"
[Footnote K: Appendix, Note K.]
The doctrine of future punishment reached its most repulsive and
abnormal developments in the hands of the monks. A vast literature was
produced by them, portraying, with vivid minuteness, the pangs of hell.
Volcanoes were said to be the portals of the lower world, that heaved
and sighed as human souls were plunged into the awful depths. God was
held up as a fearful judge, and the saving mercy of Christ himself paled
before the rescuing power of his mother. These fearful caricatures of
God, these detailed, revolting descriptions of pain and anguish, could
not but have a hardening effect upon the minds of men. "To those," says
Lecky, "who do not regard these teachings as true, it must appear
without exception, the most odious in the religious history of the
world, subversive of the very foundations of Christianity."
Finally, the greatest error of monastic teaching was in its false and
baneful distinction between the secular and the religious.
Unquestionably the Christian ideal is founded on some form of
world-renunciation. The teachings and example of Jesus, the lives of the
Apostles, and the characters of the early Christians, exhibit in varying
phases the ideal of self-crucifixion. The doctrine of the cross, with
all that it signifies, is the most powerful force in the spread of
Christianity. The spiritual nature of man needs to be trained and
disciplined. But does this truth lead the Christian to the monastic
method? Was the self-renunciation of Jesus like that of the ascetics,
with their ecstasies and self-punishments? Is God more pleased with the
recluse who turns from a needy world to shut himself up to prayer and
meditation, than He is with him who cultivates holy emotions and
heavenly aspirations, while pursuing some honorable and useful calling?
The answer to these questions discloses the chief fallacy in the
monastic ideal, the effect of which was the creation of an artificial
piety.
Pages:
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319