sympathetic survey of monastic history compels the
conclusion that monasticism, while not uniformly a blessing to the
world, was not an unmitigated evil. The system presents one long series
of perplexities and contradictions. One historian shuts his eyes to its
pernicious effects, or at least pardons its transgressions, on the
ground that perfection in man or in institutions is unattainable.
Another condemns the whole system, believing that the sum of its evils
far outweighs whatever benefits it may have conferred upon mankind.
Schaff cuts the Gordian knot, maintaining that the contradiction is
easily solved on the theory that it was not monasticism, as such, which
has proved a blessing to the Church and the world. "It was Christianity
in monasticism," he says, "which has done all the good, and used this
abnormal mode of life as a means of carrying forward its mission of love
and peace."

To illustrate the diversities of opinion on this subject, and
incidentally to show how difficult it is to present a well-balanced,
symmetrically fair and just estimate of the monastic institution as a
whole, contrast the opinions of four celebrated men. Pius IX. refers to
the, monks as "those chosen phalanxes of the army of Christ which have
always been the bulwark and ornament of the Christian republic as well
as of civil society." But then he was the Pope of Rome, the Arch-prelate
of the Church. "Monk," fiercely demands Voltaire, "Monk, what is that
profession of thine? It is that of having none, of engaging one's self
by an inviolable oath to be a fool and a slave, and to live at the
expense of others." But he was the philosophical skeptic of Paris.
"Where is the town," cries Montalembert, "which has not been founded or
enriched or protected by some religious community? Where is the church
which owes not to them a patron, a relic, a pious and popular tradition?
Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we
may be sure that religion has left there her stamp by the hand of the
monk." But this was Montalembert, the Roman Catholic historian, and the
avowed champion of the monks. "A cruel, unfeeling temper," writes
Gibbon, "has distinguished the monks of every age and country; their
stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal