with celibacy. James upholds poverty as preferable to riches in the eyes of God. The whole of the New Testament abounds with passages in which present misery is declared to be the forerunner of future happiness, and present prosperity of future suffering. This is the very spirit of monasticism, and it is not surprising that from such a root such fruits have sprung. From a very early age devout Christians have felt that in renouncing individual property, marriage, personal freedom, and the various other joys which life in the world offers, they were fulfilling the dictates of their religion and preparing themselves for heaven. To illustrate this proposition effectually would be to write the history of the monastic orders. Beginning in the deserts of Egypt, these have extended throughout Europe, and have exercised a vast and potent influence on the extension of the Christian faith. Monks have been missionaries, preachers, martyrs, persecutors, bishops and popes. The greatest names who have ranged themselves under the banner of the Catholic Church have belonged to one or other of the several orders. And alongside of the monks, living by the same rule, helping them in their several tasks, the nuns have ever been forward in undergoing their share of austerity and undertaking their share of labor.
Very various have been the immediate motives that have led such large numbers of Christians to betake themselves to the monastery or the convent. Some have fled from riches and luxury; others from poverty and wretchedness. Some have been sick of earthly pleasures; others have sought to avoid the temptation of ever knowing them. Many have been drawn by the irresistible spell of asceticism to flee from opposing parents and unsympathizing friends in order to embrace it; others have been destined from their infancy, like the Mexican and Peruvian youth, to wear the cowl or to take the veil. But throughout the history of every order there has been the same fundamental idea sustaining its existence; the idea, namely, that in becoming an ascetic, the person was consecrated to God, and became by that consecration purer, holier, and better than those who continued to pursue the ordinary avocations of secular life.
This consecration is not given without due solemnity. It is only after a novitate, in which he has full experience of the
