achievements of the Protestant Reformation, he asks what it has cost. Among other "high prices" which the Reformation had to pay, he enumerates monasticism. When the Reformation abolished monasticism, "something happened which Luther neither foresaw nor desired: monasticism, of the kind that is conceivable and necessary in the evangelical sense of the word, disappeared altogether. But every community stands in need of personalities living exclusively for its ends. The Church, for instance, needs volunteers who will abandon every other pursuit, renounce the 'world', and devote themselves entirely to the service of their neighbor; not because such a vocation is a 'higher one', but because it is a necessary one, and because no church can live without also giving rise to such a desire. But in the evangelical churches the desire has been checked by the decided attitude which they have been compelled to adopt towards Catholicism. It is a high price that we have paid; nor can the price be reduced by considering, on the other hand, how much simple and unaffected religious fervor has been kindled in home and family life. We may rejoice, however, that in the past century a beginning has been made in the direction of recouping this loss. In the institution of deaconesses and many cognate phenomena the evangelical churches are getting back what they once ejected through their inability to recognize it in the form which it then took. But it must undergo a much ampler and more varied development."[1]
One of the "ends" of the Church is education. It is natural, then, that there should be personalities who
- ↑ What is Christianity?, p. 288.
