to live, which should make possible a full and balanced existence of body, mind and soul.  Thanks to those years of retreat and preparation, he knew what he wanted and what he ought to do; and they ushered in a long life of intense mental and spiritual activity.  His houses were schools, which taught the service of God and the perfecting of the soul as the aims of life.  His rule, in which genial human tolerance, gentle courtesy, and a profound understanding of men are not less marked than lofty spirituality, is the classic statement of all that the Christian spiritual life implies and should be.[56]

What, then, is the character of the life which St. Benedict proposed as a remedy for the human failure and disharmony that he saw around him?  It was framed, of course, for a celibate community:  but it has many permanent features which are unaffected by his limitation.  It offers balanced opportunities of development to the body, the mind and the spirit; laying equal emphasis on hard work, study, and prayer.  It aims at a robust completeness, not at the production of professional ascetics; indeed, its Rule says little about physical austerities, insists on sufficient food and rest, and countenances no extremes.  According to Abbot Butler, St. Benedict’s day was divided into three and a half hours for public worship, four and a half for reading and meditation, six and a half for manual work, eight and a half for sleep, and one hour for meals.  So that in spite of the time devoted to spiritual and mental interests, the primitive Benedictine did a good day’s work and had a good night’s rest at the end of it.  The work might be anything that wanted doing, so long as the hours of prayer were not infringed.  Agriculture, scholarship, education, handicrafts and art have all been done perfectly by St. Benedict’s sons, working and willing in quiet love.  This is what one of the greatest constructive minds of Christendom regarded as a reasonable way of life; a frame within which the loftiest human faculties could grow, and man’s spirit achieve that harmony with God which is its goal.  Moreover, this life was to be social.  It was in the beginning just the busy useful life of an Italian farm, lived in groups—­in monastic families, under the rule and inspiration not of a Master but of an Abbot; a Father who really was the spiritual parent of his monks, and sought to train them in the humility, obedience, self-denial and gentle suppleness of character which are the authentic fruits of the Spirit.  This ideal, it seems to me, has something still to say to us; some reproof to administer to our hurried and muddled existence, our confusion of values, our failure to find time for reality.  We shall find in it and its creator, if we look, all those marks of the regenerate life of the Spirit which history has shown to us as normal:  namely the transcendent aim, the balanced career of action and contemplation, the creative power, and above all the principle of social solidarity and discipleship.