Isis Author:James Augustus St. John Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MONA8TICISM. 13 Here and there, thinly scattered through the Valley, are a number of Koptic monasteries, the inmates of which affect to imitate in their disci... more »pline the severities of ancient times. Of all human institutions, that of celibacy, whether for monks or clergy, is the most monstrous and absurd. No doubt a man has a right to follow the course of life which is most agreeable to himself, unless it can be proved that by so doing he trenches on the rights or happiness of others. The readers of Paradise Lost will remember the terrible expedient imagined by Eve for concentrating upon herself and upon her husband the whole weight of the curse pronounced against humanity in general: " Childless thou art," exclaimed she to Adam, "childless remain!" and had her counsel been followed, all those countless millions which have since sprung into being, to taste of happiness or misery, would have been blasted, as it were, in the bud. It would have been as if all the human race had committed suicide. The monastic vow originates in the same spirit which suggested that criminal policy to Eve, being a contrivance, as far as it goes, to cut off the stream of humanity, and prevent its reaching the goal marked for it by destiny. Monks, in general, are too ignorant to comprehend the whole extent of their crime, which,14 MARRIED LIFE. properly considered, is an endeavour to quench all the charities of domestic life, all the dear relations of wife and husband, parent and child, sister and brother. To the childless and unloving the world is a blank wilderness, and God, the root of love as of existence, can only be a cold abstraction, thrown far remote from human sympathies into the infinite solitudes of space. Love is the substance by which alone we can bridge the abyss between unity and du...« less