ative of consciousness of his own power, he not only inveighs against the condemned opinions, in unmeasured invective, but urges, and almost commands, the pope to proceed, immediately, to pronounce sentence against the heretic. "For what has God raised thee up," he inquires of Innocent, "lowly as thou wert in thine own eyes, and placed thee above kings and nations; not that thou shouldest destroy, but that thou shouldest build up the faith. God has stirred up the fury of the schismatics, that thou mightest have the glory of crushing it. This only was wanting to make thee equal to the glory of thy predecessors -the condemnation of a heresy."

A second epistle, in the same strain of emphatic authority and urgency, followed. The pope knew his dependence upon Bernard. He owed to him his own elevation to the pontificate, and dared not resist him.

Thus without a hearing, upon the representations of his bitter enemies, Abelard was condemned by the pope. "The decree of Innocent reproved all public disputations on the mysteries of religion. Abelard was condemned to silence; his disciples, to excommunication."

Bernard was not satisfied. He still urged upon the pope further restrictions: He demanded that Abelard and Arnold should be put in safe custody, and their books burned. It was ordered that the books which contained their heresies should be publicly cast into the fire, and the "two heresiarchs imprisoned in some religious house." This sentence was eagerly spread abroad by Bernard. Arnold found refuge with a legate, afterwards a pope. Bernard still pursued him. He took refuge in Zurich; and the Waldenses still revere his memory, while they are reaping the fruits of those germs which he set in an ungenial soil, but which afterwards sprung up in a luxurious growth of free principles, in a land singularly blessed in escaping both spiritual and temporal despotism.

Abelard found an asylum at Clugny, where Peter the Venerable cherished him with all the tenderness of a father and all the assiduity of a brother. In this retreat he spent two VOL. XVII. No. 65.

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years, occupied in pious studies, devout meditations, and humble religious acts. As life wore out, his fiery temper was chastened, his lofty spirit was humbled, his restless zeal gave place to quietness and submission. "I never saw his equal," says the Venerable Peter, " for humility of manners and habits. He allowed no moment to escape unoccupied in prayer, reading, writing, working, or dictation." The heavenly visitor surprised him in the midst of these holy works. He died, at the age of sixty-three, at Chalons, on the Saone, whither he had been taken for the benefit of his declining health; and his body was deposited in the tomb of the Paraclete, where Heloise continued, for twenty-one years, to mourn for him, and then rested by his side.

Bernard closed his memorable and active life in 1153, eleven years afterwards, at Claravallis, the beloved retreat which will ever be associated with his name and form.

Two such men cannot fulfil their earthly career without leaving impressions upon the minds with which they conversed, and the current of events in which they were actors. The thoughts which occupied them are living thoughts, which survive the generations and the ages which were engrossed by them. Not only the wisdom but the errors of such men are instructive. We learn from their worthy example, and not less perhaps from their unworthy mistakes. They were both great men, entitled to the gratitude and admiration of posterity. The faults of each were as prominent as their excellences were conspicuous. We admire the devotion, the humility, the earnest religious affection of Bernard. We deplore that reverence which was soiled by superstition, and that intemperate zeal which blighted the fair blossoms of charity. In Abelard we are attracted by the nobleness and independence, which, in its aims at truth, could close its eye to all the frowns of power and the authority of proscription. At the same time, we lament a recklessness and impetuosity of bearing, an arrogant and vaunting tone of superiority, which savors more of personal pride and ambition, than of the dispassionate temper of thoughtful philosophy. The practical religion of Bernard

was better than his creed. The uprightness and manliness, with which Abelard sought the promotion of a sound morality and a pure life, recommend him more than the severity of his logic. Both of these men had noble objects in view. They labored, one for the exaltation and greater power of the church, as the organ of religion and its earthly temple; the other for the freer scope and more intelligent conception of the truth, as the ground of all that is ennobling in life and hopeful for salvation. In their methods both were defective. The saintly monk, conscious of his power, used every available art to crush an adversary, with the seeming belief that the safety of the church justified the unscrupulousness of means. The philosopher, elated by his successes and proud of his artillery, was ardent for victory with an ambition which overlooked the triumphs of truth in a personal achievement. Both possessed a piety tinctured with the vices and misconceptions of the age in which they lived. Bernard had the advantage. His lot was cast in harmony with the great movement of the day. It was easy to be selfconsistent. Abelard was an innovator. His work was partly destructive. He wrangled in the midst of the transitions of thought and the emancipations of belief. It was hard to hold an even course. His later years are more in contrast with his life than are those of Bernard. His previous humiliations and concessions were brief, and soon retracted. The last quiet into which his restless spirit was brought, as it is given to us by his partial biographer, looks more like the serenity of a soul preparing for heaven. Bernard, just before his death, dictated these words: "Pray to the Saviour who willeth not the death of a sinner, that he delay not my departure, and yet that he will be pleased to guard it; support him who hath no merits of his own by your prayers, that the adversary of our salvation may not find any place open to his attacks." "Thus," says Luther, "died Bernard, a man so godly, so holy, and so chaste, that he is to be commended and preferred before all the Fathers. He being grievously sick, and having no hope of life, put not his trust in his single life, wherein he had yet lived most

chastely; not in his good works and deeds of charity, whereof he had done many; but removing them far out of his sight, and receiving the benefit of Christ by faith, he said, I have lived wickedly, but thou Lord Jesus dost possess the kingdom of heaven by double right; first, because thou art the Son of God; secondly, because thou hast purchased it by thy death and passion. The first thou keepest for thyself, as thy birth-right; the second, thou givest me, not by the right of my works, but by the right of grace. He set not against the wrath of God his own monkery nor his angelical life, but he took of that one thing which was necessary, and so was saved."

ARTICLE III.

LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT ADJUSTED.

BY REV. L. P. HICKOK, D. D., UNION COLLEGE.

How may we attain the thought of a being who is personal, creative, and at the same time infinite and absolute? This general question, in some way, underlies all the speculations which, through varied processes, eventuate in theism, pantheism, atheism, and universal scepticism. Its comprehensiveness and complication of difficulties can be appreciated only after long and patient toiling for a solution. From the first dawnings of philosophical thought, it has engaged and exhausted the powers of the human mind more than any or perhaps all other speculative inquiries, with which philosophy has been conversant. The position thus attained enables us, now, to look back upon the track gone over, and forward in the sure direction, to a satisfactory answer. The impassable limits, which have hitherto seemed to lie directly across the path, will be found in truth to be only guiding and

conservative lines on each hand, with the open way, between, to the recognition of a personal and absolute Deity, without hesitation or contradiction. It is practicable accurately to adjust the limits of religious thought.

In the compass which may be allowed to this Article, an outline of the subject with little detail is all that can be attempted; yet will care be taken to make the investigation clear and plain. The general method needs first to attain the present state of speculation on this question, and then to indicate the steps yet to be taken for a full solution.

Two prominent names may be used as the representatives of the present aspect of the discussion, viz. Sir William Hamilton, whose views may be found by our readers in the edition of his Works edited by O. W. Wight: Philosophy of the Conditioned; and Henry Longueville Mansell, B. D., in his Bampton Lectures: Limits of Religious Thought.

Hamilton gives the distinction between the infinite and the absolute, by calling the first "the unconditionally unlimited," meaning that which is beyond all limits, and "the unconditionally limited," meaning a whole beyond all conditions. When then, from any point, we seek the immensity of space on all sides; or from any instant, the eternity of time up and down its successions, we are in pursuit of the infinite; when we take the immensity of space or the eternity of time as each a concrete whole, we assume to have the absolute. So, also, with the changing phenomena of nature as we go up the series for its origin, we are in search of the infinite; and as we take the whole in one, we assume the absolute. To follow events, through all causes, up to a First Cause, and find the many in the One, is a search for the infinite; and to take any cause to be the first, as already possessing the many in the one, is an assumption of the absolute. In opposition to both the infinite and the absolute, stands "the conditionally limited," meaning that which is limited by, and related to, something other than it, and which is to be known as "the conditioned."

Hamilton still further teaches, that thinking is possible only by distinguishing one from others, and which is a con