Should a Christian be a monk?

Such is the Christian's mission. He is not to shut himself within the walls of a monastery or convent. Christianity does not consist in joining a brotherhood or a sisterhood. Nothing of the kind. We are called to move up and down in the varied relations of life, and to act in our divinely-appointed spheres to the glory of God. It is not a question of what we are doing, but of how we do it. All depends upon the object which governs our hearts. If Christ be the commanding and absorbing object of the heart, all will be right. If He be not, nothing is right. Two persons may sit down at the same table to eat; the one eats to gratify his appetite, the other eats to the glory of God — eats simply to keep his body in proper working order as God's vessel, the temple of the Holy Ghost, the instrument for Christ's service.

How different from scripture is the enforced celibacy of nuns, not to speak of monks and priests also! To what moral enormities, as well as wretchedness, this daring encroachment on God's prerogative has given rise for ages! Yet no doubt need be that it grew out of a desire for thorough devotedness. The due limits are laid down in Matt. 19:11-12 and in 1 Cor. 7 as well as here. The unmarried state has its advantages where grace gives the due inward condition, which would surely fit into suited external circumstances and issue in such a life and service as we see in the apostle himself. But this is not given to all, nor is it of man's will but of divine grace. Make it a law, and the grace is destroyed; and a speedy result of sin, shame, and misery proclaims the wisdom of God's ways and the folly of Christendom's. Presuming to do better, they have notoriously fallen not only into the violation of common morality, but into unspeakable turpitude, covered with the veil of hypocrisy, to the ruin of souls and the present worldly advantage of those whose unswerving instinct is doing evil that good may come, whose judgment is just.

Ask a saint, really intelligent as to the heavenly calling, to give a reason for his standing apart from the present world: what will he reply? Will he tell you that he does so in order to become heavenly? Nay. Will he tell you that it is because the present world is under judgement? Nay. No doubt it is under judgement, but this is not the true ground of separation. What then? "We have died, and our life is hid with Christ in God." — "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." "Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling," etc. Here we have the grand reason for the saint's present separation from the world. It does not matter what the world is, be it good or bad; he is not of it, though in it, as the place of his daily toil, conflict, and discipline.

Christian! ponder well your heavenly calling — it is the only thing that will give full deliverance from the power and influence of worldliness. Men may seek abstraction from the world in various ways, but there is only one in which to attain separation from it. Again, men may seek to render themselves unearthly in various ways; there is only one way in which we can become really heavenly. Abstraction is not separation; nor is unearthliness to be mistaken for heavenliness. The monastic system illustrates very fully the distinction between these things. A sincere monk is unearthly, in a certain sense, but by no means heavenly; he is unnatural, but by no means spiritual; he is abstracted from the world, but by no means separated from it.

Here we have very explicitly a thing for which the Lord did NOT make a request. Yet the thing, with strange perversity, has been sought by earnest souls — and many true believers among them — through the centuries, as embodied in the monastic idea. That idea may be pursued by the aid of walls of thick masonry, or it may be pursued without them. The result, however, is the same. If we turn Divinely-ordained separation into monastic isolation, we shall always end by generating within the area of our seclusion the very evils we are supposed to be avoiding. The world indeed presents us with a deadly peril. But why? Because of what we are in ourselves. A holy angel would neither court its favours nor fear its frowns: it would leave him wholly unmoved. The world does present, so to speak, the infectious germs from without; but the main trouble lies in ourselves — the susceptibility of the flesh within. No monastic isolation affects that.

But how contrary is monasticism to the example of our blessed Lord, who went about doing good! He prayed for His saints, not that they should be taken out of the world — indeed, He sent them into the world (John 17:18) — but that they should be kept from the evil. Oh! for grace, while passing along in the world, to keep our garments unspotted from its many and varied corruptions!

This was the commencement of Luther's war against the monastic vows. These were chastity, poverty and obedience. "Whatever cometh not of faith is sin," said Luther. "Whoever makes a vow of chastity, of service to God, without faith, makes an impious vow. We must utterly suppress all convents. There is only one order that is holy and maketh holy — namely, Christianity and Faith. All who possess the Spirit of Christ are priests of the living God." This latter is a great truth, often repeated but seldom learned. Luther put it forth to the Christians of Germany, and it was good the light of God's truth should shine forth. We would fain hope it penetrated many a secluded spot where the light of God's word had not yet reached.

But now a few words as to monachism may be seasonable. In letter and in spirit it is wholly unknown to both the Old Testament and the New; yet it was an old system when our Lord brought in grace and truth. Neither law nor gospel was its parent, but Oriental heathenism, Brahmanic and Buddhist; whence it crept among the Essenes of Palestine and the Therapeutae of Egypt, the immediate progenitors of Paul of Thebes and Anthony among professing Christians, before simple anchorites merged into the cloister-system, to koinobion, of Pachomius. At first they were all laymen, and many were fathers of families. Indeed it was not till 1311 that the obligation to take orders became law under Pope Clement V. Nor was any vow imposed at first. It was not uncommon for some time to return to ordinary life. Rome, ever alive to adopt any and every element conducive to ecclesiastical dominion, made the status indelible for all who took the vow. Its source was not revelation but that spurious philosophy which saw nothing but evil, as well in the human body, as in matter generally. Devotedness in grace, as taught by our Lord and the apostle, is a wholly different thing.

Some may have shut themselves up in monasteries through simple ignorance, vainly imagining they were obeying the Holy Spirit's injunction in Col. 3:5. But how many the proofs that the asceticism inculcated by some of the early sects has been only a cloak in latter times to hide the corruption practised by others!

Luther's marriage was a great event in the Reformation. Men at first began to seclude themselves in dens and caves because of surrounding evil. They had a good motive but were mistaken in doing this. If Christians, their light was to be as on a hill, and not hidden as under a bushel. Others with less piety imitated them, until monasticism had grown up into a great but evil system. The three vows were easily taken; but, except the one of obedience, were not carried out. Luther had entered the convent in search for holiness; but he had seen enough to make him view with abhorrence any one, male or female, enter a monastery. He discouraged it in every way. He now sought to live in his family, among his fellow-christians, as one of themselves, and yet with their good as much at heart as ever, to spend and be spent for the cause of God and His truth.

Some reach the elated state by this path. They do not think that they have sinned for given periods of time, and others go so far in their monastic zeal that they ignore the relations of life and treat their parents and children as dead. The Romanist or Anglican shuts himself up in a cell, and so becomes dead to duty and affection: the others become so by either offending or ignoring those whom God has given them to win and to love. It is the spirit of the monk, but without the discomfort of the monk's cell.