To set fire to a field of ripe wheat or to leave the ground untilled surely amounts to almost the same result? Everything in this world is made to be of service, and, because there is only what is necessary for all, the bread that is not sown, like that which is thrown away, is taken from someone. It is bad, it is monstrous to pay thousands of francs for a dinner given to Ambassadors, five hundred francs or more for a bottle of champagne at a fashionable dance, when so many people are hungry; but to put the amount in a woollen stocking, is as bad, as monstrous. Even worse sometimes. For, at least, some persons profit by these follies, and if it is a very despicable means of livelihood they have found, it may be that they themselves are not all despicable. Whilst as for this money which men pile up and set by for their hypothetical needs, to which they presently sacrifice even the satisfaction of these needs, what does it serve? There was someone in this world for whom it was indispensable and who is thus deprived of it. If we want a seed to germinate and fructify, we do not, unless we are mad, enclose it in a box. In being used it is undoubtedly destroyed, but it bears fruit a twentyfold.

The Synoptic Gospels are a fundamental document of ascetic theology. They present a way of life. Their rich dogmatic content is largely implicit. The key-note is struck from the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in words which anticipate the whole: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. In St. Matthew’s nineteenth chapter is recorded the question of the rich young man, and our Lord’s commendation of those who have left all for his name’s sake. This passage is often claimed as the foundation charter of the religious state. Its great advantage is that it expresses far more clearly than the earlier teaching the distinction between the commandment, obedience to which is necessary for entrance into the kingdom, and the counsel offered to those who would be perfect.

In the account which we have of the infant Church at Jerusalem distinction is not clearly made between the faithful who simply obeyed the commandments and the aspirants after perfection who followed the counsels. We might gather that the converts, as a matter of course and almost without exception, entered upon a way of life not unlike that which our Lord had counselled to the rich young man, and which was to be known as the “religious life” in the centuries to come. Yet St. Peter implied that Ananias was free to give up the price of his estate or not. His sin consisted precisely in lying about it to the Holy Ghost.

In England there is great need for more houses where retreats can be made and quite as urgently for different types of retreat house. There is room for considerable variety, for a network of smaller and larger houses, in towns and out of them, religious and lay. There is a very clear need for a liturgical retreat house, more for women than for men, to whom the existing monasteries are open. There is need for a retreat house sufficiently contemplative and monastic for a genuine spirit of silence to rule; but there is also need for a home for a very free type of retreat where the Christian minority who love the Lord in a neo-pagan age can meet, and such retreats might be the beginning of many genuine friendships and much work for God.

In a retreat we break from our routine life and plunge for a time into another life, so as to turn right way up—if we were previously upside-down—but above all so as to plunge from a more superficial to a deeper and more fully lived Christian life. But if the plunge is not into another and more fully lived life, but into a vacuum with devotional frills, an appendage to a religious life going on behind closed doors, it is apt to lend an air of unreality to the whole, so that the effects fade before the “realities” of everyday life. The grace of God apart, everything then depends on the strength of prayer of the individual and the preacher’s sterling worth.