There is but one power which, with strong hand, maintains the balance, teaches us to be sparing of joy, helps us endure pain, dams all the streams of desire and sends them back to toil and bear fruit within the soul: asceticism! It cuts with firm touch the luxuriant shoots from the tree of life, that its strength may concentrate within the marrow of the trunk and urge the growth _upward_. Asceticism! The bugbear of all the grown up children of this world. Wherever it appears human hearts are in a tumult as if death were at hand. Like flying ants bearing away their eggs to a place of safety, the disturbed consciences of worldlings anxiously strive to hide their secret desires and pleasures from the dreaded foe! But whoever dares to meet its eyes sees that it is not the bugbear which the apostles of reason and nature would fain represent it, no fleshless, bloodless shadow which strives to destroy the natural bond between the Creator and creation, but a being with a glowing heart, five wounds, and a brow bedewed with drops of sweat. Its office is stern and gloomy, its labor severe and thankless, for it has to struggle violently with rebellious souls and, save for the aid of the army of priests who have consecrated themselves to its service, it would succumb in the ceaseless struggle with materialism which is ever developing into higher consciousness! Yet whoever has once given himself to her service finds her a lofty, earnest, yet gracious goddess! She is the support of the feeble, the comforter of the unhappy and the solitary, the angel of the self-sacrificing. Whoever feels her hand upon a wounded, quivering heart, knows that she is the _benefactress_, not the taskmistress of humanity.
Nor does she always appear as the gloomy mourner beside the corpse of murdered joys. Sometimes roses wreath the thorn-scarred brow, and she becomes the priestess of love. When the world and its self-created duties rudely sunders two hearts which God created for each other and leaves them to waste away in mortal anguish, _she_ is the compassionate one. With sanctifying power she raises the struggling souls above the dividing barrier of temporal things, teaches them to trample the earth under their feet and unites them with an eternal bond in the purer sphere of _intellectual_ love. Thus she unites what _morality_ severs. _Morality_ alone is harsh, not asceticism. Morality pitilessly prescribes her laws, unheeding the weakness of poor human hearts, asceticism helps them to submit to them. Morality _demands_ obedience, asceticism _teaches_ it. Morality punishes, asceticism corrects. The former judges by appearances, the latter by the reality. Morality has only the reward of the _world_, asceticism of _Heaven_! Morality made Mary Magdalene an outcast, asceticism led her to the Lord and obtained His mercy for her.