I suppose we must all, at some time, have been disturbed by the thought of how seldom we pray. We find, when we think it over, that we ‘never seem to have time to pray’, or even that we just ‘never feel inclined to pray’. It does not ‘come naturally’, we realize; perhaps because there hardly ever seems to be any real ‘occasion’ for it; and all this can worry us. We feel, somehow, that we ought to pray more often, and more wholeheartedly, than we ever manage to do.

It is to Saint Thomas More and to the School of More, as his home in Chelsea was called, that honour must be given for leadership and inspiration in the movement for the higher education of women in England and in the subsequent development of education for the people. For the former, the court of Henry VIII and Catherine, his Spanish Queen, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, provided a model. Around the royal table, More and his daughters and many other scholars stood and took part in the discussions. In his home, More entertained as his friends and as tutors for his daughters learned and scholarly men, Vives, Erasmus, Richard Hyrde, Dr Linacre, John Clement and others. Here round the fire in winter and in the spacious grounds in summer, that intellectual community of scholars was founded, whose life work was to open the gates of learning and scholarship first to women and later to the masses of the people.

From a psychological point of view, what is it that distinguishes the life of a monk as described by Cassian from the ordinary life of a person living in the world? The question is an interesting one, and it is suggested that the answer lies in the striking simplification (or better, the simplicity) of the life of the monk as compared with life in the world. This fact, incidentally, is implied in the word monachus, which means one living alone for a single purpose.

In the last few centuries before the coming of Christ the Greek influence began to make itself felt. It reached Judea through Egypt where there was a great number of Jews centred Alexandria. But there was also a direct influx of the non-sacramental hellenic view of religion from the cities which Alexander himself founded in Palestine. The Jews were introduced to the families of the gods, and the Machabees revolted against this attack on their allegiance to Jahwe, for the hellenic familiarity with the gods naturally offered its attractions. But it was not from the Greek myths that the greatest influence was felt. These were rejected. But the intellectualization of Greek philosophy was spreading all over the near East, and it was this that was wedded to Jewish thought in the Wisdom literature.