shut out from even the congregation of the Lord (Levit. 22: 24, Deut. 23:1), seemed to him insupportable. His determination was soon formed. The monastic walls. would hide him from the world, and there he would find a refuge for his wounded spirit. It must be confessed that the cloister is well adapted to meet feelings like those which he then possessed. Thousands who have no conception of, or heart for, the duties of active beneficence, imagine they can there escape from the world's annoyances, and enjoy a life of dreamy devotion. When disappointment sours their minds, and their plans of life are broken up, it sometimes becomes pleasant to think of retiring to some retreat, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary may find rest. Nearly every one has known such pensive moments. Forgetting that Christianity aims to send us among our fellow-men, and away from them only that we may return with renewed strength, we imagine some life of solitude of superior perfection, and of more uninterrupted intercourse with God. Such was the unhealthy spirit which peopled the deserts and mountains with eremites in ancient times, and the convents with monks and nuns in later ages, there to learn that devotional indolence in a cell was far more unfavorable to piety than benevolent activity in a busy world. Abelard, however, confesses that he sought the convent only to escape from his fellow-men. But why did he require the same in Heloise? He does not conceal the fact that she took the veil with reluctance, and solely by his command. She was still not twenty, in the bloom of youth, and with tastes utterly repugnant to the monastic life. He has been severely censured for this, and perhaps unjustly. He might, indeed, have trusted her constancy to him, if that had seemed a matter of importance to one retiring from the world. She was willing to spend her days in voluntary seclusion, and no vows could bind more perfectly than a love like hers. "A single word from him," she declares, "would have constrained her to follow or even to precede him, had she seen him hastening to perdition." But his calmer judgment doubtless assured him of the propriety of this step. It would It would cut off give the seal of the Church to her course. unfounded expectations on the part of the world. It would provide her a permanent home, and release them from all plighted obligations to each other. That he should have required her to take the step before him, seems once to have awakened a painful feeling in her breast, but surely an honorable motive may have made him wish to consummate the whole before he should have renounced all intercourse with her and with public affairs. Whatever may have been his reason, she obeyed without a murmur. Abelard was the only remaining object on earth, or perhaps in the universe, she prized, and at his command she surrenders even him. Among the crowds who flocked from the city to Argenteuil to witness the sacrifice, many remon strated against it, and pressed around her to prevent her approach, even when the veil had been blessed, and laid upon the altar. With a countenance suffused with tears, not for her own but for another's fate, she moved through their opening ranks, repeating the words of her favorite Lucan: O maxime conjux, O thalamis indigne meis, hoc juris habebat "Greatest of men! too good to be my spouse! why has fickle fortune such sway over thee? Since I could bring thee only ruin, why presumed I ever to wed thee? Well art thou now avenged! Yet cheerfully I expiate my fault." Alas! the dagger of Pompey's wife, as she first uttered these words, was hardly more fatal than the act of Heloise, as she ascended the altar, pronounced the irrevocable vows, and covered herself with the monastic veil. What could she expect in that cold convent's cell? Others sought such a retreat for relief against a broken heart; she goes there to find one. Others went there, as they believed, in obedience to the call of heaven, and they expected a smile of Divine approbation; she looked for no reward from a God for whose sake she knew she had done nothing. Not as a free, self-consecrated offering, but only as a victim she came. It was to Abelard, not to God, she yielded obedience. In the tedious round of ceremonies through which she was to pass each hour of each day and night for long weary years, she has no religious aspirations to sustain her, no ascetic views to be gratified. She cannot then look up; and she has no taste for what is around her. The convent to which she is condemned has no enviable reputation; and she probably had no one to direct her thoughts to Him who would freely forgive much, that she might love much. There she remains for long years in what must have seemed to her vigorous intellect and ardent imagination, a dreary and deadly tomb, in the plenitude of her rich, natural, and educational endowments, and with a heart bounding with life and passion, to waste the matin lamp, assume devout attitudes, march in solemn processions, drop her beads, and watch the nod of her superiors. One kind of employment is open to her, and to this, when her feelings are somewhat softened by time, she devotes herself with intense predilection. This is the study of classical literature. Gradually, too, she gropes her way to a knowledge of the true salvation, for the profound sincerity of her nature could not satisfy itself with a mere external righteousness. When we meet with her again, in spite of the passion which agitates her, we shall find her by degrees calming her spirit on the firm basis of evangelical truth. It is hard to censure one so lovely, so disinterested. She sinned indeed; but who can cast a stone at her, recollecting her youthful inexperience, her utter want of religious culture and guardianship, the powerful fascination under which she came, the strong impulses of her own ardent nature, and the corrupt examples which prevailed immediately around her? A few days only elapsed before he on whom these sorrowing thoughts were fixed, retired also from the world, and became a Benedictine monk in the convent of St. Denis, two leagues north of Paris. This was one of the richest monasteries in France. Its royal founder, in the seventh century, and his successors, had lavished upon it such enormous treasures as they hoped might purchase heaven. Some of its wealth, and especially its roof of silver, had been applied to more useful purposes, and once it had been reduced to a heap of ruins. Recently it had been restored to nearly its former splendor. Here the kings of France, for several dynasties, had been buried; but its most precious treasure was the tomb of the nation's patron saint. Its literary wealth, however, exceeded even its outward splendor, and a learned leisure within its walls was a privilege coveted by many, but obtained by few. Abelard was received with open arms; and here, for the moment, he hoped the world would forget him. Religion had as little to do with his choice as with Heloise's. Thoughts of vengeance for a while occupied him in spite of his acknowledgment that he had justly provoked his enemies, but soon his spirits assume a sadder, if not a more devotional turn. It was long, however, before he thoroughly humbled himself, and received with meekness the chastisement of the Lord. But the work of subduing him had now been commenced, and was never to cease until his soul should become as a weaned child. Every cherished purpose of his selfish heart was to be crossed and thwarted, until no alternative should remain to him but a life of faith. We are compelled to defer the remainder of our Article to a succeeding Number of the Review. ARTICLE II. A Year among the Jesuits. By ANDREW STEINMETZ. F. BARTOLI: Vita di Ignacio. "To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever" is the substance of all Christian statements of the end for which man was created. Man is to aim at future happiness in the full enjoying of God, as this end. As the way to this end, he is to glorify God here. And God is to be glorified by whatsoever in life and action makes up the sum of Christian virtue or holiness. On this point there is no dispute. Fathers and schoolmen and Reformers-Protestant and Romanist-Jesuit and Jansenist-all comprise, under varying forms of statement, the essentials of this proposition. But when we come to ask HOW that holiness is to be cultivated, by which we must glorify God, the divergence of opinion begins. And the settlement of it involves no less than the whole question at issue, not simply between Romanism and Protestantism, but between different portions of the Protestant and of the Romanist body. Particularly for our present purpose-is to be noticed that great question, running through so many centuries, of the outward condition in which God may best be glorified. Whether in the world' or in the cloister, in the religious discharge of the social duties as they naturally arise, or in fleeing from those duties and relations as incompatible with the highest perfection, and devoting the whole life to the practice of religious obser vances. The early Christian ascetic found family and work such hindrances to devotion, that he must renounce them for his soul's good. Interpreting Christ's command grossly, he would FORSAKE father and mother, house and lands, for the kingdom |