character; yet there is a unity about our accounts of the institutions bearing their name that pleads for their consistence with truth, either as the result of previous influences upon the individual or as produced by the gradual development of events. The Cynics, when in the strictness of their first severity, appear to have more nearly resembled the ascetics of the east. Antisthenes wore only a coarse cloak, full of holes; he carried a wallet; and confined himself to the simplest diet. The expression, "I had rather be mad than sensual," would not be out of place in the mind of a Budhist; but the snarling propensities that won for him the name of "The Dog" would have been entirely discountenanced by Gótama. The property of Diogenes consisted in a cloak, a wallet, and a staff; he ate his meals in public, and slept in his famous tub or the porticos of public buildings. He too sought to annihilate the body, but the means he took for this purpose were not such as Budhism approves, nor would this system hold in any estimation whatever a man who revelled in filth and practised inde cencies.

The vow of the Nazarite was the only ascetic custom of which we have any notice in the sacred Scriptures, as existing among the children of Israel; and, as in the case of blood-revenge, the regulations given by Moses may have been intended rather to restrain the pernicious effects of a custom already established, than to introduce a new principle among the people of God. It was a sacrifice of the whole man, body and mind, to the Lord; and as the procreation of children appeared to the Israelites to be a duty, and not a degradation, there was no inconsistency in the mother of Sampson becoming a Nazarite that she might have a son. The Rechabites, who are called by Jerome "patres monachorum," refrained from wine and the erection of substantial dwellings, but the aim of their observances appears simply to have been, to maintain their nationality and independence.

The first order of recluses, for the knowledge of whose practices we have to go exclusively to the records of extra-Indian literature, is that of the Essencs. The Pharisees were more nearly allied to the Brahmans of India, whilst the Sadducees partook of the scepti cism of the Budhists, and the Essenes of their asceticism. The Essenes gave themselves up to a contemplative mode of life, avoided the ordinary pleasures of existence, and repudiated marriage; they despised riches, and had one common fund; commerce was avoided; they took their meals in common, each person

having a loaf of bread set before him, with a single plate of one kind of food, and they drank only water; their garments were not renewed until worn out; they abstained from conversation on ordinary topics, endeavoured to maintain a perfect tranquillity of mind upon all occasions, and were unmoved amidst the most cruel tortures; a noviciate of three years was required before any one could enter into the order, after which they took an oath that they would obey the commands of the elders, and conceal nothing from the community; they had villages of their own, or when in cities lived apart from the rest of mankind; and they rejected sacrifices, offering only gifts or self-consecration at the temple. Like other communities of a similar kind, they were frequently joined by those who were suffering from remorse of conscience, by those who were disgusted with the vanities of the world, and by the aged. Near Alexandria, on the shores of lake Moeris, resided an order of recluses called Therapeutae, who are supposed to have been a branch of the Essenes; but this opinion is controverted. They were shut up in separate cells, lived on bread and water, and ate only in the evening.

The earlier heretics, in many instances, distinguished themselves by the course of self-denial they enjoined upon their disciples. Of this kind were Saturninus, Marcion, Bardisanes, Tatian, Severus, Manichaeus, and Hierax. The followers of these misguided men macerated their bodies by repeated austerities, and shunned every kind of indulgence with rigid pertinacity. They denounced wedlock, as being a great hindrance to the Christian principle; and held abstinence and meditation in high esteem. The followers of Tatian substituted water for wine in the administration of the eucharist. They were called encratitae, the temperate, and hydroparastatae and acquarii, water-offerers. It was supposed by Severus that wine and women were produced by the evil principle, as they are the cause of the chief miseries of man. The Marcionites admitted none to baptism who were married, and none to the eucharist who did not renounce wedlock. On the other hand, Elxai despised continence, and obliged his followers to marry. The Ebionites, who were supposed to be so called from their poverty, with some other of the heretical sects enumerated above, held that it was wrong to possess anything beyond that which is absolutely necessary for daily subsistence, as the present world, in its very nature, apart from its abuse, is the exclusive possession of Satan,

and therefore all communion with it must be more or less connected with sin.

But, although the principal ascetics of heathendom and heresy have now passed under our review, all their mortifications and abstractions appear to be feeble and effete, when compared with the manifestations of the same principle that are seen among the myriads of India. The system towered to the loftiest height in the place of its birth; and it was here that it assumed the most formidable majesty and exercised the most extended influence.

There is in all men a yearning after something that is beyond the limits of the visible world; and although this feeling may too generally be overpowered by the pressure of toil and the strife of passion, there are times when the solemn thought will present itself that a higher destiny is intended for man than that which he now inherits. By some minds, a divinity is communicated to the simplest objects of creation; and a pebble, a flower, a cloud, or a rill, becomes an instrument of music from which are sent forth strains of sweet harmony or lofty measure: this type of mind forms the poet. In other minds there is dissatisfaction with the common affairs of life, a moodiness which scowls at all that is connected with refinement and luxury, and would turn away from the sight of the brightest gem that ever adorned a coronet to contemplate the lack-lustre sockets of a skull: this type forms the recluse. By other minds the attention is directed to voices unheard by the busy multitude; they realise the objective presence of some superior intelligence, to whose influence they implicitly resign themselves, or they lose their own consciousness in the mute contemplation of its more glorious attributes: this type forms the mystic. And there are other minds that seek only to dive into the mysteries of the future, or to gain possession of miraculous energies, either by an increase of their own inherent powers or by allying themselves with the spirits of other spheres: this type forms the soothsayer and the magician.

All these types of mind are united in the recluse of India; but he has thoughts and sympathies that are peculiar to his own order. When he would become a poet, he makes his pebble into a mountain and his rill into a sea; when a recluse, he rejects not only the pleasures of earth, but the enjoyments of heaven; when a mystic, he would lose his very being, as well as his consciousness; and

when a soothsayer or a magician, he invokes not the aid of other intelligences, as he can stretch forth his hand and the universe becomes plastic to his touch, and he can summons eternity to present itself to his vision. Though the thoughts he loves best to cherish are vast even to utter extravagance, he allows not the tranquillity of his mind to be ruffled by their presence; in its inner depths his spirit is still placid; thus resembling rather the thick-ribbed ice of the lake, which the rock that has toppled from the summit of the overhanging mountain cannot move, than its limped water that the gentlest breeze will ripple. Hence, when he would assume to himself a supernatural power, he utters no spell; he seeks no voice of incantation; he asks for no mystic strain from the minstrel's harp. A clod of earth or a basin of water, and deep silence, are all that he requires to enable him to work the mightiest miracles. Even these simple signs can be dispensed with, when he proceeds to the higher stages of the exercise. In the twenty-second chapter of the Vishnu Purána we have a representation of one mode of dhyána, in which the conception of a thing is attempted to be rendered. more definite by thinking upon its types; or in which, at least, the thoughts are more readily concentrated by being addressed to a sensible emblem instead of an abstract truth. Thus the yogi says to himself, "I meditate upon the jewel on Vishnu's brow, as the soul of the world; upon the gem on his breast, as the first principle of all things," and so on: and thus through a perceptible substance proceeds to an imperceptible idea.* But the rahat only needs the emblem in the preparatory rite; when once he has received an inner evidence that the power he seeks is gained, he can ever afterwards exercise it by an act of volition, without any supernumerary aid.

The entrance of the spirit of asceticism into the Christian church was affected at an early period. Its progress was at first slow. Those who have seen the approach of the lion know well that every limb of the animal's body, and almost every hair, seems to be instinct with a separate life, the object of which is, to deprive its advance of all appearance of motion; and then there is the bound, the seizure, and the conquest absolute. Thus stealthy, and thus fatal, was the approach of the ascetic spirit; and it was this that enabled it to gain a hold so mighty upon the early professors of the * Wilson's Vishnu Purána.

faith. Satan became transformed into a sylph of light, very beautiful in appearance, and too diminutive to be supposed capable of working harm. By this means the capitol had been taken before the enemy was discovered; and the principle in question was too congenial to human nature to allow of any prolonged resistance when its evils became apparent.

At an after period, when the advocates of the system were called upon to defend it from the attacks of its opponents, precedents were sought in the Scriptures. Jerome (Ep. 49) cited Elias and John the Baptist as the fathers of monachism, and referred to the sons of the prophets, who dwelt in the fields and solitudes, and "erected for themselves tabernacles near the Jordan ;" and also to the Rechabites, "who drank no wine nor strong drink, and dwelt in tents." It was supposed, from a misconstruction of Exod. xiii. 2, that the first-born who were sanctified to the Lord embraced perpetual virginity, and that Mary was one of the temple virgins thus consecrated. The Carmelites were so specific in their assertions as to maintain that Elias was the first of their own order, and that he was called "bald-head" because he had adopted the tonsure. By some writers it was argued that there was a regular succession of hermits upon mount Carmel from the sons of the prophets to the time of Christ; and that these hermits, having at an early period embraced Christianity, continued the succession to the twelfth century, when the order was introduced into Europe. The community of goods, for a time adopted by the apostolic converts, was adduced in defence of another branch of their peculiarities.

As the ascetic principle is universally prevalent in the heart of man, and requires scarcely any encouragement to call it forth to activity, it is in vain to enquire how it arose in the church of Christ, or in what form it was first manifested. There are many virtues essential to the evangelic life, that, if carried to excess or perverted from their original intention, would each do something towards the advancement of this specious delusion. Of this kind are humility, the non-resistance of injuries, chastity, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, abstraction from the world, and communion with God. There is not one of these graces that the recluse does not imagine he fulfils in a better manner than other men; and upon this he founds his claim to superiority of holiness upon earth, and to a greater degree of glory throughout eternity.

The high estimation in which celibacy was held by many mem

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