And we may note in passing that the Bible draws our attention to certain facts about these two personages which are important as striking at the root of the notion that austerities of some sort are necessary for the great attainment.

The vitality of the new religion had been preserved in ages of unparalleled vices by two things especially,by martyrdom and by austerities; the one a noble attestation of faith in an age of unbelief, and the other a lofty, almost stoical, disdain of those pleasures which centre in the body.

Self-expiations, flagellations, sheepskin cloaks, root dinners, repulsive austerities, followed.

It was always sombre in its attire, ascetic in its habits, intolerant in its dogmas, secluded in its life, narrow in its views, and repulsive in its austerities; but its leaders and dignitaries did not then conceal under their coarse raiments either ambition, or avarice, or gluttony.

But the time cameas it always mustfor the sundering of all earthly ties; austerities and labors accomplished too soon their work.

Hence the first thing for a good man to do was to bring the bodythis seat of evilunder subjection, and, if possible, to eradicate the passions and appetites which enslave the body; and this was to be done by self-flagellations, penances, austerities, and solitude,flight from the contaminating influences of the world.

It was accompanied with the most painful austerities,self-inflicted scourgings, lacerations, dire privations, to propitiate an angry deity, or to bring the body into a state which would be insensible to pain, or to exorcise passions which the imaginations inflamed.

He entered this gloomy retreat, situated amid marshes and morasses, with no outward attractions like Cluny, but unhealthy and miserably poor,the dreariest spot, perhaps, in Burgundy; and he entered at the head of thirty young men, of the noble class, among whom were four of his brothers who had been knights, and who presented themselves to the abbot as novices, bent on the severest austerities that human nature could support.

Such was his physical weakness that "nearly everything he took his stomach rejected;" and such was the rigor of his austerities that he destroyed the power of appetite.

On this message which greatly increased his discontent, the zamorin sent for his brother, to whom he confided the government of his dominions till such time as he should have completed his religious austerities in seclusion.

The hardships undergone by these monks appear almost insupportable to human nature, and notwithstanding the immense number of deaths occasioned by their rigorous austerities, the Cénobites of La Trappe, at the suppression of their order, amounted to one hundred monks, sixty-nine lay brothers, and fifty-six Frères Donnés.

Horror-struck with the shocking spectacle, he, from that hour, renounced all connexion with the world, and imposed upon himself the most rigid austerities, which he continued until his death, forty years after.

If these worthy and pious people have abandoned the world for the solitude and austerities of La Trappe, they have not forgotten, in their own self-denial, the benevolence and benignity due to strangers.

* Abbot Pambo, as well as Arsenius, had been dead several years; the abbot's place was filled, by his own dying command, by a hermit from the neighbouring deserts, who had made himself famous for many miles round by his extraordinary austerities, his ceaseless prayers, and his loving wisdom.

In times and regions so disjoined from each other, that there can scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments either by commerce or tradition, has prevailed a general and uniform expectation of propitiating God by corporal austerities, of anticipating his vengeance by voluntary inflictions, and appeasing his justice by a speedy and cheerful submission to a less penalty, when a greater is incurred.

Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is invigorated and roused, by which the attractions of pleasure are interrupted, and the chains of sensuality are broken.

The natives said that the austerities of Gobind were the envy of the gods; that he could hold still the blood in his veins from dusk to dawn; and make the listener understand many wonderful things about himself and the meaning of life.

She was already practising in secret the austerities of the convent.

The sage Kanwa lives in the constant practice of austerities.

In the Rámáyana, the great sage Vi[s']wámitra (both king and saint), who raised himself by his austerities from the regal to the Bráhmanical caste, is said to be the son of Gádhi, King of Kanúj, grandson of Kusanátha, and great-grandson of Kusika or Kusa.

A long war ensued between the king and the sage (symbolical of the struggles between the military and Bráhmanical classes), which ended in the defeat of Vi[s']wámitra, whose vexation was such, that he devoted himself to austerities, in the hope of attaining the condition of a Bráhman.

Dushyanta was a Rájarshi; that is, a man of the military class who had attained the rank of Royal Sage or Saint by the practice of religious austerities.

[S']iva happened then to be practising austerities, and intent on a vow of chastity.

The Rishi Aurva, who had gained great power by his austerities, was pressed by the gods and others to perpetuate his race.

She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared austerities of the vaults around her.