WESLEYAN-METHODIST MAGAZINE.

NOVEMBER, 1859.

BASIL, AND HIS ORDER.

THE interior of Asia Minor, now so little known, was open during the third century to the most genial influence of the Christian religion. To us the richly diversified landscapes are all but forbidden ground; but once the mountain-ranges and romantic glens, the fruitful plains and garden-like valleys, the charming dales, and upland forests of pine and beech and odorous cedar, the perfumed flower-beds broadly sheltered by the plane-tree, and the river-banks adorned with the verdure of mastic and tamarind groves, combined to form a paradise, in which the Christian church trained some of her noblest sons. One of these was Basil. This remarkable man was born about the year 329, in Cæsarea Mazaca, a large and flourishing city, sheltered by the mountains on the southern side of a rich plain near the source of the eastern Halys. The happy circumstances under which he began his mortal life might be likened to the ever mild, equalized, and sunny climate of his birth-place; nor was the luxuriant fruitfulness of his native valley more fragrant than the names of that Christian ancestry from which he sprang. The name of his great-grandmother, and the memory of his grandparents, were "blessed;" for they had been. wandering confessors in the desert parts of Pontus. His father Basil, with his mother Eumelia, fully sustained the honour of this pious lineage, and left a beautiful reflection of their own character in that of their children. These formed a distinguished group. There were Basil, Peter of Sebaste, Gregory of Nyssen, that pattern of cultivated Christian intellect, and their sister Macrina, whose example and influence were so powerful in favour of convent-life in the East.

A dangerous affliction of the infant Basil called forth all the graces of his parents, who, after using ordinary means of relief, appealed fervently to Him who sometimes, in the days of His flesh, responded graciously to the cry of parental affection. The child was spared. And, whilst for a time under the care of his grandmother, whose last days were spent in the beautiful neighbourhood of New-Caesarea, in Pontus, his young intellect and heart were imbued with saving truth, while his physical powers were unfolded and his health confirmed. His studies were begun at home under his father's eye. Then we find him pursuing the course at Cæsarea, in Palestine; where he first met with that celebrated man with whom he lived in close friendship so long. While yet a youth, he sought the educational advantages of Constantinople, visited the schools of Alexandria, and finally gathered 3 Q

VOL. V.-FIFTH SERIES.

up all that Athens could yield to his inquiring mind. While at the seat of Grecian learning, he enjoyed companionship with Gregory; and, as a fellow-student with Julian, afterwards known as "the Apostate," he learned to use the weapons of elegant literature against that cause to which his school-mate subsequently gave his imperial influence and power. All his powers and learning were given to the defence of truth. And his spiritual character marked him at length as ripe for the responsibilities and honours of a bishopric. He is known as the Bishop of Cæsarea. But his name has a still higher distinction as that of a peacemaker between contending parties; and especially as a great defender of Scripture truth, in association with such men as his brother of Nyssa, Amphilochius, Didymus, and Gregory Nazianzen. With these he stemmed the torrent of Arianism and its kindred error; and by his personal energy, firmness, and Christian spirit, saved his own province, at least, from the desolation with which it was threatened by the combined forces of popular heresy and imperial will. The Emperor came to Cæsarea to enforce his own theology. "All others are prepared to obey," said his Minister to the Prelate: "do you alone dare to have any other religion than your master's?" "I have nothing to be afraid of," was the calm reply. "If you wish to deprive me of possessions, I have none except my cloak and a few books." "Well, but what of exile?" "Banishment is no banishment to me," said Basil, "since the whole world is my Lord's." "But there is torture." "If that be applied," was the answer, "the first stroke will crush my feeble body, and I shall go to God, who is the desire of my soul." The Emperor was conquered, and the church was saved.

A character like that of Basil must leave its own impress upon any system with which it became identified; and we are not surprised to find monachism witnessing even now to the Bishop's legislation and example. Perhaps, no individual instance more clearly illustrates that process by which the seeker of spiritual perfection may pass, from plain, distinct Christianity, into the mistaken devotedness of the cloister. Basil's was an exemplar case. It had required all the friendly zeal of his companion, Gregory, to keep him from renouncing the literary advantages of Athens, in disgust at the insolence and formality of its schools; and, though for a time he exercised his powers in public life at Cæsarea, his sister's warning-against pride, vanity, and ambition-easily led him to grave reflection. The result, he says, was an awakening, as from a deep sleep, into the light of that Gospel whose superior blessings make every science appear but vain. In the simplicity of his first love, he shrank from the world. Nor, with all his native and acquired strength, was he proof against the influence of religious fashion; for he saw no way of becoming dead to the world, but by emulating the severity of the consecrated recluse. Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, were visited and explored in search of some model teacher of saintly abstraction; and the earnest traveller returned from a pilgrimage of two years, entirely persuaded that those only were strangers to earth and citizens of

heaven who had proved the possibility of uniting abstinence and labour, fervour and exhaustion; or who had rendered themselves largely independent of food or sleep, and enjoyed the highest devotion amidst hunger and thirst, nakedness and cold; and lived in the body as if its existence were never felt. His enthusiasm was too warm to admit fondness for ecclesiastical office as a rival. He adopted the garb and manners under which alone, he thought, exalted virtue was to be found; and entered on his novitiate, in a desert of Pontus, near the scene of his mother's and sister's conventual seclusion. The Church, however, could not dispense with the energies of such a son; and, in spite of himself, he was called to the oversight and defence of the flock in times of heresy and persecution. He was a blessing to his diocese; but, perhaps, a victim to the rules by which he sought to purify and regulate the ascetic institute. The question of comparative merit between the solitary system and that of community soon engaged the inquiring mind of Basil. His extensive researches had qualified him for fairly estimating their respective claims; and his judgment seems to have hastened the public decision, and to have secured pre-eminence for the rule of brotherhood. "The fact that God wishes us to care one for another is enough to show us," he says, "that we ought to live in fellowship. The advantages of pure hermit-life are very few, if any. Its object is the good of the individual himself. And this is clearly inconsistent with apostolic charity, whose aim is not so much one's own advantage as the salvation of many. Besides, the solitary man cannot easily discern his own faults, having no one to teach or correct him. The wise man's words may be applied to his case: Woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.' He will be in great danger, also, of self-complacency: indeed, it will be very difficult to guard against it; for, having no one to judge of his actions, he will soon imagine that he has reached the height of perfection. But, on the other hand, the life of the cœnobite has this advantage, that it is under correction; and correction even by an enemy often excites those who judge things holily to desire the remedy for their faults. Here we have a proper arena for our spiritual combats; an easy road for advance in piety; a continual exercise, a perpetual meditation on the commands of God. This mode of life is, indeed, conformed to that of the first Christians, who were all together, and had all things common." *

These views, sustained by his powerful example and ceaseless and successful efforts to gather religious communities out of the world, now secured a commanding and accumulating influence. A few ascetics, here and there, would still prefer the solitary cell. At a later period there was a provision for such cases, in connexion with the more popular monastery; and even now, under the Greek Church, as a recent explorer tells us,† "a real, genuine, unsophisticated live

* Regulæ fusius tract. Interrog. vii. (Benedict. Edit., tom. ii., 345-8.) + Curzon.

hermit" may sometimes be found in regions like Mount Athos, a lingering relic of an almost extinct class. But Basil's choice became supreme. Not that he was blind to the evils of the system which he had adopted; for he soon found that many of those to whom he had bound himself were pure only in appearance, and that convent life was liable to hypocrisy or extravagance. His discernment was not equal to the discovery that the secret of the mischief which he deplored was in the first principles of the institution; but, mistaking an essential property for a mere accident, he sought to effect a reform by more stringent rules, and really became the founder of the first link in that chain of religious Orders, whose history is the record of successive attempts to check the natural working of a wrong principle, and whose names remain as the memorials of a system which has failed to accomplish its first purpose.

While Anthony was the founder of Laura, (that is, clusters of cells,) and Pachomius has the honour of the better-regulated Cœnobia, Basil brought the institution nearer to its more permanent form by imposing more solemn vows and enforcing a uniform rule. His name is, properly, the first to distinguish a monastic order. The Order of St. Anthony took its name at a later date in honour of the venerated hermit; but its regulations seem to have been those of Basil, whose rules were generally received through the East, by those even who were not professedly his monks. The Order of St. Basil became widely popular during its founder's life; but after his departure its influence took a still more extensive range. It flourished for three centuries; and, though it subsequently fluctuated under the various influences of heresy, schism, and political change, it still lives under the shadow of the Greek Church, and boasts of furnishing other calendars, as well as its own, with the names of Royal members, martyrs, confessors, Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes. Its rules, as framed by the Saint, number in their larger form fifty-five, and in shorter sections three hundred and thirteen. In the one, Basil speaks as the instructer of monks; in the other, he appears rather as the teaching Bishop. The Order admits of three modes of life :-There is the entire recluse, shut up in the grotto or cavern on the mountain-top, never appearing, but professedly abandoned to Divine Providence ;-then, the more accessible hermit, who ruminates in some little nest in the neighbourhood of the monastery;—while the third style is that of the brotherhood, living in regulated community within the conventual establishment. Among these the original laws are many and strict. Their daily offices of devotion would occupy six hours, and call for wakefulness day and night. They are now found in volumes so many, so large, and so expensive, that neither priest nor monk in these degenerate days can observe them; although the Greek recluse is still honoured as "the good elder," who lives in "the perfect state," "the angelic life," and is therefore most eligible for ecclesiastical honour and preferment. The stages of his advance toward perfection were to be known by his garb, which was changed from the first dim-coloured tunic and bonnet of the novice, to the