One was the superior virtue of a life devoted to purely religious contemplation, and for the same end that animated the existence of fakirs and sofis.  It was to escape the contaminating influence of matter, to rise above the wants of the body, to exterminate animal passions and appetites, to hide from a world which luxury corrupted.  The Christian recluses were thus led to bury themselves in cells among the mountains and deserts, in dreary and uncomfortable caverns, in isolated retreats far from the habitation of men,—­yea, among wild beasts, clothing themselves in their skins and eating their food, in order to commune with God more effectually, and propitiate His favor.  Their thoughts were diverted from the miseries which they ought to have alleviated and the ignorance which they ought to have removed, and were concentrated upon themselves, not upon their relatives and neighbors.  The cries of suffering humanity were disregarded in a vain attempt to practise doubtful virtues.  How much good those pious recluses might have done, had their piety taken a more practical form!  What missionaries they might have made, what self-denying laborers in the field of active philanthropy, what noble teachers to the poor and miserable!  The conversion of the world to Christianity did not enter into their minds so much as the desire to swell the number of their communities.  They only aimed at a dreamy pietism,—­at best their own individual salvation, rather than the salvation of others.  Instead of reaching to the beatific vision, they became ignorant, narrow, and visionary; and, when learned, they fought for words and not for things.  They were advocates of subtile and metaphysical distinctions in theology, rather than of those practical duties and simple faith which primitive Christianity enjoined.  Monastic life, no less than the schools of Alexandria, was influential in creating a divinity which gave as great authority to dogmas that are the result of intellectual deductions, as those based on direct and original declarations.  And these deductions were often gloomy, and colored by the fears which were inseparable from a belief in divine wrath rather than divine love.  The genius of monasticism, ancient and modern, is the propitiation of the Divinity who seeks to punish rather than to forgive.  It invented Purgatory, to escape the awful burnings of an everlasting hell of physical sufferings.  It pervaded the whole theology of the Middle Ages, filling hamlet and convent alike with an atmosphere of fear and wrath, and creating a cruel spiritual despotism.  The recluse, isolated and lonely, consumed himself with phantoms, fancied devils, and “chimeras dire.”  He could not escape from himself, although he might fly from society.  As a means of grace he sought voluntary solitary confinement, without nutritious food or proper protection from the heat and cold, clad in a sheepskin filled with dirt and vermin.  What life could be more antagonistic to enlightened reason?  What mistake more fatal to everything like self-improvement, culture, knowledge, happiness?  And all for what?  To strive after an impossible perfection, or the solution of insoluble questions, or the favor of a Deity whose attributes he misunderstood.