1835 there was a priest near Negombo who professed never to reside in a house, and to subsist entirely upon fruits. From the singularity of his appearance, and the mystery of his life, he was an object of great terror to children. Though regarded by some persons as sincere, his conduct was generally condemned, and he was thought to be of weak intellect.

This mode of asceticism is of too striking a character not to have had many imitators in the west. Mary, of Egypt, resided in the desert beyond the Jordan forty-seven years. During the first four years of the penance of Hilarion he had no other shelter from the inclemencies of the weather than a little hovel, made of reeds and rushes woven together. He afterwards built a little cell, still to be seen in the time of Jerome, which was only a little longer than his body, four feet broad, and five feet in height. Martinianus lived many years upon a rock surrounded by water, in the open air. James, of Nisibis, chose the highest mountains for his abode, retiring to a cave in the winter, and the rest of the year living in the woods, in the open air. Martin, of Tours, had a cell built of wood, his monks having generally cells of a similar description, whilst some resided in various holes dug in the sides of the rocks. In the sixth century it was customary in some places for a monk, celcbrated for his virtues, to be chosen, who was afterwards to lead the life of a recluse, walled up in a cell, and spending his whole time in fasting, praying, and weeping. Marcian shut himself up in a small enclosure, out of which he never went, his cell being so low and narrow, that he could neither stand nor lie in it without bending his body. But the most singular residence was that of Simeon Stylites, who passed thirty years of his life upon the top of a column, which was gradually raised from nine to sixty feet in height.

Even in our own inclement country, the zeal of these ancient ascetics has been emulated. Simon Stock, a youth of Kent, in the twelfth year of his age, retired to the forest, and resided in the hollow of a large oak tree. When the anchorets of England retired from the world, the ceremony of seclusion was generally presided over by the bishop. Their cells, twelve feet square, had three apertures, one for receiving the housel, another for food, and the third for lights. The door was generally walled up, and the anchoret was not permitted to come out, "but by consent and benediction of the bishop, in case of great necessity."

XIV. OBEDIENCE.

The yoke of the recluse must in many instances be exceedingly painful of endurance. Far away is he from all the amenities of the world, though formed by the hand of God to seek their enjoyment; he is often alone, and has much leisure, by which the melancholy circumstances of his situation are almost continually presented to his mind; the silence and solitude that are around him people themselves with shapes that appear to him with mockery and gibe, until his own spirit seems to add its powers to the number of his persecutors; and in the place where he expected to find peace there is only disappointment and vexation. Yet if he be a coenobite also, there are occasional opportunities of intercourse with other men, all of whom are enduring the same piercing of the soul by that which is more cruel than the serpent's tooth; and if permitted the exhibition of the slightest symptom of dissatisfaction, or to communicate to each other their individual woes, the heaviest bar and the strongest wall would be insufficient to retain them within the bounds by which they are circumscribed. The gloomy abstractedness, the sunken eye, channelled brow, hollow cheek, pallid countenance, and attenuated frame, with which the painter delights to present to us the monk, are the faithful semblances of a sad reality; and these emaciations are too frequently the result of painful exercises of discipline imposed by an imperious master, and not from vigils and penances self-imposed, that the body may be subdued, and the whole man be soul. The code of discipline to which he is subject is therefore most severe and stringent in all that relates to intercourse with members of the same fraternity: to his superior, he must be in every respect submissive; to his equal, reserved; and to his inferior, distant. The necessity of implicit obedience is therefore insisted upon in all monkish canons. It is one of the eight things requisite to monastic perfection, and is called "the cardinal virtue of monks." In the monasteries founded by David, the patron of Wales, the candidates for admission had to wait ten days at the door, during which time they were tried with harsh words and repeated refusals, in order that they might learn to die to themselves; and they were afterwards required to discover their most secret thoughts and temptations to the abbot. In the Regula Benedicti, cap. 5, it is said, "Primus humilitatis gradus est obedientia sine mora ;" and in the first chapter it is said that

the rule and life of the Franciscans is this, " to obey the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience, without property, and in chastity." But to see this principle in perfection we must examine the institutes of the Jesuits. The most perfect obedience and self-denial were the two first lessons that Ignatius inculcated upon his novices. They were told at the door, as they entered, that they must leave behind them all self-will and private judgment. In his letter to the Portuguese Jesuits, On the Virtue of Obedience, he says that this alone brings forth and nourishes all other virtues. He calls it the peculiar virtue and distinguishing characteristic of his society, in which, if any member suffer himself to be outdone by those of other orders in fasting or watching, he must yield to none in obedience. He adds that true obedience must reach the understanding as well as the will, and never suffer a person even secretly, to complain of, or censure, the precept of a superior; nor is it a less fault to break the laws of obedience in watching than in sleeping, in labouring than in doing nothing. No particular bodily austerities are prescribed by the rules of the society; but there are two practices that are to be most rigorously observed. The first is called the rule of Manifestation, by which every member is required to discover even his inclinations to his superior; the second is, that every member renounces his right to his own reputation with his superior, giving leave to every brother immediately to inform his superior of his faults, without first observing the law of private correction, which in common cases is acknowledged to be right.*

The profound respect that was paid by the inmates of the monastery to their abbot may be learnt from the following extract of a MS. in the British Museum relative to the abbey of Evesham. "The newly-elected abbot, if he were consecrated out of the monastery, shall, when he returns, be received by us in a festive procession. After his instalment by the prior, he is everywhere to be received with particular reverence. We must be reverently obedient to him in all things lawful: and as he passes along, either through the cloister, through any of the offices, or any where except in the dormitory, all shall stand up and bow to him while passing. . . . . No one shall walk abreast with him, except to mass. Wherever he shall sit, no one shall presume to sit down by him, unless he command him so to do. If bidden to sit down by him, that person shall bow to him in a devout manner, and thus humbly take his seat.

* Hospin. De Monachis. Alban Butler, July 31.

Whoever shall give anything into his hand, or receive anything from him, shall kiss his hand. Wherever he shall be present, there should be observed the strictest order and discipline. When he shall reprehend any monk who has behaved or spoken amiss, whether it be within the cloister or not, that monk shall afterwards entreat his pardon in a humble manner, as if in the chapter-house, and shall stand before him till ordered to sit down; and as long as he sees him to be angry, so long shall he entreat for pardon, till his wrath be appeased."

The Essenes paid so great a respect to each other, that if ten of them were sitting together, no one would speak if it were contrary to the wishes of the nine; and if a senior among them were only touched by a junior, he had to wash himself from the pollution, as he would have had to do if touched by a stranger. The results to which the law of obedience led were of a varied character. The director of John, the Dwarf, bade him, as his first lesson, plant a dry walking-stick in the ground, which he was to water every day until it brought forth fruit. The novice was obedient, though he had to fetch the water a considerable distance; but in the third year the stick actually took root, put forth leaves and buds, and produced fruit, which John gathered and gave to his brethren, telling them that it was the fruit of obedience. When Lanfranc, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, was once reading a Latin sentence he was stopped and told by his superior to pronounce the e in docere short. Though he knew that he was right, he made the alteration as commanded, saying that it was a greater sin to disobey the abbot, who commanded him in Christ's name, than to adopt a wrong quantity. A similar story is told of the still more celebrated Thomas Aquinas. It was part of the Benedictine rule, that when two monks met, the junior was to ask benediction from the senior; and when he passed by the junior was to rise and give him his seat, nor to sit down till he bade him. When the abbot entered the chapter, all descended one step and bowed to him, standing on the same step until he sat down. When he went out with benediction, the monks met him on their knees, and gave the kiss of charity, to his hand first, and afterwards to his mouth, if he offered it. When the monks delivered anything to him they kneeled, kissing his hand if he was seated. No brother was allowed (cap. 37) among

* Tindal's History of Evesham.

the Benedictines to cross the threshold of the monastery without the permission of his superior.

It is probable that in this part of the institute the ascetic would meet with his heaviest cross. By the constitution of our species, as social beings, we are necessitated on many occasions to give up our own will; and whenever new associations are formed, whether as a family, a club, an order, a sect, a city, or a country, there are additional barriers to the exercise of the individual will. But in all these instances there is an interchange of assistance, a reciprocity of kindly offices, and an acknowledged advantage, that causes the momentary sacrifice on our part to be recompensed in a thousand modes, that are more than an equivalent for the loss we have had to sustain; so that the home in which the family is congregated, or the country by which the exercise of our national institutions is bounded, are magic words that have often been the most powerful impulse in the rallying cry that has led men on to victory or death. But there is in man a natural propensity to usurp a greater authority than that which is properly conceded to him, on account of the position in which he is accidentally placed as a ruler. In this respect we are true children of the father-fiend, who is made to say that he had rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. It is a base lie that he utters, as he would readily give up his sovereignty to be the lowest of the seraphs that ministers before the throne; but it is one so consonant with our own corrupt imaginations that we give it credence, until maturer thought has convinced us that it is an empty boast. In the monastic institutes this passion has been carried out to its utmost limit. The recluse was taught that all within, as well as all without, is to be abandoned; that not only the mine but the me was to be sacrificed at the ascetic altar. The superior aimed at exercising an influence like that of the steam-engine of some extensive manufactory in modern times, which throughout the vast edifice over which it rules is the motive power by which every thread is thrown and every wheel revolves. There was a restriction upon all the senses of the monk, that there might be no outward irregularity; and if the mind wandered, however innocently, from the prescribed course, the weakness was to be confessed to the superior aud absolution sought. In the Pátimokkhan the misdemeanours that require confession and absolution form the more numerous class.

When viewed in connexion with this severity of discipline, some of the names given to the monks and nuns, as brother, and abbot;