I. and Gregory VII. It produced saints like Anthony and Bernard, and trained di- vines like Chrysostom and Jerome, and the long succession of schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. Some of the pro- foundest theological discussions, like the tracts of Anselm, and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, and not a few of the best books of devotion, like the " Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis, have proceeded from the solemn quietude of clois- ter life. Sacred hymns, unsurpassed for sweetness, like the r/esu dulcis memaria, or tender emotion, like the Stabat inciter dolorosa, or terrific grandeur, like the Dies tree, dies ilia, were conceived and sung by mediseval monks for all ages to come. In patristic and antiquarian learning the Benedictines, so lately as the seventeenth century, have done extraordinary service. Finally, monasticism, at least in the "West, promoted the cultivation of the soil and the education of the people, and by its industrious transcriptions of the Bible, the works of the church fathers, and the ancient classics, earned for itself, before the Eeformation, much of the credit of the modern civilization of Eurojje. The traveller in France, Italy, S^^ain, Germany, Eng- lirmities of which are so much more sad, so much more tedious aud difficult to cure !" Montalembert (1. c. i. 25) objects to this view as poetic and touching but false, and represents monasticism as an arena for the healthiest and strongest souls which the Avorld has ever produced, and quotes the passage of Chrysostom : " Come and see the tents of the soldiers of Christ ; come and see their order of battle ; they fight every day, and every day they defeat and immolate the passions which assail us." * The abbot Isidore of Pelusium wrote to a slaveholder, Ep. 1. i. 142 (cited by Keander) : " I did not think that the man who loves Christ, and knows the grace which makes us all free, would still hold slaves." § 3-i. INFLUENCE AND EFFECT OF MONASTICISM. 177 land, and even in the nortliern regions of Scotland and S\yc- den, encounters innumerable traces of useful monastic labors in the ruins of abbeys, of chapter houses, of convents, of ])ri()rie8 and hermitages, from which once proceeded educational and misriiouary influences upon the surrounding hills and forests. These offices, however, to the progress of arts and letters were only accessory, often involuntary, and altogether foreign to the intention of the founders of monastic life and institutions, who looked exclusively to the religious and moral education of the soul. In seeking first the kingdom of heaven, these other things were added to them. But on the other hand, monasticism withdrew from society many useful forces ; diffused an indifference for the family life, the civil and military service of the state, and all public prac- tical operations ; turned the channels of religion from tlic world into the desert, and so hastened the decline of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and the whole Roman