This spirit of asceticism found its way into the Christian Church. Perhaps jealousy lest the Stoic philosophy, or Jewish Pharisaism, should seem to have a more marked influence than Christianity, produced a desire to make a display of asceticism. Or it might be that a persuasion of the excellence of this, for its own sake, led Christian men to adhere to it. Whatever the motive, there was soon manifested, in the Church, an exaggeration of self-restraint. Men began to withdraw from the ordinary walks of Christian life. They began to despise the performance of merely common duties; and to sketch out new ways to perfection, which they thought better than those taught by the Saviour. They began to do violence to their natures. In fact they became Stoical, as if they thought the being so was an advance on being Christian. Christianity is a religion eminently suited for the daily life of men. It teaches us to do our duty in the world. We are taught that the highest degree of piety is consistent with, and indeed implies, the performance of one’s proper part, as belonging to a great family, which has a right to the energy and service of each of its members. To do our duty amongst men, wisely and bravely, is taught us too by the example of the divine founder of our religion. A man’s interests and desires may often lie in the direction of his ordinary duties. There can be no true piety in relinquishing the post GOD has given him merely because his interest would induce him to retain it. On the other hand, our duties may often be difficult and distracting. In that case, we have no right to leave them. There is often greater victory in doing our work in the world than in fleeing into solitude for the exercises of devotion. He who makes his religion to consist of care for self only, who for selfish ends neglects the duties which every man owes to his fellow-men, has a very unsatisfactory sense of the doctrines of the Gospel. Yet we find early mention in the records of the Church, of men who cut themselves off from intercourse with their fellow-Christians, leaving their place in the human family vacant, their work undone. They assumed the air of peculiar sanctity, clad themselves in coarse garments, slept on the hardest of couches, often on the ground, covered only by a sheepskin, or some similar coverlet, lived on the humblest fare, and many of them thought it a peculiar virtue to forego the joys of the marriage-life. When we look at this state of things with the eye of reason, we see that it has really no claim on the veneration of mankind. If it was good for one, why not for another? If certain persons, by means of their seclusion and mortification of the flesh, as they termed it, made themselves peculiarly the loved of GOD, then might all men do so; for we are told, “there is no respect of persons with” Him[61]. But, if all were to adopt this system of living, what would become of human society?