CIVILIZATION. 121 



The expectation of iliis highesi lile is ex])ro6Séd in 

 one of tlie noblest and most misapprehended institutions 

 of the Catholic churcli. Now tliat I liave contcmphiti'd 

 civilization under its various forms, suffer me to disen- 

 gage from my poor person the snl)limit y of the monastic 

 state, and to greet in the true monk, not some dead fos- 

 sil of the un returning past, but the boldest and most 

 farsighted forerunner of the ultimate future. He is 

 the man who, without despising what there is of grand 

 and noble in this Avorld, loving it, on the contrary, and 

 keei)ing heart of hope for all its interests, warms with 

 ejithusiasm for a loftier form of goodness that is yet to 

 come, but which is brought nigh to him by faith. He 

 looks fiir beyond these most solid realities, to the bold- 

 est and most splendid Utopias, and ever, as humanity 

 grows impatient of its voyage, and longs to land ere it 

 has reached the port, he seems to point forward to some 

 invisible shore, and say, "Xot yet ! not yet!" 



In the life of Saint Benedict written by-vSaint Gre- 

 gory the Great — historian worthy of his hero — it is 

 reported that one night, just before the hour of those 

 holy hymns which exhale from the cloister in the midst 

 of silence and darkness, the man of God was gazing upon 

 heaven through the window of his cell. A mystical 

 light shoue round about him, and the whole world was 

 brought before him, as if it had been gathered up into 

 one ray of sunlight. " He saw it," says the inscription 

 which is read to this day in the tower in which he dwelt 

 on Monte Cassino, *"' he saw it, and scorned it."' Lispc.rit 

 et de.yjc.cit. This world which was his handiwork — 

 his, the patriarch of the Monks of the "West, patriarch 

 I might say of European civilization — when he saw it 

 lifted clear of the obsctirities of time, into the light of the 

 everlasting Sun, how petty and poor a world he found it! 



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