What the typical Christian character had in mind in all that he did was neither the removal of suffering nor of injustice, but the salvation of his own soul. That justified everything so long as it was believed to contribute to that end. The social consequences of what was done simply did not count. And if, instead of taking mere phrases from the principal Christian writers, we carefully examine their meaning we shall see that they were strangely devoid of what is now understood by the expression "moral incentive." The more impressive the outbreak of Christian piety the clearer does this become. No one could have illustrated the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice better than did the saints and monks of the earlier Christian centuries. Such a character as the famous St. Simon Stylites, living for years on his pillar, filthy and verminous, and yet the admired of Christendom, with the lives of numerous other saints, whose sole claim to be remembered is that they lived the lives of worse than animals in the selfish endeavours to save their shrunken souls, will well illustrate this point. If it entered the diseased imagination of these men that the road to salvation lay through attending to the sick and the needy, they were quite ready to labour in that direction; but of any desire to remove the horrible social conditions that prevailed, or to remedy the injustice of which their clients were the victims, there is seldom a trace. And, on the other hand, if they believed that their salvation involved getting away from human society altogether and leading the life of a hermit, they were as ready to do that. If it meant the forsaking of husband or wife or parent or child, these were left without compunction, and their desertion was counted as proof of righteousness. The lives of the saints are full of illustrations of this. Professor William James well remarks, in his _Varieties of Religious Experience_, that "In gentle characters, where devoutness is intense and the intellect feeble, we have an imaginative absorption in the love of God to the exclusion of all practical human interests.... When the love of God takes possession of such a mind it expels all human loves and human uses." Of the Blessed St. Mary Alacoque, her biographer points out that as she became absorbed in the love of Christ she became increasingly useless to the practical life of the convent. Of St. Teresa, James remarks that although a woman of strong intellect his impression of her was a feeling of pity that so much vitality of soul should have found such poor employment. And of so famous a character as St. Augustine a Christian writer, Mr. A. C. Benson, remarks:--