A Simple statement of some elementary notions may fittingly accompany more learned essays on particular aspects of monasticism.

A Benedictine's aim is the common aim of all Christians. Only his method is, to some extent, peculiar to him. It may be succinctly described as ‘monastic obedience'.

The monastic vow of obedience seems to have been one of St Benedict's inventions. Before his time monks either lived apart and independently (as did St Benedict himself in his Subiaco days) or attached themselves by easily terminable engagements to a teacher or a series of teachers. Doubtless that often worked well, and the monk either persevered in his solitude or passed from teacher to teacher receiving from each some special lesson, some further benefit. But it obviously left the unstable soul without support and opened a fairly comfortable career to the work-shy. Indignant descriptions of some unsatisfactory typen maiven the first chapter of St Benedict's Rule.

To a generation born and bred to conditions notoriously unstable there should be something singularly attractive, if at the same time somewhat elusive, in the thought of stability. Most people will instinctively think of it in its possible application to international, social, economic and financial affairs; to religious, and more particularly to Benedictines, it may more naturally suggest the vow of stability which was St Benedict's most far-reaching contribution to western monasticism. Yet the two aspects are more closely connected than may at first sight appear, the one in fact springs naturally from the other. In both connections there is implied a continuity, a stability, of contact with the source and origin, the Fons et Origo, of all things, a dimly-realised perception of a model and exemplar in accordance with which man and his world are to be ordered and fashioned.

Pope Pius XII, in his Encyclical Letter Fulgens Radiatur written to honour the fourteenth centenary of the death of St Benedict, invites ‘all classes of society’ to turn again to the Holy Rule that there they may find ‘the sacred principles of religion and the standards of life which are the most secure and most stable foundations of human society'.

It is clear that the Pope had a special reason for stressing the civilising and unifying effects of St Benedict's work. All men are now searching for a solid foundation on which to rebuild the unity of Europe. It is an appropriate moment, then, to remind us of the way in which Europe was first united in the spirit of Christ. ‘Not only England, Gaul, the Low Countries, Friesland, Denmark, Germany and Scandinavia, but also many Slavonic lands boast of their conversion by those monks, whom they consider their glory and reverence as founders of their civilisation.'

It may be as well to begin, in the approved scholastic manner, by defining one's terms; or at least by delimiting the field of discussion-a very necessary step surely with a paper so ambiguously worded as this one! Orthodoxy, my Lord'. said Bishop Warburton, is my doxy-heterodoxy is another man's doxy'. No doubt we could improve on that and together hit upon a less question-begging statement of what we mean by ‘orthodoxy'. All the same, I must try not to confuse the issue by taking too much for granted. And what are we to understand by that indeterminate phrase ‘religious experience'? At the beginning of the century William James devoted a series of Gifford Lectures to The Varieties of Religious Experience-a work still being reprinted even in these days of paper shortage. James was, professedly an empiricist, with but a limited gift for philosophical generalisation, so that his collected data have both the interest and the tediousness of a case book'; but they serve to show how varied are the phenomena which have been placed-whether legitimately or not is another question!—in the category of ‘religious experience’.

Since God is love, so too is Christ. But what is love? It is not enough to say that love is the giving of oneself as Christ our Lord did upon the cross for this act is but an outward expression of love and the same act could be not love but a crime. What then is love if God is love? It is not the urge we have for something we do not possess for God has all and more than all. He is infinity, and yet he loves.

Perhaps, to know its nature, we should begin with ourselves, for all our knowledge of God is known by analogy with ourselves. We have such things as qualities. He is these things. Whatever we obtain, that we obtain from him. He is that and more. He is knowledge; he is power, wisdom, prudence, peace, love. We have them as passing gifts but we know them best in our own souls.