is essentially only an activity for God,—for the glorifying of his name, the spreading abroad of his praise. But God is absolute subjectivity,—subjectivity separated from the world, above the world, set free from matter, severed from the life of the species, and therefore from the distinction of sex. Separation from the world, from matter, from the life of the species, is therefore the essential aim of Christianity.[1] And this aim had its visible, practical realization in Monachism.
It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism from the east. At least, if this derivation is to be accepted, they who maintain it should be consistent enough to derive the opposite tendency of Christendom, not from Christianity, but from the spirit of the western nations, the occidental nature in general. But how, in that case, shall we explain the monastic enthusiasm of the west? Monachism must rather be derived directly from Christianity itself: it was a necessary consequence of the belief in heaven, promised to mankind by Christianity. Where the heavenly life is a truth, the earthly life is a lie; where imagination is all, reality is nothing. To him who believes in an eternal heavenly life, the present life loses its value,—or rather, it has already lost its value: belief in the heavenly life is belief in the worthlessness and nothingness of this life. I cannot represent to myself the future life without longing for it, without casting down a look of compassion or contempt on this pitiable earthly life, and the heavenly life can be no object, no law of faith, without, at the same time, being a law of morality: it must determine my actions,[2] at least if my life is to be in accordance with my faith: I ought not to cleave to the transitory things of this earth. I ought not;—but neither do I wish; for what are all things here below compared with the glory of the heavenly life?[3]
- ↑ “The life for God is not this natural life, which is subject to decay. . . . Ought we not then to sigh after future things, and be averse to all these temporal things? . . . Wherefore we should find consolation in heartily despising this life and this world, and from our hearts sigh for and desire the future honour and glory of eternal life.”—Luther (Th. i. s. 466, 467).
- ↑ “Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est iturus.”—Meditat. Sacrae Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46.
- ↑ “Affectanti coelestia, terrena non sapiunt. Æternis inhianti, fastidio sunt transitoria.”—Bernard. (Epist. Ex Persona Heliae Monachi ad Parentes). “Nihil nostra refert in hoc ævo, nisi de eo quam celeriter excedere.”—Tertullian (Apol. adv. Gentes, c. 41). “Wherefore a Christian man should rather be advised to bear sickness with patience, yea, even to desire that death should come,—the sooner the better. For, as St. Cyprian says, nothing is more for the advantage of a Christian, than soon to die. But we rather listen to the pagan Juvenal, when he says: ‘Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.’”—Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).
