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must admit the possibility or probability of our coming from time to time into momentous and conscious contact with that world. But as to the frequency and character of actual cases of contact, as well as about particular instances alleged, there may be wide differences of opinion.
Of the eremetical life in general a word should perhaps here be said. That manner of life was a human attempt to reproduce one portion of the example given by the Divine Model—that of His forty days' fast and temptation in the wilderness and of His long night-vigils and prayers on the mountainsides. In ages very different from ours it had a singularly strong appeal for earnest men and women. How strong we may gather from Athanasius's account of the effect produced by Anthony's example during and immediately after his lifetime:—
"Among the mountains there were monasteries as if tabernacles filled with divine choirs, singing, studying, fasting, praying, exulting in the hope of things to come, working for alms deeds, having love and harmony one towards another. And truly it was given to one there to see a peculiar comity of piety and righteousness. Neither injurer nor injured was there, nor chiding of the tax-collector; but a multitude of ascetics, whose one feeling was towards holiness. So that a stranger, seeing the monasteries and their order, would be led to cry out: 'How beauteous are thy homes, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel; as shady groves, as a garden on a river, as tents which the Lord has pitched, and as cedars by the waters!'"
Such a tribute to the monastic and contemplative life is especially interesting as coming from one who was himself thoroughly a man of zeal, action, and conflict. See also infra the life of S. Austin for the sentiments of that Father towards monasticism.S. BENEDICT AND S. SCHOLASTICA
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