Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/171

 VII] ORIGINS OF MONASTICISM 153 could gather numbers from so many sources and be strengthened by the accession of opposite characters. Although Christianity was an active and militant 'X religion, a strong influence making for the growth of monasticism lay in the impulse given by the Christian faith to the contemplative life. Among pagans also, in the first centuries of the Christian era, had come a yearning for meditation, as may be seen in the lives of many Neo-pythagoreans and Neo-platonists. There are moods of drowsiness rather than meditation, which need no incitement beyond indolence. Otherwise the growth of the contemplative life requires a definite cause. With the later schools of Greek philoso- phy such a cause lay in the yearning for union with the divine, and in the growing sense of inability to reach it through modes of active reasoning. Sheer contemplation of the divine, which transcended definite thought, might bring a vision of it, with ecstatic frui- tion. Such feelings fostered contemplation among Neo-platonists, who had but the great mystic, incon- ceivable, unlovable One to contemplate. But Chris- tianity brought new thoughts of God, and a rush of loving feeling which struck the believer's heart with a new passion for the Omnipotent Lover. What greater fulness of love and life, even here in the flesh, than to dwell in this ? How could the believ- er's thoughts leave it, any more than the lover would disperse the golden haze of thought of the beloved, which in her absence enfolds his being ? God was an exhaustless object of meditation to He- brew psalmists. Christianity deepened the spiritual life; and filled it with love's realities. Monk and nun