body or its own. No spirit can so mingle with us, and be poured into us, that we become in consequence either good or learned. No angel, no spirit can comprehend me; none can I comprehend in this manner. Even angels themselves cannot seize each other's thoughts, without bodily organs. This prerogative is reserved for the highest, the unbounded Spirit, Who alone, when He imparts knowledge either to angel or man, needs not that we should have ears to hear, or that we should have a mouth to speak. By Himself He is poured in; by Himself He is made manifest. Pure Himself, He is understood by the pure. He alone needs nothing; alone is sufficient to Himself and to all by His sole omnipotent will.”

“I must not pass over in silence those spiritual feet of GOD, which, in the first place, it behoves the penitent to kiss in a spiritual manner. I well know your curiosity, which does not willingly allow anything obscure to pass by it; nor indeed is it a contemptible thing to know what are those feet which the Scripture so frequently mentions in connection with GOD. Sometimes He is spoken of as standing on them, as 'We will worship in the place where Thy feet have stood.' Sometimes as walking, as 'I will dwell in them and will walk in them.' Sometimes even as running, as 'He rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.' If it appear right to the Apostle to call the head of CHRIST GOD, it appears to me as not unnatural to consider His feet as representing Man; one of which I shall name mercy, and the other judgment. Those two words are known to you, and the Scripture repeats them in many places. On those feet, fitly moving under one divine head, CHRIST, born of a woman, He Who was invisible under the law, then made Emmanuel ('GOD with us'), was seen on the earth, and conversed with men."

"As regards creatures devoid of sense and reason, who can doubt that GOD needs them much less? but when they concur in the performance of a good work, then it appears how all things serve Him Who can justly say: 'The world is Mine, and the fulness thereof.' Assuredly, seeing that He knows the means best adapted to ends, He does not in the service of His creatures seek efficacy, but suitability."

The repute of his eloquence as well as of his sanctity drew

men from all parts of Christendom to the leafy shades and secret tranquillity of Clairvaux. There they could find rest from action, and peace in a world of tumult, and by the holy example of the man of GOD could confirm themselves in their feeble endeavour after the truth. They felt emotions never felt before, and were conscious of thoughts such as had never before elevated their minds, while they listened to the flood of glowing words that poured from his hallowed lips, or marked the purity and devotion of his daily life. But for Bernard himself there was neither rest nor tranquillity. The Church depended for its right government on the monk of Clairvaux. And not only was his advice urgently requested by bishops, and abbots and ecclesiastics of all ranks, but by princes and rulers, who desired the benefit of his calm judgment and penetrating sagacity. He was equal to every need. His counsel always suited the occasion, and was always what the applicant had required. He could direct the Head of the Church, reprove an archbishop, or give sound advice to a young abbot. Nowhere does he appear to greater advantage than in his frank and cordial letters to his humbler correspondents, and from this advice to the young abbot we gladly quote some admirable sentences, which show that the Monk of Clairvaux was a man of wide sympathies as well as of masculine intelligence.

"Do not," he says, "put forward the empty excuse of your rawness or want of experience; for barren modesty is more pleasing, nor is that humility praiseworthy which passes the bounds of moderation. Attend to your work; drive out bashfulness by a sense of duty, and act as a master. You are young, yet you are a debtor; you must know you were a debtor from the day you were bound. Will youth be an excuse to a creditor for the loss of his profits? Does the usurer expect no interest at the beginning of his loan? But, say you, I am not sufficient for these things. As if your offering were not accepted from what you have, and not from what you have not! Be prepared to answer for the single talent committed to your charge, and take no thought for the rest. 'If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little.' For he that is unjust in the

least is unjust also in much. Give all, as assuredly you shall pay to the uttermost farthing; but, of a truth, out of what you possess, not out of what you possess not.

“Take heed to give to your words the voice of power. You ask, what is that? It is, that your works harmonize with your words, or rather your words with your works; that you be careful to do before you teach. It is a most beautiful and salutary order of things that you should first bear the burden you place on others, and learn from yourself how men should be ruled. Otherwise the wise man will mock you, as that lazy one to whom it is labour to lift his hand to his mouth. The Apostle also will reprove you, saying: 'Thou who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?' . . . That speech, also, which is full of life and power, is an example of work, as it makes easy what it speaks persuasively, while it shows that can be done which it advises. Understand, therefore, to the quieting of your conscience, that in these two commandments, i.e., of precept and example, the whole of your duty resides. You, however, if you be wise, will add a third, namely, a zeal for prayer, to complete that treble repetition of the Gospel in reference to ‘feeding the sheep.' You will know that no sacrament of that Trinity is in any wise broken by you, if you feed them by word, by example, and by the fruit of holy prayers. Now abideth speech, example, prayer, these three; but the greatest of these is prayer. For although, as has been said, the strength of speech is work, yet prayer wins grace and efficacy for both work and speech."1

Ν

CHAPTER III.

IN 1137 Bernard was called again to Italy, where the affairs of the Papacy were still in a disturbed condition. Roger II., who had been crowned King of Sicily by Anacletus, continued to support his cause; but otherwise the partisans of the anti-pope had lost heart, and were most of

1 J. C. Morison, "Life and Times of S. Bernard,” pp. 228, 229.

them inclined to a reconciliation with Innocent. They hesitated through various moral and political considerations; either they were afraid of losing the dignities and emoluments to which Anacletus had promoted them, or they held themselves bound by the oath they had taken. Bernard met the former difficulty by promising his good offices with the Pope; to the latter he opposed certain arguments, ingenious rather than conclusive, which proved of sufficient efficacy in cases where the reasoning faculty was aided by the will. Having succeeded so well with many of the antipope's adherents, Bernard resolved to attempt to detach King Roger from the alliance. The Emperor Lothair, with the aid of the fleets of Genoa and Pisa, had wrested from him all his conquests on the mainland, but differences had arisen between him and Innocent, and the Imperial forces were on their homeward march when Bernard entered on his task of mediation. He was met by Roger with a proposal that seemed fair enough: he was willing, he said, to hear both sides, and suggested that their representatives should, in his presence, expound their respective claims, on the understanding that he would acknowledge Innocent's authority if the arguments in his favour preponderated. The offer was accepted. Anacletus put forward Peter of Pisa, who was renowned for his dialectical skill and knowledge of jurisprudence. Bernard appeared for Innocent. The combat took place at Salerno, before Roger and his court. Peter of Pisa opened with a rhetorical speech, in which he exhausted all the resources of his casuistry. When it came to Bernard's turn, he spoke with his usual directness and force :

"I know, Peter, that you are a wise and learned man, and I would that a better cause and a more honourable business engaged your attention; for had you truth and reason on your side, your eloquence would prevail over every other. As for myself, a rustic, more used to spade and hoe than to public declamations, were it not that the faith requires me to speak, I should observe the silence prescribed by my rule. Charity, however, forces me to speak, inasmuch as Peter, the son of Leo, protected by King Roger, rends and divides that vesture of the LORD which neither the Jew nor the heathen presumed to rend.

There is one Faith, one LORD, one Baptism; neither do we know two Lords, two faiths, two baptisms. To begin from antiquity, there was but one ark at the time of the Flood; in this ark eight souls were saved; all the rest of the world, as many as were outside the ark, perished. No one will deny that this ark was a type of the Church. Lately, another ark has been built, and as there are now two, one must be false, and must sink in the depths of the sea. If the ark which Peter rules be of GOD, it follows that that in which Innocent governs must perish. Therefore the Eastern Church will perish, and the Western also. France, Germany, Spain, England, and the barbarous countries will perish in the waters. The monastic orders of the Camaldoli, the Carthusians, the Cluniacs, the Cistercians, the Præmonstrants, and innumerable other congregations of servants and handmaidens of the LORD; it is inevitable that they all sink to the bottom of the sea. The bishops, and abbots, and princes of the Church, with millstones fastened to their necks, will plunge headlong into the depths. Roger alone, out of all the lords of the earth, will enter Peter's ark, and while all the rest perish, he alone will be saved. GOD forbid that the religion of the whole world should perish, and that the ambition of Peter, whose life has been such as is known to all, should obtain the kingdom of heaven."

Overcome by Bernard's earnestness, and feeling perhaps a secret conviction that the cause of Anacletus was lost, Peter of Pisa embraced Bernard, yielded to his appeal, and accompanying him to Rome, made his submission to Innocent. Roger did not so readily succumb, being desirous to secure the possession of certain lands which he had occupied in the neighbourhood of Beneventum and Monte Cassino. The schism, however, was virtually at an end; and this through the personal influence of one man. Soon afterwards Anacletus died, and though another anti-pope was set up, and named Victor IV., he speedily resigned the hollow dignity. Repairing by night to Bernard's lodging, he threw off his insignia, abandoned his pretensions, and was led by the Abbot to pay homage to the triumphant Innocent. Thus was once more restored the unity of the Church; the mystical vesture was again made whole. Ber