CHAPTER IX.: THE HOUSE OF PEACE.

THE sense of ancient peace, the quiet beauty of the ruined abbeys which Turner and many a lesser artist loved to paint, must often have come home to many who visit them, who have no knowledge of architecture and little thought for history. But, even with these passers by, something of their interest in the old ruin is perhaps due to the thought of the life which was lived there in the days gone by. Less worthy traditions have marred the glory of the earlier days, and dimmed the recollection of the long struggle with nature, the hardships of a simple, self-denying life, the toil of the scholar and the conflicts of the saint, but as we look at the broken pillars and the silent aisles and arches where once the music of men's chanting rose and fell, we feel that it is not only the thought of the vanished greatness that moves us, but the sense that this was a place where prayer was wont to be made. We try to picture to our selves sometimes the life of mediaeval England, and how these ruins were once places living and vibrating with thought and spiritual effort, centres [p.136] from which pulsed out many a good influence to uplift the lives of men.

It is true that the monastic ideal was in some respects narrow and one-sided, that its social and religious life was marred and maimed by an artificial celibacy being put in the place of the natural family life; but granting all this, had not the monastery at its best a noble place in the nation, which is too often lacking to-day, or but imperfectly supplied by other things?

The rule of St. Benedict prescribed that seven hours daily should be given by each disciple to manual labour; it was a far-seeing provision, in which there seems to have been realized the thought that study and prayer alone without active work could not provide a complete and healthy life. The Benedictine and Cistercian Abbeys were, at their best, never self-centred institutions whose members pursued their own spiritual welfare without regard to the needs of the world outside. Their scholars copied manuscripts and wrote books for the instruction of men, they were schoolmasters to rich and poor; their lay brothers laboured in the fields, making waste places smooth. Their intercessions went up for others than themselves. Every now and then guests from the great world came to stay within the abbey walls for rest and refreshment of soul, and now and then to end their days in an atmosphere of prayer and peace. In some ways, as we know, the coming of the Friars marked a stage of higher development, in that they [p.137] shared more fully the life of the people, at least in the simplicity and poverty of the early days of the Franciscan movement. Yet another development again is seen in the communities of Brethren of the common life, and in the béguinages of the Low Countries, which combined something of the possibility of individual home life with a common union for prayer.

It is interesting to be able to see at Ghent and Bruges to-day these quaint communities, where each inmate has her own house, with perfect liberty to come and go, to mix with the outer world, or even to return to it altogether; but with a common chapel, and a common religious bond visibly uniting the whole sisterhood. Is it not possible, if the Reformation of Henry VIII. had not been so largely political in its origin, that the monastic system might have been in some measure adapted to the needs of the world of to-day without those acts of spoliation which gave the new Tudor aristocracy its wealth and left us these piles of ruined buildings?

A famous French novelist who had lived and written as a materialist, turned in his closing years back to the ancient Catholic Church, finding peace and refreshment as a lay guest within the walls of a monastery. Much of his later work may seem exaggerated, and even morbid, in its mysticism, but it was sincere because based upon his own inward experience. In one of these later religious novels he speaks of cloistered convents [p.138] as being "the spiritual lightning conductors of Europe." To him the lives of these poor women, shut off in perpetuity from their fellows, were not wasted, but provided a sacrifice of spiritual struggle on behalf of the erring world outside.

Perhaps Huysmans was not right in thinking that the self-inflicted loneliness of the Poor Clares and Benedictine nuns stood in so high a relation of service to humanity as he pictures; certainly the life of practical prayer lived out by a faithful sister of St. Vincent de Paul amongst the sick poor whom she tends, seems far higher and more Christlike than that of the cloistered ascetic; but still the fact remains that if we are not materialists, but have faith in the effectual working of all true prayer we must hold that the intercessions of the cloister, in so far as they spring from true hearts of faith, are not wasted, but, in some way we cannot understand, flow out for the uplifting of the world.

As we look out at the life of to-day must we not feel that in its rush and hurry, with the thoughtless materialism of its outlook, there is more than ever need for the essential message of the monastery, fellowship in self-surrender and self-control, comradeship in study, work and above all in prayer? Is it not possible for us even now to have in our midst here and there little colonies which will do for our age the work which the best monasteries did for the Middle Ages, and perhaps [p.139] something more even than this, in that we need no longer have their limitations?

What would such a monastery be, if we can picture it in its main features?

The first monks were always anxious to have their cells built in some out of the way spot, and sometimes moved the site of their abbeys to avoid the dangers to their inward life which seemed to them to come with the invasions of sounds and sights, which the approach of "the world" brought with it. We do not now believe in the separation of the life of the Church from that of men outside it, and there was at times, perhaps, some thing selfish in the monkish love of quiet isolation, but for certain high purposes of the monastery there was a sound instinct in it too. If the community remains in living touch with those without, sending its members out from it and receiving guests on visits long or short, it will, in many cases, do its work best if its situation provides it with a natural atmosphere and background of peace and quiet, corresponding to that inward atmosphere which is to play around the life of its members.

Our monastery then will be placed in some little frequented spot, if possible close to one of those natural bridges over which we may most easily pass into communion with the life of nature unmarred by man's civilization; at the edge of some rolling heather moorland, where for miles you may walk and see no sign of house or road, under a ridge [p.140] of the limestone fells, or beneath the shadow of a great chalk down, where the sheep wander freely, or if mountain and moor be too far away, within reach of some solitary beach where the sea and wind sing to each other; or with an outlook over some wide plain, with broad horizons giving some sense of openness and freedom.

Thus the companions of the House of Peace will have constantly near them the opportunity of silent intercourse with nature; they can go out, wet or fine, sometimes alone and sometimes in company, to let the fresh winds and the sunlight and the spirit of the great open spaces play about them, making them stronger and fitter for joy and labour, for study, work and prayer.

For the House of Peace will be a dwelling place where work is done. It will have its garden, with flowers and fruit trees to be tended, kitchen herbs to be raised; there will be beehives and poultry, and it may be the cares of a small farm; but beast and bird will be treated as friendly companions, objects of the Divine care and therefore, too, of the good will and reverence of the dwellers in the House.

There will be books: especially such as will help most the inner life of man, the /Acta sanctorum/, and all stories of the saints of God; the records of other religions than ours, the works of philosophers, poets and thinkers; and such a general library as would befit a home whose windows look out on to many sides of life.

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But it will not be enough for the House to be supplied with opportunity for fruitful study, quiet cells for work and meditation, and with manual labour in garden, field and orchard for all who are fitted for it. Side by side with all this, lest the life of the place grow self-centred, there must be some redemptive work going on, for those who would not themselves have been helped by all this storehouse of good things, apart from the mediation and ministry of its inmates.

This might be found in the education of back ward or delicate children from poor homes, physically or mentally in need of special care and protection, or in the care of convalescents; it might be found in the training upon the adjoining farm or in the carpenter's workshop, as well as in special classes held within the House itself, of a small group of lads from some reformatory, or juvenile offenders to whom our present prison system offers only imperfect means of succour. In helping in their training, in joining in their games the companions of the House of Peace would find a noble part of their own work and joy; they would hope too to share with these younger brothers not a little of the deeper inspiration of common worship.

There might be as a part of the House rooms for married companions, while single men and single women could be lodged in separate wings or in hostels of their own. Grouped near there might be cottages with homes linked to the House [p.142] by ties more or less close, whose inmates would share in much of the work of the community and in the privilege of common worship. The centre of all would be the place of prayer, the hearth where each companion would come to rekindle his own torch of love and aspiration; a place always open, used in common at certain times and by all companions who were able to come there, used also frequently throughout the day for silent prayer and meditation, whether by the companions and their guests, or the passing stranger who might care to enter in.

At least at one meal during the day the ancient practice would be maintained of one companion reading aloud from some helpful book while the rest kept silence. During certain hours of the day silence would also be observed, though with no slavish bond.

The Buddhist monasteries of Burmah fulfil in the life of that people a place which might, to some small extent, be taken for us by a group of such Houses of Rest. It is the duty of every Burmese Buddhist who desires to fulfil the whole ideal of manhood to pass some portion of his life, it may be months or years, it may even be only weeks or days, as a monk in a Buddhist monastery, learning its lessons and drinking in its peace. So, too, into our House of Rest might come, at different stages of their lives, the eager seeker after truth, the strong man in the midst of the battle of his work, the weary, [p.143] tired and disheartened by their failure; all would find a welcome, a home of refreshment, where in the atmosphere of prayer, with the daily round of simple work, of study, of open air life and common worship, they might find guidance and renewal of strength. Some might only stay for a short while, others for longer periods; yet others might find in the House of Rest their central home, returning there at intervals after periods of labour as social ministers in the crowded towns, in which, perhaps, a number of different branches of work might be affiliated in some way to the central House of Rest, which would be a storehouse to supply help to these branches far away.

One of the rocks upon which the old monastic system made shipwreck was the corporate selfishness which came to the monks through their possessions. They had renounced individual wealth, but they were too zealous to secure for their abbeys the property which might enhance their usefulness and assure their future growth. Believing as we do that institutions like men must die to give place to new life, we must not try to secure an earthly immortality for a good institution, any more than for a good individual. It would probably be best then that our House of Rest should not be a legal corporation, able to own and receive property. Its companions should be tenants on God's earth; their House should be lent them in trust, but not be owned by them. It might still, however, be possible for those who [p.144] desired for a longer period to have the privilege of holy poverty, to renounce for the time being their own income, without taking any vow or handing over to the community possessions which they might rightly resume at a later date, in trust for the world they would serve.

Paul Sabatier has finely said that one of the great claims which distinguishes still the ancient Catholic Church is the unlimited opportunity for self-sacrifice which she holds forth to her children. We cannot get the utmost except for the highest. Our house of prayer and of work, where self-denial might be found to the full united with the joy of service, would give this opportunity of self-surrender, of self-discipline untainted by false asceticism, of comradeship in sacrifice and in the purest joys and highest aspirations of the heart, which in the depths of our soul we need and long for. May it not even yet be built, this House of Peace and Prayer?