Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/7



, inseparable as it is from every great religious system, seems to emanate spontaneously from the fundamental religious idea. China, India, and Europe, despite their marked divergence in conceiving the ultimate objects of religious belief, and the distinct racial and territorial influences that have affected their development, have been equally prolific in monastic institutions—they seem to be evoked by the simple rudimentary story which is common to them all. And, indeed, we cannot wonder that that story has engendered an organised abdication of earthly joys such as the monastic system embodies. From the earliest ages, changing with their changes and ever growing with their measured roll, religion has taught men that the world about them was but a veil that hid a brighter world from their gaze, that,