But it was not so in Buddhism. Its lay associates, however numerous, were but the fringes of religious communities essentially and wholly monastic. When, therefore, deterioration or degradation in the Order set in, reformation of it by the people was hopeless. In the Order this deterioration showed itself earlier that its dominant ideal was lower than the Christian. In early Christian Monachism, fortitude and devotion all sprang from the immolation of self for the universal good. In Buddha’s Sangha, however, though there was both devotion and fortitude displayed, the goal to be reached was simply self-rescue. Its course of beneficence therefore was not only shorter but shallower. Unintentionally it wrought out social reforms, and perhaps political revolution. It restrained luxury, and checked the unbounded sensuality to which Indians are prone; it rebuked the earthly-minded, and witnessed nobly of the higher interests of life to peoples that sorely needed the testimony. It not only propagated morality, but promoted learning, and a love of the beautiful in nature and art, but its force was eventually exhausted. Very early it sank into the stagnation in which it has existed for centuries, and any advance registered by the nations among whom the institution has existed has been due, for more than a thousand years, to the influx of Christian ideas and sentiments. Its own methods hastened its decay. Like all Eastern religious growths, it represented the piety of inertion. Manual labour of all kinds was placed under the ban, and beyond attending to the cleanliness of his person and of his lodging the Buddhist monk was not allowed to do anything save itinerate for his maintenance and the preaching of the law. He was instructed that every moment abstracted from meditation was serious loss. This was in direct contradiction to the very first rule of Christian solitary life, which even in the stifling heat of the desert demanded manual tasks, which fasting might be said to have doubled, continued through the long day till vespers summoned the labourers to worship. The Buddhist monk knew neither the healthy life of physical exertion nor the spiritual refreshment of worship. He might vindicate his idleness against the reproaches of the industrious by the assertion that he too in his quiet life was also “ploughing and sowing” to much better purpose,[263] but then the effect of his ploughing and the fruit of his sowing were all confined to himself, who alone was freed by it from suffering. He could not answer, as the Nicæan monk and quondam courtier replied to Valens, when challenged as to whither he was going, “I go to pray for your empire.”[264] Augustine has indeed assured us that “the less a monk labours in anything but prayer the more serviceable he is to men”; but the prayer which he had in view was not selfish. On the contrary, the tears and penitential exercises of men who had become strangers to all personal desires “were mighty to drown sin