Who could be more devout than Saint Simeon Stylites? who spent all his life upon the top of a tall pillar, absorbed in contemplation, ecstasy, remorse and prayer. Let the poet speak for him.
"Bethink thee, Lord? while Thou and all the saints
Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth
House in the shade of comfortable roofs,
Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,
I, 'twixt the spring and downfal of the light
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times
To Christ, the Virgin Mother and the Saints:
Or in the night, after a little sleep,
I wake, the chill stars sparkle; I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost,
I wear an undressed goatskin on my neck,
And in my weak, lean arms I lift the Cross,
And strive and wrestle with Thee till I die.
O mercy, mercy, wash away my sin!"
A mournful spectacle. Devotion excited to madness, while mind, heart, and conscience, all are dumb, and the poor weak body only bears the heavy burdens which the tyrannous soul heaps upon it!
Devotion, then, needs conscience. Conscience tells a man that he must act as well as pray. Devotion makes the great act of prayer. Conscience works out into the actual of every-day life, the ideal of which devotion has conceived. Will then devotion and conscience be sufficient for a noble manhood? Devotion and conscience alone developed, have ofttimes, in the days that are past, formed some stern old grand inquisitor, torturing the life out of human sinews because he ought. The grand inquisitor's devotion and conscience told him that he ought to advance the holy faith by every engine in his power, and therefore, as he considered that the rack, the thumbscrews, the rope, the fire and the faggot were the best possible engines, he used the same to the utmost of his ability; and thought, alas for humanity! that he was doing God service.
The grand inquisitor had devotion, he had conscience, he probably also had nerves of iron; but he could not possibly have had a heart. Devotion, then, and conscience need a loving, human heart. Will these three be sufficient? The picture grows fairer, we begin to feel less pain when we turn away from the stern, dark portrait of the grand inquisitor, which frowns so grimly in the picture gallery of history, and look upon that fair and gentle upturned face, half shaded by the veil that covers her head. That is a nun of the order of Saint Theresa.
The pale, emaciated countenance tells of many a vigil protracted through the long hours of the night; those wild eyes once saw, or thought they saw, the picture of the Virgin hanging in her cell smiling on her as she prayed; yea, and have wept many a tear as she repeated her sins over to her confessor, or as she stood by the bed-side of some poor sufferer, while those gentle Christian hands smoothed the dying pillow. Rest in peace, soul sainted and dear! The tears thou didst once shed, are wiped away now forever; the sins thou didst once bewail, are all forgiven now, for thou hast loved much!
But the day of nuns has gone forever. A higher development must be sought for. The nun becomes impossible when we train the intellect; Devotion says, Worship; the Mind adds, The Lord thy God. The Conscience says, Do right; the Intellect shows what is right. The Heart says, Love thy fellow-men; the Intellect tells the right way of loving them. Piety and charity! these are glorious! these are the two angels from Heaven which prompt us to help our brothers who need our help; but intellect must show us the way to do it. To take a single instance. Piety and charity cannot show us how to drain and ventilate and rebuild the hovels of the poor in New York. No, every spade, every saw, every hammer employed in that most righteous undertaking must be directed by intellect, by science. Piety and charity may prompt, but intellect must guide.
I know full well that many a woman's heart, guided only by her sacred instinct of loving, acts out the law of right without any conscious questioning of the intellect; that a thousand tender feet carry the gospel of Christ along the alleys of New York and London, or along the corridors of the Crimean hospital, though even there also woman's wit has to aid woman's heart. The noble heart, the Christian love of Florence Nightingale took her to those eastern shores; this made the voice tender and the hand gentle. But whoso reads the account of what she did, will see that beside these, wit and wisdom, keen discerning of means to ends, ability to see what ought to be done, intellect, reason in short, was necessary in order to make a Florence Nightingale possible, together with an exhaustless fund of bodily endurance, fortitude and stoicism.
Thus, then, we find that devotion, conscience, heart, and intellect are all necessary to each other in the harmonious development of Human Nature. Will they be found sufficient for a perfect life?
Put together a strong soul, a tender conscience, a woman's heart, and a man's intellect, and we have a Charlotte Bronté,—surely one of the best types of the modern mind. Will she find these four noble parts of Human Nature sufficient for the task of living?