Terror and despair are on every side, but they are not afraid.
They know what it means to face the demons of the desert, to lie down at
night with wild beasts for companions. They have not yielded to the
depravity of the human heart and the temptations of a licentious age.
They have conquered sinful appetites by self-abnegation and fasting.
They come to a distracted society with a message of peace--a peace won
by courageous self-sacrifice. They call men to save their perishing
souls by surrendering their wills to God and enlisting in a campaign
against the powers of darkness. They appeal to the ancient spirit of
courage and love of hardship. They arouse the dormant moral energies of
the profligate nobles, proud of the past and sick of the present. The
story of Anthony admonished Rome that a life of sensuous gratification
was inglorious, unworthy of the true Roman, and that the flesh could be
mastered by heroic endeavor.
Women, who spent their hours in frivolous amusements, welcomed with
gratitude the discovery that they could be happy without degradation,
and joyfully responded to the call of righteousness. "Despising
themselves," says Kingsley, "despising their husbands to whom they had
been wedded in loveless wedlock, they too fled from a world which had
sated and sickened them."
Woman's natural craving for lofty friendships and pure aspirations found
satisfaction in the monastic ideal. She fled from the incessant broils
of a corrupt court, from the courtesans that usurped the place of the
wife, from the insolence and selfishness of men who scorned even the
appearance of virtue and did not hesitate to degrade even their wives
and sisters.
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