How little did the pious men, who, in the third century, extolled the merit of mortification, and petty torture, and celibacy, think of the hideous corruptions in which these practices were to terminate! A sagacity more than human was needed to foresee the end from the beginning. But, with the experience of past ages before us, we may well learn to distrust every specious attempt to exaggerate morality, or to attach ideas of blame to things innocent or indifferent. This over-doing of virtue never fails to divert the mind from what is substantially good, and is moreover the almost invariable symptom of a transmuted or fictitious pietism. * * * * * II. The ancient monkery was a system of the most deliberate selfishness. That solicitude for the preservation of individual interests which forms the basis of the human constitution, is so broken up and counteracted by the claims and pleasures of domestic life, that, though the principle remains, its manifestations are suppressed, and its predominance effectually prevented, except in some few tempers peculiarly unsocial. But the anchoret is a selfist by his very profession; and, like the sensualist, though his taste is of another kind, he pursues his personal gratifications, reckless of the welfare of others. His own advantage or delight, or, to use his favorite phrase—"the good of his soul," is the sovereign object of his cares. His meditations, even if they embrace the compass of heaven, come round, ever and again, to find their ultimate issue in his own bosom; but can that be true wisdom which just ends at the point whence it started? True wisdom is a progressive principle. In abjuring the use of the active faculties, in reducing himself, by the spell of vows, to a condition of physical and moral annihilation, the insulated being says to his fellows, concerning whatever might otherwise have been converted to their benefit—"It is corban;" thus making void the law of love to our neighbor, by a pretended intensity of love to God.