I am free to confess a profound reverence for many of these men determined at all hazards to keep their souls unspotted from the world. I bow before a passion for righteousness ready to part with life itself if necessary. Yet the gross extravagances, the almost incredible absurdities of their unnatural lives compel us to withhold our judgment. One thing is certain, the strange life of those far-off years is an eloquent testimony to the indestructible craving of the human soul for self-mastery and soul-purity. II _MONASTICISM IN THE WEST: ANTE-BENEDICTINE MONKS 340-480 A.D._ We are now to follow the fortunes of the monastic system from its introduction in Rome to the time of Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the first great monastic order. Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, who made Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire, died in 337 A.D. Three years later Rome heard, probably for the first time, an authentic account of the Egyptian hermits. The story was carried to the Eternal City by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, one of the most remarkable characters in the early church, a man of surpassing courage and perseverance, an intrepid foe of heresy, "heroic and invincible," as Milton styled him. Twenty of the forty-six years of his official life were spent in banishment. Athanasius was an intimate friend of the hermit Anthony and a persistent advocate of the ascetic ideal. When he fled to Rome, in 340, to escape the persecutions of the Arians, he took with him two specimens of monastic virtue--Ammonius and Isidore. These hermits, so filthy and savage in appearance, albeit, as I trust, clean in heart, excited general disgust, and their story of the tortures and holiness of their Egyptian brethren was received with derision. But men who had faced and conquered the terrors of the desert were not to be so easily repulsed. Aided by other ascetic travelers from the East they persisted in their propaganda until contempt yielded to admiration. The enthusiasm of the uncouth hermits became contagious. The Christians in Rome now welcomed the story of the recluses as a Divine call to abandon a dissolute society for the peace and joy of a desert life. But before this transformation of public opinion can be appreciated, it is needful to know something of the social and religious condition of Rome in the days when Athanasius and his hermits walked her streets.