and settles like a new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its reefs, while its rough crags, bare rocks and desolate aspect make it more terrible still....  He sees the glory of God which even the apostles saw not, save in the desert.  He beholds, it is true, no embattled towns, but he has enrolled his name in the new city.  Garments of sackcloth disfigure his limbs, yet so he will the sooner be caught up to meet Christ in the clouds.  Round the entire island roars the frenzied sea, while the beetling crags along its winding shores resound as the billows beat against them.  Precipitous cliffs surround his dreadful abode as if it were a prison.  He is careless, fearless, armed from head to foot in the apostles’ armor.”

Listen to these trumpet tones as Jerome calls to a companion of his youth in Rome:  “O desert, enamelled with the flowers of Christ!  O retreat, which rejoicest in the friendship of God!  What dost thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world?  How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeons of cities?  Believe me, I see here more light.”

To pass hastily over such appeals, coming from distant lands across the sea to stir the minds of the thoughtful in Rome, is to ignore one of the causes which produced the great exodus that followed.  He made men see that they were living in a moral Sodom, and that if they would save their souls they must escape to the desert.  The power of personal influence, of inspiring private letters, can hardly be overemphasized in studying the remarkable progress of asceticism.  Great awakenings in the moral, as in the political or the social world, may be traced to the profound influence of individuals, whose prophetic insight and moral enthusiasm unfold the germ of the larger movements.  There may be widespread unrest, the ground may be prepared for the seed, but the immediate cause of universal uprisings is the clarion call of genius.  Thus Luther’s was the voice that cried in the wilderness, inciting a vast host for whom centuries had been preparing.

But Jerome’s fame as a man of learning, possessing a critical taste and a classic style of rare beauty and simplicity, must not blind us to the crowning glory of his brilliant career.  He was above all a spiritual force.  His chief appeal was to the conscience.  He warmed the most torpid hearts by the fervor of his love, and encouraged the most hopeless by his fiery zeal and heroic faith.  As a promoter of monasticism, he clashed with the interests of an enfeebled clergy and a corrupt laity.  Nothing could swerve him from his course.  False monks might draw terrible rebukes from him, but the conviction that the soul could be delivered from captivity to the body only by mortification remained unshaken.  He induced men to break the fetters of society that they might, under the more favorable circumstances of solitude, wage war against their unruly passions.