Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/53

 upon the abstract doctrines of Christianity for so long a time—to see them nervously tightening their lips against the assaults of the evil one. For our monastic literature, never entertaining for a moment the idea that such a performance was beyond the powers of the average normally-constituted individual, taught us to see in spirit myriads of ugly little demons (why the devil should always choose or make an ugly body to appear in is problematical—the modern conception of him, à la Marie Corelli, is much more plausible) with pointed ears and forked tails, sitting on our shoulders and on the arms of our stalls and filling our minds with irrelevant thoughts. In fact, our worthy novice-master (and several respectable authors) assured us that the imps had been seen on more than one occasion by particularly pious elder brethren—that on one dreadful occasion, happily long ago, a full-sized demon had entered the choir with a basket and orthodox trident, discovered a young friar who was distracted in his prayers, and promptly disappeared with him in his basket. All of which we were obliged to listen to with the utmost gravity and concern if we set any value upon our sojourn in the monastery.

So a series of mental apparatus, called methods of meditation, had been invented for the purpose of aiding the wayward human mind to fix its gaze on the things of the spirit without interruption. Unfortunately they were often so complicated as to make