At least at one meal during the day the ancient practice would be maintained of one companion reading aloud from some helpful book while the rest kept silence. During certain hours of the day silence would also be observed, though with no slavish bond.
The Buddhist monasteries of Burmah fulfil in the life of that people a place which might, to some small extent, be taken for us by a group of such Houses of Rest. It is the duty of every Burmese Buddhist who desires to fulfil the whole ideal of manhood to pass some portion of his life, it may be months or years, it may even be only weeks or days, as a monk in a Buddhist monastery, learning its lessons and drinking in its peace. So, too, into our House of Rest might come, at different stages of their lives, the eager seeker after truth, the strong man in the midst of the battle of his work, the weary, [p.143] tired and disheartened by their failure; all would find a welcome, a home of refreshment, where in the atmosphere of prayer, with the daily round of simple work, of study, of open air life and common worship, they might find guidance and renewal of strength. Some might only stay for a short while, others for longer periods; yet others might find in the House of Rest their central home, returning there at intervals after periods of labour as social ministers in the crowded towns, in which, perhaps, a number of different branches of work might be affiliated in some way to the central House of Rest, which would be a storehouse to supply help to these branches far away.
One of the rocks upon which the old monastic system made shipwreck was the corporate selfishness which came to the monks through their possessions. They had renounced individual wealth, but they were too zealous to secure for their abbeys the property which might enhance their usefulness and assure their future growth. Believing as we do that institutions like men must die to give place to new life, we must not try to secure an earthly immortality for a good institution, any more than for a good individual. It would probably be best then that our House of Rest should not be a legal corporation, able to own and receive property. Its companions should be tenants on God's earth; their House should be lent them in trust, but not be owned by them. It might still, however, be possible for those who [p.144] desired for a longer period to have the privilege of holy poverty, to renounce for the time being their own income, without taking any vow or handing over to the community possessions which they might rightly resume at a later date, in trust for the world they would serve.
Paul Sabatier has finely said that one of the great claims which distinguishes still the ancient Catholic Church is the unlimited opportunity for self-sacrifice which she holds forth to her children. We cannot get the utmost except for the highest. Our house of prayer and of work, where self-denial might be found to the full united with the joy of service, would give this opportunity of self-surrender, of self-discipline untainted by false asceticism, of comradeship in sacrifice and in the purest joys and highest aspirations of the heart, which in the depths of our soul we need and long for. May it not even yet be built, this House of Peace and Prayer?
CHAPTER X.: THE PATH TO UNITY.
A GREAT patristic scholar who, though a lover of theology, is also a lover of his fellow-men, has related how, journeying across the lonely desert of Arabia the Rocky towards the holy monastery of Sinai, he came upon a band of peasant pilgrims; he did not know their language nor they his, but each made the sign of the Cross as they drew near one another, and as they did so they seemed at once to be friends. He was greeted with welcoming smiles, and the way through the wilderness was lightened by the sense of Christian fellowship. It cheered him to feel how that ancient sacred symbol had surmounted the barriers of race and speech, making these strangers feel that they were comrades and fellow pilgrims travelling to a common goal. And yet he could not but recall with a sense of sorrowful irony the thought that, had he made the sign of the Cross not in the Greek, but in the Latin way, he would have been met with sullen indifference and distrust, if not with anger. These simple Russian peasants were the spiritual descendants of the [p.146] brave men who centuries ago went to death at the stake rather than place their fingers and thumb in the new-fangled way, which, to their mind, symbolised some error in the conception of the doctrine of the Trinity, a departure from the one orthodox fashion by which the Church should be guided in making the holy sign.
It is difficult for us to realise that so small a change should make so great a difference to the welcome given to a stranger; and, yet, perhaps some of the differences which separate Western Christians to-day may be almost as foolish in the sight of the angels.
An English parson once sadly told how, when travelling in France in his cassock, he had been delighted by a number of ecclesiastics coming to call upon their foreign confrere, and how, to his dismay, they all incontinently fled, as from contagion of plague, when they realised that he was only an Anglican; he doubtless felt acutely the blindness of the worthy Romans who failed to recognise the apostolic nature of his orders. As acutely, perhaps, some Nonconformist minister at home may have regretted a similar attitude on the part of the good parson to the unhallowed ministrations of the dissenter.
When we look back over the long centuries that separate us from the early Apostolic Church, there are few things which make us sadder than this spirit of distrust and hostility, showing itself between men who alike believe themselves to be Christians. [p.147] It is no new thing; what is new to-day as a wide spread spirit is the desire to transcend our differences, not by despising or ignoring the things which separate us, nor yet by the victory of one church or sect over another, or the absorption of the lesser by the greater community, but by the better understanding of each other and of ourselves, the closer co-operation where co-operation is possible, and, it may be, the gradual realisation of a unity deeper than all that keeps us apart.
We remember how the mocking scorn of Celsus made sport of the divisions between Catholic and heretic Christians of his day, while both alike were a persecuted minority struggling against the edicts of pagan Rome. Montanists and orthodox suffered sometimes side by side, and yet, while awaiting death in the same prisons, they would hold no communion with each other.