This community of, presumably, able-bodied men who desire to reap of our worldly things naively sets forth in the following programme the manner in which they intend to occupy their time:
5 A.M. Rise. 5.30 to 6. Meditation in Chapel. 6. Morning Prayer and Prime. 6.50 to 8. Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. 8. Breakfast. 9.30. Terce and Intercessions. 12 M. Sext and None. 12.30 P.M. Dinner. 1 to 1.20. Recreation (in common). 4.45. Evensong. 5.15 to 5.45. Meditation. 6. Supper. 6.30 to 7.15. Recreation (in common). 8.30. Compline. 10. Lights extinguished.
And it is to permit them to spend their days in such fruitful fashion that one is called upon to contribute the money earned by men who toil! That many have already contributed is to be inferred from the fact that this community has become possessed of seventy-five acres of valuable land, and has spent some forty thousand dollars on the erection of a monastery.
Of course, there are worthless idlers everywhere, but very few of them in our practical day assume their indolence as a merit, or call upon their neighbours to support them, in the name of the deeper sentiments of life.
Hare, in "A Pair of Spectacles" remarks cynically, when asked to help an indigent widow, "Oh, I know that indigent widow; she comes from Sheffield." One knows these sturdy beggars. They come from out the Middle Ages, when it was still felt that there was some special virtue in abandoning the obvious duties of life to take up others more appealing to the Saint; more appealing precisely because they were anything but obvious.
The very name of Saint is a stench in my heretical nostrils. I never knew or read of one who was not a vain egoist, with all the cruelty, obstinacy, and selfishness of the egoist. Read the Lives of the Saints. Not one of these absurd chronicles but is a repulsive tale of an insane vanity trampling on the rights and feelings of others to achieve notoriety. St. Louis is a sample of the type: renouncing his duties to his unlucky wife, squabbling with every other monarch unfortunate enough to be associated with him, and wrecking the expeditions in which he joined because of some petty qualm about his meagre, unimportant little soul.