"
[217] F. Max Muller: Ramakrishna, his Life and sayings, 1899, p.
180.
[218] Oldenberg: Buddha; translated by W. Hoey, London, 1882, p.
127.
We find accordingly that as ascetic saints have grown older, and
directors of conscience more experienced, they usually have shown
a tendency to lay less stress on special bodily mortifications.
Catholic teachers have always professed the rule that, since
health is needed for efficiency in God's service, health must not
be sacrificed to mortification. The general optimism and
healthy-mindedness of liberal Protestant circles to-day makes
mortification for mortification's sake repugnant to us. We can
no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that God
can take delight in the spectacle of sufferings self-inflicted in
his honor is abhorrent. In consequence of all these motives you
probably are disposed, unless some special utility can be shown
in some individual's discipline, to treat the general tendency to
asceticism as pathological.
Yet I believe that a more careful consideration of the whole
matter, distinguishing between the general good intention of
asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of
which it may be guilty, ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem.
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