Those who regard this saintly type as a hot-house plant, raised under conditions which appear to defend it from the temptations and distractions of ordinary existence, can have little acquaintance either with cloister ideals or with cloistered lives. A thoroughgoing monastic discipline is the most searching school of virtue ever invented. It withers easy-going piety and “other-worldliness” at the root. It confers a robust humility which is proof against all mortifications and disappointments. It leaves no room for individual tastes and preferences, religious or secular. Its pupils must learn to resent nothing, to demand nothing; to thrive on humiliations, to love and serve all without distinction, without personal choice; even to renounce the special consolations of religion. The common idea of the cloister, as providing a career of impressive religious ceremonial varied by plain sewing, pious gossip, and “devotionettes” is far from the truth. On its external side, a well-ordered convent provides a busy, practical, family life of the most austere kind, with many duties, both religious and domestic, countless demands upon patience, good-temper and unselfishness, and few relaxations. On its hidden side, it is a device to train and toughen the spirit, develop its highest powers, and help it to concentrate its attention more and more completely on eternal realities. That training is still given in its completeness; and the classic, saintly character is still being produced, with its special cultivation of love, meekness, and self-sacrifice, balanced by energy, courage, and strength of will. Sanctity is the orientation of the spirit towards supreme Reality. To the believer in any theistic religion, no attitude of the soul could be simpler, more natural than this. There is nothing about it which deserves to be called abnormal, archaic, or fantastic. The complications with which it is surrounded, the unnatural aspect which it wears for practical men, all come from its collision with the entangled interests and perverse ideals of the world. Thus, retreat from this tangle of sham interests, the building up of a consistent universe within which the self can develop its highest powers and purest loves, is felt to be imperative for those selves in whom this innate aptitude for God reaches the conscious level. In these spirits, the “vocation” for the special life of correspondence with the supersensual reproduces on a higher plane the vocation of the artist or the poet. All the self’s best energies and desires tend in this direction, and it will achieve harmonious development only by unifying itself about this centre of interest, and submitting to the nurture and discipline which shall assure its dominance. The symbols with which the universe of religion is furnished, the moral law which there obtains, are all contributory to the one end; and find their justification in its achievement.