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MONKERY, THE RELIGION OF SOUTHERN EUROPE.

A THIRD reply to the inquiry concerning the moral condition. and influence of the ascetic institute, turns upon a consideration of what has always been (at least during the last eighteen hundred, or two thousand years) the physical and moral characteristics of the nations bordering upon the Mediterranean. Unless we are resolved to shut our eyes to plain matters of fact, facts of this class must be taken into account, when we look into the materials of the religious history of these nations. Not to do so is to take romance for history; and moreover, as one error implies more, we shall really be doing the ancient church a great injustice, at the moment when we are wishing to enhance its credit; for the same reasonable considerations which forbid our being duped by its lofty professions, supply also an apology for its follies, and a palliation for its grievous faults.

During the last two thousand years, what has been the state of manners and morals in all the countries between the thirty-fifth and the forty-fifth parallels of latitude, and between the Caspian and the Atlantic? These zephyr-breathing and garden lands of the world have presented, throughout this course of time (or only with partial and transient exceptions) a social condition intimately disordered by the want of moral tone; and parallel with this ill habit of the social mass, there has run on a religion which, while it has but faintly affected the many, or to any good purpose, has spent its force upon a few, and these few so removed by artificial distinctions from their fellows, as to do little or no good by their example. Throughout these countries, and during this lapse of ages, there have been the EXTREMES in morals, but

no MEAN.

The philosophy of the moral, political, and religious history of southern Europe, turns upon this very fact. Northward of the forty-fifth parallel (in Europe) may be found—a generally diffused animal health, and a physical robustness—and a wide middle class in society-and a breadth of opinion and feeling-and a soberness and mild liberality of judgment, and a dislike and an avoidance of enormities of conduct and sentiment; none of which important elements of national well-being can be predicated of the south.

Before the absolute moral merit of the nations, who occupy these two geographical bands, could be respectively ascertained, many intricate questions should be gone into; but meantime, the characteristics above stated remain undisturbed. And then, if the nineteenth century is to be compared with the third or fourth, it will appear that the difference which marks this lapse of time, attaches almost entirely to the north of Europe, where every thing in that interval of time has been regenerated, or absolutely created while the south, amid many convulsions, has remained substantially the same physically, morally, and religiously. Indeed, whenever the ancient and the modern worlds are compared (and by ancient, we now intend the declining period of the roman empire) the difference discoverable is such as results chiefly from that creation of a broad mean, in the social, political, and religious spheres, which has come about in northern Europe, during the last five centuries.

The tendency of genuine christianity is always to create a mean in society, or as we may say, to consolidate and extend the political, social, and moral terra firma, or wide continent of common interests, and ordinary sentiments. Wherever the Gospel is to get a footing in a country, the proclamation is of this sort,'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.' Not indeed that christianity is a levelling doctrine, in the cant, modern sense of the term; but yet its gradual operation is to call into existence a mean, whereupon the extremes of high and low may meet, and be reconciled. Let a pure christianity now take its course in Turkey, and what would

be the political and social consequence, after a few years, but to blend the discordant elements of the national system; and first to create, and then to empower, a middle class, and a middle doctrine, and a middle influence, which should at once elevate the degraded, and chastise and control the proud? In this happy sense Christ's doctrine is indeed revolutionary.

Christianity was, in fact, just about to work this its proper effect upon the roman world, and was making a happy commencement by putting woman into her long lost place, and by bestowing upon her, personal virtue, and reverence and influence, without which, as there is no healthy condition of the domestic system, so there can be no national virtue, or liberty, or elevation of character. This happy change was commencing, when the ascetic fanaticism came in; first, to poison the domestic system at the core, by its hypocritical prudery, and its consequent separation of the sexes; and secondly, to turn off the fertilizing current of the most powerful sentiments from the field of common life, and to throw them all into the waste pipe which emptied itself upon the wilderness. We use no figure, or a figure only in the terms, when we say that the mighty waters of christian moral influence, which should have renovated the roman world, and have saved the barbarism of a thousand years, was, by the ascetic institute, shed over the horrid sands of Egypt and Arabia-there to be lost for ever!

It was as if, where there is a rich virgin soil favoured by the sun, one were to find the plough, and the spade, and the various implements of husbandry, employed by a stupid race, not upon the teeming lands, but in vainly enscalping the surface of rocks, and in bootlessly furrowing the faithless sands of the shore! Such, in a word, was that perversion of the moral force of the Gospel which resulted from the ancient asceticism. Southern Europe was therefore left to be southern Europe still, for another cycle of centuries, and monkish fanaticism with its celibacy and its fastings, has continued, now these fifteen hundred years, to be the grim antithesis of a wide-spread dissoluteness of manners. In Portugal, Spain, the south of France, Italy, Sicily, and the islands about, during all this lapse of time, while in comparatively but few instances temperate and virtuous husbands and wives have blessed

the common walks of life, monks and nuns of ambiguous character have swarmed from religious houses. Little national morality has been seen in those countries; but more than enough of the madman's imitation of virtue and piety. Throughout these regions, and during these ages, few families have been blessed with purity and peace; but miracles have been going on all hands the green leaf and sweet fruits of piety have not covered the fields; but the seculars and regulars, like a perpetual visitation of locusts, have brooded on the waste.

In passing, full-fraught with english feelings, from our northern latitudes to the south of Europe, every one feels that the degrading superstition of the common people is not a doctrine and practice that have happened to invade these countries, oppressing and corrupting the social system, but rather, that it is the congenial religion of races distinguished by physical debility, by relaxation. of principle, by abjectness of soul, by ferocity, and by actual debauchery. The Gospel, even now, would indeed bring in upon these very people the energy of moral health, and it would have done so in the times of Diocletian; but those who were then intrusted with it, mistook its spirit, and in holding forth a crazed asceticism as the only genuine virtue, they left the mass of the people just such as they found it-debauched, ferocious, superstitious; and such, with transient exceptions, have they continued, under the influence of the very same system, from that time to this.

Besides many differences, affecting the mere surface of society, and which belong to our general civilization, as distinguishing modern from ancient southern Europe, there is one moral and ecclesiastical point of contrast, which I would not overlook, and it is this The church, in the fourth century, was moving down a declivity; whereas at present, and long since, it has reached its point of lowest depression, upon a dead level. Now, so long as this decline was in progress, all persons of fervent mind, conscious of the general movement, struggled mightily to arrest it. This eager and anxious struggle, then, is that which gives vehemence and animation to the hortatory compositions of the nicene age. The great preachers and writers whom we have occasion so frequently to name, stood midway, and breast-high in the torrent ;

and how passionately do they contend for their footing, and how manfully do they fight the billows!

There was therefore a resistance, not indeed to the superstitions, but to the immoralities of the age, and an agony, and an animation belonging to the Church in the fourth century, which do not belong to it (in the same countries) at present. Yet it would be going much too far to affirm that the moral condition of the mass of society was better then than it is now, on the same soils. There is an abundance of evidence proving the extreme corruption of manners in the era now in question; nor can it be requisite, in this place, to enlarge upon so trite a subject. It is therefore a sheer illusion although it be one easily followed, which would assume our northern and english notions of morality-the morality of our sober middle classes, and then, attributing any such state of things to the social system in the fourth century, and to the nations bordering the Mediterranean, imagine that the ascetic virtues of those times stood high above any such level of morals. In taking our idea of the nicene monastic life from the romantic descriptions given of it by its credulous admirers, we think of it as an obelisk, pointing to the skies, the base of which rested on firm level ground, and a ground of general virtue and piety. It was in fact no such thing;-the nicene asceticism rose out of a bog, and it barely kept its apex above the widespread corruption: or it was like those monuments of egyptian magnificence which just peep out of the deluge of sand that has long smothered the glory of so many temples and palaces.

The ancient ascetic virtue, far from being lofty absolutely, was barely so relatively; and indeed, if we are to trust some of its best informed advocates, it had actually worked itself down a good way below the general level of decency, temperance, and continence. It was therefore very far from being, what we are likely to imagine it to have been, when we read selected specimens of ascetic piety.