and purify the world.”[265] As long as monks were truly prayerful, and nuns, like vestals, kept alive the sacred fire for every hearth, they represented that side of the Church’s mediation which is most important and effective; for no one can be really effective in the service of man who is not frequent in the service of waiting upon God. The heroes of the Christian Church, who have evangelised and civilised the wild waste places of the world, who, like the apostle, laid aside every encumbrance to run their race, were, like the apostle, men of much meditation and prayer. We have no such examples in Buddhism, for it lacked the provision which alone could nurture them. In the life of the Buddhist monk there was probably more, and more intense meditation than in that of the Christian, but there was a vast difference in their respective themes of meditation. The Christian could draw his inspiration from a source far higher and purer than himself, and in communion with the Father, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his spirit gather a strength which astonished the world; but what possible inspiration for endeavour could come to a poor Buddhist monk who was chiefly occupied in contemplating the impurity of his perishable body, and whose very highest theme of meditation was simply “nothing whatever”?[266] Another essential distinction between the two modes of life is disclosed in their relation to charity. We have seen that Buddhism had no conception of charity in the Christian sense, and that practical charity in it was represented from a pole quite opposite to that of Christianity. As if conscious of its defects, later Buddhism originated faith in and hope of Maitreya, the Buddha who is next to come, and who, as the son of love, will realise its unconscious prophecies, fulfil its longings, and perfect all things; but notwithstanding this the Buddhist monk continued to be the receiver, not the dispenser, of charity. His whole merit consisted in taking what it was the merit of the layman to offer him:[267] and the taking was all for himself and for his Order. He had no conception of the life suggested in the saying, “As poor, yet making many rich,” and he never could have said of his monastery that it was “l’infirmière des pauvres.” To offer charity to others was the last conception which he could form of his duty: yea, to clothe the naked, take the leper from the dunghill, and help the outcast, was the very reverse of his duty. His creed as to misery in this being the fruit of evil done in a former existence, cut him off from that service of the lost and fallen which in Christendom has been accounted glorious, and for the rendering of which, several of its monastic institutions have been spared the penalty of their corruption.