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This is the law under which thou art to live, and to strive for salvation. If thou canst observe it, enter; if not, go in peace, thou art free. The novitiate lasted one year, and during this time the rule was read and the question put thrice. If at the end of that time the novice remained firm, he was introduced to the community in the church, made a declaration of his vows in writing, placed it on the altar, threw himself at the feet of the brethren, and from that moment was a monk. The rule which swayed this mass of life, wherever it existed, in a Benedictine monastery, and indirectly the monasteries of other orders, which are only modifications of the Benedictine system, was sketched out by that solitary hermit of Subiaco. It consists of seventy-three chapters, which contain a code of laws regulating the duties between the abbot and his monks, the mode conducting the divine services, the administration of penalties and discipline, the duties of monks to each other, and the internal economy of the monastery, the duties of the institution toward the world outside, the distribution of charity, the kindly reception of strangers, the laws to regulate the actions of those who were compelled to be absent or to travel; in fine, everything which could pertain to the administration of an institution composed of an infinite variety of characters subjected to one absolute ruler. It has elicited the admiration of the learned and good of all subsequent ages. It begins with the simple sentence:
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Listen, O son, to the precepts of the master! Do not fear to receive the counsel of a good father, and to fulfil it fully, that thy laborious obedience may lead thee back to him from whom disobedience and weakness have alienated thee. To thee, whoever thou art, who renouncest thine own will to fight under the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and takest in hand the valiant and glorious weapons of obedience, are my words at this moment addressed. The first words,
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Ausculta, O fili! are often to be seen inscribed on a book placed in the hands of St. Benedict, in paintings and stained glass. The preamble contains the injunction of the two leading principles of the rule; all the rest is detail, marvellously thorough and comprehensive. These two grand principles were obedience and labor--the former became absorbed in the latter, for he speaks of that also as a species of labor--
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Obedientiae laborem; but the latter was the genius, the master-spirit of the whole code. There was to be labor, not only of contemplation, in the shape of prayer, worship, and self-discipline, to nurture the soul, but labor of action, vigorous, healthy, bodily labor, with the pen in the scriptorium, with the spade in the fields, with the hatchet in the forest, or with the trowel on the walls. Labor of some sort there must be daily, but no idleness: that was branded as
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--
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Otiositas inimica est animiae. It was enjoined with all the earnestness of one thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the great Master, who said,
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Work whilst it is yet day, for the night cometh, when no man shall work; who would not allow the man he had restored to come and remain with him--that is, to lead the life of religious contemplation, but told him to