A Monk of S. Honorat.
THE last words with which we take our leave of the saints of olden days, and the saints of the nineteenth century, will be the more befitting, as they are the words of one to whom “the heavenly door was opened,” as he read for the first time the Word of God under the pines of S. Honorat, where he was a Trappist monk some few years since; and who now preaches the glad tidings of “that which he has seen and heard,” as a Protestant pastor in the Hautes Alpes. One who is familiar with the brightest side of monastic experience, can best judge of that which is lacking in the life he loved; and he serves therefore as a witness to us that the converse with God, and the joy in Christ which we have traced in those of olden days, was not the fruit of convent life, but the fruit of the Spirit of God. “If monastic life,” he writes, “appears to us to be a deviation from the Gospel, rather than a practical development of it, we shall find that the root of monasticism deviates from the Gospel yet more widely; for that root is the dogma of salvation by works. The object of a monk in our days, as in former ages, is not to attain to some vague ideal, or to reach a state of perfection, short of which he might still be saved; but his exclusive object is to increase the chances of his salvation; to render himself as much as possible assured of having attained it. However fully we may admit the beauty, the grandeur, and, to certain minds, the attractiveness of much that is to be found in monastic life, is there not a reason why after all it is simply a failure? No solid building can be raised on a foundation that is undermined. Whatever respect we may accord to it, whatever homage we may be ready to render it, the truth remains, that monasticism is not, and never was, pure Christianity. The true, the only Christianity, the Christianity that saves, is found neither in the law, nor in works; it does not consist in the practice of the sublimest virtues, nor even in the entire abnegation of self, and surrender of all things.
“The true, the only Christianity is Christ; His Divine Person beheld and adored by the living faith of the heart. And outside of Christ, outside of that faith which lays hold of Him alone, which trusts in Him only, there is but mirage, illusion, and disappointment.
“En Te trouvant, j’ai trouve toute chose,
Et ce bonheur m’est venu par la foi.
C’est sur Ton rein qu’en pair je me repose;
Je suis à Toi; je suis à Toi.”