But like all unnatural segregations of human beings from society, for which man was made, Monachism everywhere became eventually an excuse for indolence and misanthropy; a refuge for the melancholy, and for all who had become unfit to serve either the world or the Church. Its whole history in the Christian Church has justified the warning of St. Paul against artificial methods of attaining to saintliness. The vices which beset society never lost any of their power over the recluses of the desert or the inmates of the monastery, while many other vices were added to the host that assailed the solitary, undefended by his fellows.[261] “Woe to him that is alone, for when he falls there is not another to raise him up! Woe to him that is alone, for there is no one to keep him from falling!” are the lessons of this long mistaken attempt to realise an undemanded standard of excellence; and yet, just because of the consistency of its ideal with one side of Christian service, modern Christendom, though in altered and modified forms, has not parted with Monachism yet. “The ideal of the Christian monk,” says Montalembert, “is that of manhood in its purest and most energetic form—manhood intellectually and morally superior, devoting itself to efforts greater and more sustained than are exacted in a worldly career; and this not to make earthly service a stepping-stone to heaven, but of life a long series of victories for man.”[262] Surely this is the ideal of every Christian minister truly consecrated to the service of man; yea, the ideal of every brother or sister who, married or single, in business or society, is trying to reach forward to the mark of our high calling. There is no code of disabilities in the service of Christ, and the way to the highest honours is open to all who wish to enter it, of whatever condition or rank or mental capacity they may be. When this common ideal was fallen from in the monastic orders, it was being realised by many private members of the Church; when the professional Church had falsified it, it was being upheld by so-called “men of the world”; and therefore, as a natural consequence, when the monastic orders of Christendom became corrupt, society, true to its better instincts, rose up and reformed them or swept them away. There was always a large volume of life outside the particular channel which these orders filled, to purify it when it became foul, or to force it onward, when stagnant, into the life of the Church.