FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

Evening Star, Issue 20440, 22 March 1930, Page 2

FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

THE HERMIT LIFE We have lately buried an example of it in the person of Ben Rudd. I met him several times. But it was my fortune to make my first acquaintance with him in one of his less gracious moods. It was a winter day,; the enow lay thick about Flagstaff and its base. A friend and myself were urging our way to the summit. The air bit shrewdly; but it had the lightness and exhilaration that characterises it when it comes thrice sifted over fields of frozen snow. Quite unintentionally we happened to cross a corner of Ben Rudd’s property. The snow had obscured the track. The old man darted out after us like a spider when the fly is caught in his net. We thought he would turn back when wo went off his property, which we set about doing quickly. But no, on he came at a furious pace. Then we resolved to give him a run for it. So wo started off down towards the Taieri Plains. But he was bent on capturing us, and followed hard after us. On and on we fled him down the labyrinthine'ways, ■ But, with unhurrying chase And unperturbed pace, he pursued ns. After we had gone a mile or two, scrambling over fences and floundering in and out of snowdrifts, tho thing got past a joke. So we thought we would stop and face the inevitable; for ho was evidently determined to follow us up no matter how far. So wo stood still. When ho overtook us ho was frothing at the mouth, partly with rage, partly with breathlessness! He demanded what we meant by trespassing on his property. We said we did not know we were doing so. “ Why, then, did we run away from him?” That did seem'to indicate a guilty conscience. But wo expressed sorrow in silver words, in the form of half a crown each, for we really pitied the old soul. He told us how he was pestered out of his life with people breaking down his fences. Then we got to talking in a friendly way. Ho told us something about himself. I asked if he ever went to town. Yes, ho did .sometimes, but as seldom as possible. I gave him a cordial invitation to come and see mo next time he was in Dun-: edin. Ho did. A good while after the foregoing events he turned up one day,, just after lunch was over. Ho had not had any, L so we made that right for him. Then he gave us something of his history; told us how he was well connected at Homo; how ho was the black sheep of tho family and had run away, and all the rest which has already been told in tho newspapers. Ho said further that he had had a dream recently. He dreamt he wag in hell. In one of i.ts chambers he saw inscribed on the wall tho, names of a number of yoijng men belonging to a certain church society in Dunedin, and the name of a D.D. who was described as tho leader of tho band. I said it, was to be hoped that, in this instance anyway, the adage would bo true—that dreams'.go by contrariness—otherwise the outlopk for the society, in question' arid its leader was bad. He agreed. He became communicative. Ho wondered pathetically why people would keep pestering him by trespassing and annoying him in various way. Tears gathered in Ins eyes as he told the story of his wrongs. I really felt very sorry lor the poor old chap, advised him to see a lawyer, and ;tried to help him in several ways.-which I need not detail here. And now his trials are at an end, and after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well. But if it be true that he who makes two-blades of grass grow, where there was only one or none before deserves well of his country, Ben Rudd should shino in the honour. For he, did accomplish this in his little farm. He did something more than this; he revived iii some small degree the ideal of tho hermit life.'

The world owes much to its hermits. It has never wanted types of them. And some of these are among the, greatest names in history. They have been commoner in tlie East than in the West., Jeremiah, perhaps tlie greatest of the Hebrew Prophets, longed for a lodging place in the wilderness. Ho was sick of society, sick of its sins, its. conventionalities, its lecheries, and treacheries. The cry of one of, tho poets, of his race found an answering echo in his heart. “Oh, that I had tho wings of a dove. . . . Lo, then I would wander far off and remain in tho wilderness.”: Some four centuries later wo com© on ono who had not merely longed but who actually lived tho hermit life, and whom tho Supremo Teacher described as “ among them that are born of woman there hath not arisen a greater than John tho. Baptist.” The tradition was carried on chiefly through the influence of certain ascetic sects, such as the Esseues, the Thcrapeutae, Neo-Platonists, etc., • after tho Christian era. Its earliest, most prominent, and also its noblest example was St. Antony. Like Tolstoi and others, he thought Christ meant what. He said. And so on© day

in church he was struck by the words of Jesus; “If.thou- wilt be perfect go soli all that thou hast and give to the poor, and coino follow me.” He took Christ at His word. Ho was a rich man, but ho sold his estate and property, except a small amount which he retained for his sister and himself. But it could not end there. Once again in church the words “ take no thought for to-morrow ” smote his conscience. He gave up what he had purposed to keep, took his sister to a nunnery, and betook himself to a solitary life. “He fixed his dwelling first in a tomb, then in a ruined fort near the Nile, where he remained for twenty years, and finally to a grove of date palms near the west coast pf the Red Sea, where he died in 365.” • . * A, « Somebody says that no one over- went into the wilderness that the devil did not go with him. St. Antony apparently bad many a bout with this old enemy of man. All sorts of legends have gathered about his name bearing on these conflicts with the spirit of evil. It is quite natural that when a man follows out the dictates of his conscience doubts and fears will many a time beset him. And especially is this so when, as in Antony’s case, his course puts him at right angles to the world. And when, in addition to this, fir® added fasting, prayer, constant meditation upon spiritual things, life, death, and the great hereafter, away from the hurly burly of the world, there are sure to emerge abnormal experiences—experiences which to the ordinary person appear unreasonable, extravagant, absurd. Yet in spite of l what seems to us the abnormal visions and dreams ‘of St. Antony ho was no fool, if we are to believe that a man is not profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul. The trouble has been in all ages that few do not believe’ that, or, at any rate, act as if they did. Yet St. Antony’s piety had a basis of sound wisdom. He was shrewd, had a sane judgment and a clear insight into mental as well as spiritual truth. Many of his sayings indicate this. Ho said to a blind friend: “Trouble not at the loss of thy bodily eyes. Thou hast the eyes with which the angels see, with which thou mayest behold God.” And was ever a better definition of perfection given than to make it consist in over new beginnings, as St. Antony defined it. Once, when a company of holy men were discussing which was the highest of tho virtues, St. Antony decided in favour of discretion, because it moderates all the other virtues. It is not surprising that he attracted many to his call, drawn thither by his wisdom, his piety, and his cheerful and courteous manners. Disciples also were, formed, and when ho died “ the desert was studded with hermitages in every direction.” So began the era of monasticism that has played so prominent a part in the history of religion. -

The devil is said to be .the ape of God. At any rate, all good things have mysterious tendency to corrupt. And so it was with tho hermits. The time came when tho hermit life degenerated. Tennyson has sketched the type of this in his poem ‘ Sjt. Simeon Styiites'.' Here wo meet tho error that matter —the , flesh—is evil and only to ho trampled upon and cast out. The poem, says Stopford Brooke, is robustly yet delicately done. It brings out vividly that the more the flesh is punished the more certain is salvation. Tho power of miracle working, “the claim, ■ the right established over God, from Whom self-inflicted penanco wrenches privilege, the steady underlying vanity and boastfulness’’-—all this is well, if somewhat disagreeably, portrayed in the poem. Tennyson’s dislike of.the ascetic ideal when it has run to seed is evident in many of his poems, .and especially in tho ‘ Holy Grail.’ It wrecks the Round Table because it was the pursuit of purity dissociated from humanity and humanity’s needs Nevertheless, the early hermits’ witness bore good fruit for a while, and though the system produced, evil imitators we ought not to forget how much we owe to St. Antony and others. The hermits boro their testimony not in word, but in deed. The ago was festering to corruption. “ Art and science were dead. Society, had sunk into utter' frivolity. Slavery had assumed its most revolting aspects, cruelty and luxury were triumphant.’’ Religion should not forget what it owes to the hermits. In a sense it owes itself to them. It was, as a writer has pointed out, with St. Antony that tho great Athanasius found refuge when Ins life was imperilled by his enemies. It was the life of Antony that tended to the conversion of St. Augustine, and so linked up the faith of Britain with Christianity. St. Basil and St. Gregory, defenders of that faith had both been hermits. It was another hermit, St. Jerome, that gave us the Latin translation of the Bible. It .was Ephrem, the Syrian, a hermit like Antony, who with his dying breath made his protest against slavery; and it was another hermit, Teleraachus, who made it in deed against the horrors of tho amphitheatre at Romo. He leaped into tho arena, and his death decreed that Rome no more should 'wallow in this old lust of Paganism, and make her festal hour dark with tho blood of man who murdered man- * * * * Of course, with our larger light it is easy to pick holes in the hermit life. Nevertheless our age would be none the worse of a dash of tho hermit spirit into its hot and hurrying pace. It is loaded down at one end with luxuries, the half of which makes life a slave under the tyranny of things; while at tho other end the masses grqyel in low pleasures or fester in poverty and moral corruption. “ When I first entered Eanelagh,” said Johnson to Boswell of that centre of London amusement, “ it gave an expansion and gay sensation) to my mind such as I never experienced anywhere else, but. . . . it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go homo and think. ” The same might be said of the gay crowds of to-day. And even amongst those, who do think how few, comparatively, is tho number whose thought has wings that take it into those spiritual regions from whence the greater hermits drew the inspiration for the nobility of their testimony. Ron.