are to
lie; internal assaults so fierce that it was terribly difficult to know
whether he had yielded or not, sudden images of pride and anger and lust
that presented themselves so vividly and attractively that it seemed he
must have willed them; it was not often that he was tempted to sin in
word or deed--such, when they came, rushed on him suddenly; but in the
realm of thought and imagination and motive he would often find himself,
as it were, entering a swarm of such things, that hovered round him,
impeding his prayer, blinding his insight, and seeking to sting the very
heart of his spiritual life. Then once more he would fight himself free
by despising and rejecting them, or would emerge without conscious will
of his own into clearness and serenity.

But as he looked back he regretted nothing. It was true that the
warfare was more subtle and internal, but it was more honourable too;
for to conquer a motive or tame an imagination was at once more arduous
and more far-reaching in its effects than a victory in merely outward
matters, and he seldom failed to thank God half-a-dozen times a day for
having given him the vocation of a monk.

There was one danger, however, that he did not realise, and his
confessor failed to point it out to him; and that was the danger of the
wrong kind of detachment. As has been already seen the theory of the
Religious Life was that men sought it not merely for the salvation of
their own souls, but for that of the world. A monastery was a place
where in a special sense the spiritual commerce of the world was carried
on: as a workman's shed is the place deputed and used by the world for
the manufacture of certain articles. It was the manufactory of grace
where skilled persons were at work, busy at a task of prayer and
sacrament which was to be at other men's service. If the father of a
family had a piece of spiritual work to be done, he went to the
monastery and arranged for it, and paid a fee for the sustenance of
those he employed, as he might go to a merchant's to order a cargo and
settle for its delivery.

Since this was so then, it was necessary that the spiritual workmen
should be in a certain touch with those for whom they worked. It was
true that they must be out of the world, undominated by its principles
and out of love with its spirit; but in another sense they must live in
its heart. To use another analogy they were as windmills, lifted up from
the earth into the high airs of