Basil did not condemn marriage, but he believed that it was incompatible
with the highest spiritual attainments. For the Kingdom of God's sake it
was necessary to forsake all. "Love not the world, neither the things of
the world," embraced to his mind the married state. By avoiding the
cares of marriage a man was sure to escape, so he thought, the gross
sensuality of the age. He struck at the dangers which attend the
possession of riches, by enforcing poverty. An abbot was appointed over
his cloisters to whom absolute obedience was demanded. Everywhere men
needed this lesson of obedience. The discipline of the armies was
relaxed. The authority of religion was set at naught; laxity and
disorder prevailed even among the monks. They went roaming over the
country controlled only by their whims. Insubordination had to be
checked or the monastic institution was doomed. Hence, Basil was
particular to enforce a respect for law and order.

Altogether this was an honest and serious attempt to introduce fresh
power into a corrupt age and to faithfully observe the Biblical commands
as Basil understood them. The floods of iniquity were engulfing even the
church. A new standard had to be raised and an inner circle of pious and
zealous believers gathered from the multitude of half-pagan Christians,
or all was lost.

The subsequent history of Greek monachism has little interest. In
Russia, at a late date, the Greek monks served some purpose in keeping
alive the national spirit under the Tartar yoke, but the practical
benefits to the East were few, in comparison with the vigorous life of
the Western monasticism.

Montalembert, the brilliant champion of Christian monasticism, becomes
an adverse critic of the system in the East, although it is noteworthy
he now speaks of monasticism as it appears in the Greek church, which he
holds to be heretical; yet his indictment is quite true: "They yielded
to all the deleterious impulses of that declining society. They have
saved nothing, regenerated nothing, elevated nothing."

We have visited the hermit in the desert and in the monastery governed
by its abbot and its rules. We must view the monk in one other aspect,
that of theological champion. Here the hermit and the monk of the
monastery meet on common ground. They were fighters, not debaters;
fighters, not disciplined soldiers; fighters, not persuading Christians.
They swarmed down from the mountains like hungry wolves. They fought
her