futed by the existence of Aristotle's "Treatise on Ethics," "the Institutes of Menu,"* and the moral teachings of the "Bhagvat Geeta." The testimony of Cicero is conclusive as to the perception, by all minds, of an immutable morality. "There is one true and original law, conformable to nature and reason, diffused over all, invariable, eternal, which calls to the fulfillment of duty and to abstinence from injustice, and which calls with that irresistible voice which is felt in all its authority when it is heard. This law cannot be abolished, curtailed, nor affected in its sanctions by any law of man. A whole senate,

a whole people cannot dispense with its paramount obligation. It requires no commentator to render it distinctly intelligible, nor is it different at Rome, at Athens now, and in the ages before and after; but in all ages, and in all nations, it is, and has been, and will be, one and everlasting-one as that God, its great author and promulgator, is one."‡

Among the most savage, as among the most refined and polished nations, are also to be found the common rules of morality. Theft, adultery, murder, are offenses condemned and punished by every nation under heaven. The high qualities of virtue are the things which win esteem and command reverence in every country however rude. The quotation of authorities on this point is needless. Were we asked for proof, we would go straight to the darkest corner of the earth at The Fijian regards theft, adultery, abduction, incendiarism, and treason as serious crimes.§

once.

If, then, moral distinctions are self-evident, necessary, and universal, they are not the creations of mere law; they are not the result of Divine legislation. The will of God did not call them into being, and therefore the ground of obligation to govern ourselves by them is not to be found in the Divine will.

"God is no more the creator of virtue than he is of truth. Justice and benevolence were virtues previous to the forthputting of will or jurisprudence on his part. They had a subsistence and a character before that any creatures were made *See the Life of Sir James Mackintosh,

Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. xvi, pp. 788, 805.
Lucani Pharsalia, Lib. ix, v.

page 251.

Translated by Dr. Brown. Philosophy, vol. ii,

See "Fiji and the Fijians," page 22.

who could be the subjects of a will or a government at all. He no more ordained them to be virtues than he ordained that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two right angles. The moral and the mathematical propositions have been alike the objects of Divine perception and of Divine approval from all eternity; and he no more willed the rightness of the one, and the reality of the other, than he willed himself into being, or willed what should be the virtues of his own character, or the ideas of his own reason.' 99% Moral distinctions are, therefore, uncreated and eternal-the necessary development of the uncreated and eternal reason. Virtue has an inherent and essential rightness of its own, and God wills it because it is right.

The Divine will is the fountain of efficiency; the Divine reason is the fountain of law. Free-will is universally the subject and not the foundation of obligation. In the Divine reason must therefore be found the ground of all moral obligation. And as the human reason is the outbirth and image of the Divine, so its affirmations are the highest authority to man. The voice of conscience is the voice of God. There can be no higher authority in morals. It speaks more immediately and directly to the human heart than the voice of any prophet or

seer.

The necessary affirmations of the moral faculty are assumed as the reason of obligation. When the particular relation, in view of which a particular duty is affirmed, is apprehended, whether it be a duty toward God, individual man, or society, all the reason that can be assigned has been given why that duty is binding upon us. We have then discovered the only real and ultimate foundation of all obligation.

We flatter ourselves we have now cleared our pathway to the field of Moral Science, and may be permitted, in another short article, to mark out its legitimate boundaries, and gather up some of its precious fruits.

*Chalmers' Institutes, vol. i.

ART. II.-THE SAINTS OF THE DESERT: ST. ANTHONY OF EGYPT, AND SYMEON THE STYLITE.

CHRISTIAN monasticism arose in the fourth century on the basis of the earlier asceticism, which can be traced to the apostolic age, and even beyond to the Essenes in Palestine and Therapeuta in Egypt. It was an attempt to save the virgin purity of the Church, now united with the State since Constantine, by carrying it into the wilderness, and to strike out a safer way to holiness and salvation by withdrawing from the world and its temptations, and by cultivating exclusively the virtues of humility, chastity, and self-denial in unbroken communion with God. It spread with astonishing rapidity all over the Christian world, became one of the leading institutions in the Greek and Roman Church, and exerted for many centuries down to the Reformation, and even to the present time, a powerful influence for good and evil upon the Church and the world.

The first known Christian hermit, as distinct from the earlier ascetics, who lived in the midst of the Church, is the fabulous PAUL OF THEBES, in Upper Egypt. In the twenty-second year of his age, during the Decian persecution, A. D. 250, he retired to a distant cave, grew fond of solitude, and lived there, according to the legend, ninety years in a grotto near a spring and a palm-tree, which furnished him food, shade, and clothing until his death, in 340. In his later years a raven is said to have brought him daily half a loaf, as the ravens ministered to Elijah. But no one knew of this wonderful saint till Anthony, who under a higher impulse visited and buried him, made him known to the world. At this singular visit the raven brought a double portion of bread, and at the burial two lions of the desert assisted Anthony of their own accord, digging a grave in the sand. So says, in good earnest, the learned Jerome some thirty years afterward, as it appears, on the authority of Amathus and Macarius, two disciples of Anthony. But this and similar traditions he opens to suspicion by the remark in the prologue to his life of Paul of Thebes, that many incredible things are said of him which are not worthy of repetition.

In this Paul we have an example of a canonized saint who lived ninety years unseen and unknown in the wilderness, beyond all fellowship with the visible Church, without Bible, public worship, or sacraments, and so died, yet is supposed to have attained the highest grade of piety. How does this consist with the common doctrine of the Catholic Church respecting the necessity and the operation of the means of grace? Augustine, blinded by the ascetic spirit of his age, says even that anchorets on their level of perfection may dispense with the Bible. Certain it is that this kind of perfection stands not in the Bible, but outside of it.

The proper founder of the hermit life, the one chiefly instrumental in giving it its prevalence, was ST. ANTHONY of Egypt. He is the most celebrated, the most original, and the most venerable representative of this abnormal and eccentric sanctity, the patriarch of monks, and the childless father of an innumerable seed. Anthony sprang from a Christian and honorable Coptic family, and was born about 251 at Conia, on the borders of the Thebiad. Naturally quiet, contemplative, and reflective, he avoided the society of playmates, and despised all higher learning. He understood only his Coptic vernacular, and remained all his life ignorant of Grecian literature and secular science. But he diligently attended divine worship with his parents, and so carefully heard the Scripture lessons that he retained them in memory. Memory was his library. He afterward made faithful, but only too literal use of single passages of Scripture, and began his discourse to the hermits with the very uncatholic-sounding declaration, "The holy Scriptures give us instruction enough." In his eighteenth year, about 270, the death of his parents devolved on him the care of a younger sister and a considerable estate. Six months afterward he heard in the church, just as he was meditating on the apostles' implicit following of Jesus, the word of the Lord to the rich young ruler: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." This word was the voice of God, which determined his life. He divided his real estate, consisting of three hundred acres of fertile land, among the inhabitants of the village, and sold his personal property for the benefit of the poor, excepting a moderate

reserve for the support of his sister. But when soon afterward he heard in the church the exhortation, "Take no thought for the morrow," he distributed the remnant to the poor, and intrusted his sister to a society of pious virgins. He visited her only once after, a characteristic fact for the ascetic depreciation of natural ties.

He then forsook the hamlet and led an ascetic life in the neighborhood, praying constantly according to the exhortation, "Pray without ceasing;" and also laboring according to the maxim, "If any will not work, neither should he eat." What he did not need for his slender support he gave to the poor. He visited the neighboring ascetics, who were then already very plentiful in Egypt, to learn humbly and thankfully their several eminent virtues: from one, earnestness in prayer; from another, watchfulness; from a third, excellence in fasting; from a fourth, meekness; from all, love to Christ and to fellow-men. Thus he made himself universally beloved, and came to be reverenced as a friend of God. But to reach a still higher level of ascetic holiness, he retreated, after the year 285, further and further from the bosom and vicinity of the Church into solitude, and thus became the founder of anchoretism or hermit life, strictly so called. At first he lived in a sepulcher; then for twenty years in the ruins of a castle; and last on Mount Colzim, some seven hours from the Red Sea, a three days' journey east of the Nile, where an old cloister still preserves his name and memory.

In this solitude he prosecuted his ascetic practices with everincreasing vigor. The monotony was broken only by basketmaking, occasional visits, and battles with the devil. In fasting he attained a rare abstemiousness. His food consisted of bread and salt, sometimes dates; his drink of water. Flesh and wine he never touched. He ate only once a day, generally after sunset, and like the presbyter Isidore, was ashamed that an immortal spirit should need earthly nourishment. Often he fasted from two to five days. Friends and wandering Saracens, who always had a certain reverence for the saints of the desert, brought him bread from time to time. But in the last years of his life, to render himself entirely independent of others, and to afford hospitality to travelers, he cultivated a small garden on the mountain, near a spring shaded by palms.