left in a more unsatisfactory state. However Bernard might have conducted a learned debate, he had all the qualities and attributes that constitute a man a leader of his age. He founded, or helped

to found, a hundred and sixty monasteries, and raised his orderthe Cistercian-to be the first order of the church. He was in heart and soul a monk, and clung to many errors and monkish monstrosities; but we must not forget that seven hundred years have run their round since he played his part in life. Personally his life was pure and sincere, and publicly he denounced wickedness, whether in high or low places. He boldly declared against the then broached dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin. Bernard was called upon to settle a dispute between the pope and king of France. It had assumed very serious proportions, for the king and his troops had ravaged the country round Vitry. The means used by Bernard to pacify the enraged king were hardly those that even statecraft can justify. This much is clear enough that, but for Bernard, the war would have raged till one of the combatants bad succumbed. He got another victory over his enemies, in the deposition of Henry Murduch, archbishop of York, and the appointment of a Clairvaux monk to the see. His letters on this subject to the popes Innocent, and Eugenius II., are bold, fiery, and often rise into menace.

We now approach events that beggar all these ecclesiastical squabbles,--events which convulsed Europe, and the lands of the Orient, while they entirely changed many of the social and political institutions of the West. We refer to the Crusades. While the nations of western Europe were rising out of barbarism, a new and aggressive religion had sprung up in the East. This wave of fanaticism kept on spreading till it covered most Asiatic lands, and dashed along the shores of the Mediterranean, and was fast covering southern Europe. The Crucifix fell before the barbaric vigour of the Crescent. The Moslems held Jerusalem, and the holy places, for several hundreds of years. No very great things can be said in favour of the Christian pilgrims to these holy places; but less can be said of the Moslems, "whose wanton and cruel persecutions," as Gibbon says, "made many martyrs, and many apostates." Tales of sacrilege and barbarities frequently harrowed and roused Europe, till Peter, the hermit, commenced the first Crusade. It is beside our purpose to narrate the terrible calamities that befel the armies on their journey, and how the Latin throne was set up in Jerusalem; how nobly Godfrey, Tancred, Baldwin, and others, fought and fell; how prosperity made the conquerors confident and careless, while adversity made the Moslems united, wary, and desperate; and how disaster upon disaster befel the arms of the Christians;-all this is, we say, away from our design. But Louis VII., to atone for his outrages in Vitry, was anxious to lead another army to the

Holy Land. The pope sanctioned it, and appointed Bernard the apostle of the movement. He was now fifty-five years of age, and broken in health. When the movement was started in Vegelai, he was a general cynosure, eyes were turned from king, queen, pope to this pale and attenuated monk. Wait till he opens those

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firm lips, till those eyes flash, and you cease to wonder at the excitement depicted in the faces and shown in the gestures of that multitude of men, who made the welkin ring with shouts of Crosses, crosses ! Broadcast he threw all he had, and then had to tear up his gown and cowl to scatter among the multitude. They in their frenzy elected him commander-in-chief, but he declined the office. He set out to preach this Holy War. So absorbed was he in his new work that he seemed oblivious to weakness, exhaustion, and pain. Through France, Italy, and Germany he went the same scene being witnessed in nearly every place,— the rushing of the people to see and hear him, and the assumption of the Cross by crowds. The themes were the sufferings of the pilgrims, the desecration of the sacred places, and the glorious success which should crown their banners. He was not the sheer, unmixed fanatic that the Hermit was: he was accomplished, politic, and seraphic. To every crusard he said, "Fight for the recovery of the holy places, and you shall have a full remission of sin; and if you fall, you enter directly into heaven." We cannot enter into the general question of the Crusades, those who wish to see this question stated can do so in the masterly lectures of Sir F. Stephen. For good or for evil, here is the result of this monk's preaching, in a hundred and seventy thousand men, under the command of Conrad, emperor of Germany, and a following of seventy thousand under Louis VII. During his preaching tours an abundance of wonders and miracles were wrought,-as many as thirty-six in one day. In their puerility they excite our contempt, while the grounds of their reception are so weak that they are a burlesque upon the laws of evidence. Whatever doubt may hang over his conduct in relation to the Crusades, his noble defence of the down-trodden Jews is to his everlasting honour. Their history is a dreary one during these ages. They were regarded as miscreants, and as deserving of summary vengeance as the Saracens. Then they were rich and helpless,-excellent reasons for plundering and killing them. A wretch of a monk had been inciting the multitude to rob, massacre, and exterminate them. Bernard's whole soul was moved with indignation at this cruelty and oppression. He silenced the truculent monk, and hushed the clamour of the maddened masses. In the meantime he had to confront and stamp out another heresy. He had done a great deal in this line; but here was more work for him to do. This false teacher was a monk-one Pontius-who had corrupted

whole districts in the south-west of France. In Poitiers, Toulouse, and Perigeux, as in other places, the heretics fled before "the lord abbot." The only difficulty he had was with bishop Gilbert of Poitiers. In this case his foe was an acute dialectian, and the dispute was the old rub of realism versus nominalism. Stoutly, even fiercely, was this battle fought. The deliverances of the church on the subject had varied from point to point, all round this dialectic compass;-now deciding that general notions, such as tree or animal, have no real existence-that they were ens rationis and not ens reale; then going on to conceptualism, a midway doctrine, that the universals exist which are independent of single objects, but yet dependent upon the thinking subject, where they are notions or conceptions. Then on again to lowest realism, which maintains that genus and species were real things-existent as opposed to non-existent. This last philosophy was in favour at this time, and was held by Bernard.

Gilbert met

first the pope in Paris, then Bernard in Rheims. Gilbert made many quotations from the Fathers, and evaded the real question till Bernard fastened him so closely with the statement that the "divine essence, nature, form, goodness, wisdom, virtue, power, and magnitude truly is God," till Gilbert replied, "If you hold that so do I," and thus yielded the point. He gladly returned to his carissimi Claral vallenses, and soon after, was well nigh heart broken with the intelligence of the hopeless failure of the crusades. Public clamour began to cast about for a victim, and whom should they fasten upon but Bernard. He was accused as the author of all the disaster, and his name was vilified and abused on all hands. In this season of adversity his virtues shone out conspicuously. He wrote an apology to the pope for the course he had taken; and addressed to him one of his most considerable works,-De Consideratione. This work is very discursive; the flow and vehemence of his feelings carry him withersoever they may. The plan was to consider, 1st. Concerning onesself; 2nd. Concerning things which are under one; 3rd. Things which are around one; and 4th. Things which are above one. He at this time was troubled at the treachery and duplicity of his secretary, who had freely used his name and seals for base and fraudulent purposes, and had written false letters to the pope and others. Trials seemed to gather and multiply. He found that

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions."

His health failed irredeemably, he could take no solid food, and liquids gave him extreme pain, sleep forsook him, his legs and feet were swollen very much, yet still, his unconquerable mind would not yield. He was still engaged in important business, and even

in this state of body endured as much fatigue as many robust men. He went to Moselle to quiet disturbances in the diocese of his friend the archbishop of Treves. But his labours were drawing to a close, his last letter was written to his uncle Andrew, in Palestine, bewailing the calamities of the unhappy Christians there. His friends died one after the other, and left him only lingering behind. His dear friend, Suger, died in the work of getting up another crusade. Then his life-long friend and benefactor, count Theobald, died. Bernard's friend and pupil, pope Eugenius, soon followed; and now his own time to die came. His beloved monks

wept around his bed, and prayed that he might be spared to them. But that wonderful brain that had controlled Europe now lost its power, his good fight was won, and he entered the land supernal through the gentle sleep of death, in the year 1152, in the sixtysecond year of his age.

His fervent, true, and sustained piety most conspicuously strikes a reader of his life. Through the errors of his system we see how firmly he holds the great verities of our faith. He was the greatest teacher of justification by faith before Luther. His devotional spirit often expressed itself in hallowed song. Some of the hymns attributed to him we are not sure about; but his hymn on the "preciousness of Christ" is an exquisite little poem, and has often been translated. Who will not desire with him "Light, more light,”—

"With us, O Lord, abiding,
Enlighten us with light;
Disperse the spirit's darkness,
With joy make all things bright."

His integrity was stern, and often somewhat rugged. Nothing on earth could turn him from the plain way of duty, and his rebukes to the truculent were anything but honeyed and gentle. He made no difference between friends and foes, but did right. He never feared the face of man, but did what he believed to be his duty. He mixed in disputes only to settle them, or defend the right. He was often rough, intolerant, and overbearing, but he acted upon the principle that

"Diseases, desperate grown,

By desperate appliances are relieved,
Or not at all.”

The quality of the man was seen in his stern and instant refusal to get a piece of church preferment for the son of his dear friend, count Theobald, who was very young, rightly contending that only those who could discharge the duties of an office should have its emoluments.

His industry is remarkable. He lived sixty-two years of suffer

ing, always carrying about a frail body, and often enduring acutest pain; yet he never tired, never yielded to exhaustion, lassitude, or pain. Let our readers look over this imperfect sketch, and see the amount of toilsome work he performed; let them remember, besides, the four hundred and fifty letters he wrote, many of them of great length, and many more which are not extant; and the three hundred and forty sermons we have, in addition to all his other writings, and say whether he was not zealous, earnest, and ever-working. We are not blind to his defects, yet we can confidently use, respecting him, the words of Shakespeare in reference to Brutus:

"His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix'd in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man.”

E. H.

ART. II. THE FUTURE STATE.

A View of the Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State. By RICHARD WHATELY, D.D., late Archbishop of Dublin. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. 1855.

HE revelation of a future state is given us in such a form as to be purely practical. It is to quell the sin and establish the faith of the soul. The 15th chapter of the 1st of Corinthians, that rich and wonderful leaf of inspiration concerning a future existence, is simply for this, that we may continue "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." The whole is a divinely urged argument for the faithful service of God in this life. Its business is not to show heaven, but to bring to heaven. Like a glass that gathers the rays of heaven into one focus, it points and pours "the powers of the world to come" on the conscience and heart. They are powers, because they influence and hold us even in the world that now is. There is no theory in the word of God. Man theorizes, but God furnishes original truth. Man has a free and in one sense prophetic spirit. He has in him a basis of command over worlds that he does not see. From materials which he has, he throws out bridges and structures of thought over into that invisible region which he does not