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Over the entire three first chapters of the Song of Solomon, to every true student of church-history, there hangs one golden gleam of Gospel radiance amidst the shadows of the dark age. There is a monastery in Champagne called Clairvaux. It is situated among folds of wood, near Bar-sur-Aube. We do not know how it escaped through the French Revolution; but Gibbon speaks of its pomp in his time, and of a certain tun of wine in its cellar, containing 914 hogsheads. Sail back up the stream of time about 700 years; the splendid monastery folds back into a rough house

"As if a rose should shut, and be a bud again."

him away, he had delivered eighty-six, taking verse after verse in the Canticles.* We have read nearly all; and while we would not be guilty of the absurdity of claiming Bernard as a full-blown Protestant, it is certainly surprising to see how little distinctively Romish occurs in them, while very much is to be found that might have come from Leighton or Baxter. Öne falls back upon Butler's distinction between the religion and the superstition, in the Romh system. Certainly these sermons might be read with advantage by the judicious student who sought to inhale an aroma, not to copy with lifeless exactitude. In these days of preaching, we may do some of our readers a service by quoting a few sentences. Here is a beautiful prayer for a preacher: "Break thy bread to these hungry souls, by my hands, if Thou deignest, but by Thine own strength." How sound and sensible is this account of the working of grace with the human faculties: "A wondrous and inseparable commixture of supernatural light, and the illuminated mind." The following is strikingly profound :

the first is to be referred to the Son, the second

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The poor monks are out in the field. It is a hot day. The landscape flickers in the heat. The purple grapes are adust. The monks are hot and tired. A bell sounds. They go into their simple chapel. Their abbot stands up to speak. He has a book in his hand. His name is Bernard of Clairvaux. He had taken a part in preaching the second crusade, which modern enlightenment must deplore: which, perhaps, he regretted himself. But "In the soul I have an intuition of three against this, may be set his noble sym- things-reason, will, memory. When the reapathy with the persecuted Jews. Thus son receives the light that can not be extinhe had written to the clergy of Eastern guished, when the will obtains the peace that France: "The Jews are not to be perse-heres forever in the fountain that can not fail, can not be taken away, when the memory incuted, slaughtered, or even banished. Search the Scriptures. They are living pillars, pictured with the passion of the Lord. They are witnesses of our redemption, while they pay the penalty of their guilt. Yet in the evening they shall be brought home; and when the multitude of the nations has entered in, then shall all Israel be saved." To Rudolf, the priest who excited the persecution, he sternly said: "Art thou greater than he to whom the word was spoken, 'Put up thy sword into the sheath? Wouldst thou empty the treasures of the mercy of Christ ?" The Jewish annals record his praise: "God sent after this Belial Bernard from Clairvaux, a city which is in Tzarphath (France)-he took no ransom of Israel, for he spake good of Israel in his heart. If it had not been that the Lord had sent

this priest, there would none have remained." There, then, he stands preaching in the year 1153. Day after day, when the labor was over, he poured forth these simple sermons for the refreshment of the brethren. That year, ere death had called |

to the Holy Spirit, the last to the Father. blessed Trinity! my trinity of misery sigheth unto Thee!"

Here are some striking illustrations of man's incapacity to speak well or rightly of himself:

"Who would believe the blank wall were it to

The

assert that it produced that golden ray which stole in upon it through the shutter? glorious picture, or immortal writing, is no praise to the pen or the pencil; and good words are not the glory of our tongue and lips.”

The philosophy of the history of true religion in the middle ages is compressed into these remarkable and little known sentences:

"There is a kind of carnal love in the heart

rather directed to Christ after the flesh. In

Upon consulting Mabillon's edition of Bernard, we think that this statement is probably inaccurate. Some of these sermons must have been delivered long before the last year of his life.

good."

common

such a case there stands before the man as he | selfish isolation, we deprive ourselves of the prays, the sacred image of the God-man, either singular sweetness of social and born, or at his mother's breast, or teaching, or the like. I suppose that this was one chief cause why the invisible God willed to be manifest in the flesh, to draw the carnal affections of carnal man in the first instance, to the salutary love of his flesh, and so gradually to lead them on to a spiritual love."

Yet a few more thoughts, gathered from this old and rare garland, to entwine with the Song of Solomon, and we have done. "A tranquil God tranquillizes all things, and to see his quietness is to be quiet." "God is without passion, not without compassion." Of his beloved brother, Gerard, dying happily: "It grew day to thee, my brother, in thy midnight; thy night became as clear as the day." "As stars shine at night, but are unseen by day; so true grace, sometimes not apparent in prosperity, shines out in adversity." From the thirty-sixth sermon, at the close of which "somnolentos auditores perstringit," it seems that the brethren sometimes slept under Bernard after a vigil; it would be curious enough to compare his sad and gentle words with Swift's fierce and defiant satire in his sermon upon sleeping in church. Here is a pointed passage:

"There are those who wish to know only that they may know, and it is curiosity; that they may be known, and it is vanity; that they may sell their knowledge for money or honors, and it is greed; that they may edify, and it is charity; that they may be edified, and it is prudence.'

Here, again, are two profound thoughts: "It is ignorance of God which produces despair. I assert that all who are unwilling to turn to God are ignorant of him. They refuse, because they imagine him austere, who is gentle; terrible, who is altogether lovely. Thus iniquity lies to itself, framing to itself an idol. What fear ye? that He will not forgive your sins? But he hath nailed them to the cross with his own hands. That ye are tied with the chain of evil habits? But he looseth them that are bound. What more would ye have? What hinders ye from salvation? This, that ye are ignorant of God."

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In reading this last most suggestive passage, we are reminded of three great modern writers. Julius Müller, in his view of sin and selfishness, adopts the same profound interpretation of the parable of the prodigal, his fall beginning with the significant trait that he first wishes to have his own portion severed from his father's property. Burns says of sensual sin:

"It hardens all within,

And petrifies the feeling."

And it will be sufficient just to allude to Butler's sentences about "the abandoned, in what is called the way of pleasure."

On referring to Isaiah, the fifty-third chapter is especially dear to every Christian heart. "From that chapter," says Bengel, "not only many Jews, but Atheists, have been converted. History records some; God knows all." Two memorable instances there are. One we all remember-the conversion of Candace's treasurer, by Philip. He was a proselyte returning from Jerusalem to Meroe, in Upper Egypt, the capital of the Ethiopian Candaces. Meroe is mentioned by Herodotus, the father of history. After a land journey of many days up the Nile, all jagged and bristling with isles, like the jaws of one of its own crocodiles, and ugly rocks just rising over the seething waters like hogs' backs, the traveler once more gets into his boat upon the smoother flood, until he arrives at the great city of Meroe. There the oracle of Jove sleeps amid its palms upon the quiet Nile; and all this way had the treasurer traveled to the oracle of the Living God. Now he was returning in his chariot, going down towards Gaza, the old historic city given by Joshua to Judah, whose gates Samson had carried away-the key of Syria towards Egypt. Its situation had exposed it to many invaders, and it was at this time desert. But nature had richly adorned its vicinity. The hoary olives, and the great red pomegranate blossoms profusely dates slept like evening clouds upon the covered the long rich plain. The purple far-off eminence which was the highest point of the fallen town. And still, beyond the blue Mediterranean broke in

rainbow whirls of dazzling surf, with a boom of thunder upon the broken beach of Gaza. But the attention of him who sat in the chariot was riveted to the page which he read. There is something about Scripture to the inquiring mind, which makes it precious, even when not fully understood. Sweetness is wafted from its dark sayings like the rich oriental scents that give us a dim notice of their existence through the silk wrapping, or ivory cabinet, in which they are confined. In his devout abstraction he reads aloud, so that the humble foot traveler, who comes up to the chariot, hears what he is repeating. And the place of the Scriptures where he read was this: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and, like a lamb dumb before the shearers, so opened he not his mouth."

This beautiful passage of Scripture recalls to us also another triumph of divine grace, in the person of a different man, in a different scene, in another age. A poet of the day has, with much happiness, compared the thought or line, which the writer sends abroad and forgets, and after many days finds stored in a friend's heart, to the arrow which the archer shoots at random, and discovers in the cleft of a tree. And the Scriptures are the arrows of God, which" are sharp in the heart of his enemies, whereby the people fall under Him;" yet the wound is not unto death, but is barbed with love. And the force of the arrow is not spent upon the first object which it strikes: its range is from its first sending forth to the end of time it may have a myriad marks. The same shaft which cleft the Ethiopian's heart, cleft another and a harder. The date is not now the year after Pentecost, but June, 1680. The scene is not by the olives and palms of Gaza, in sight of the long sweep of the Mediterranean; it is in Oxfordshire, near Woodstock. The sunset writes its long lines of gold upon the great oaks and beeches of Woodstock park; the deer are sweeping through the fern; the magnificent pile had not yet been reared which the English nation stamped with the name of Blenheim; the ducal house of Marlborough was but the country family of Churchhill. There, in the place of the palace which Vanborough reared, stood a long low range of buildings, with the tall brick chimneys, and triangular gable-ends, of Elizabethan date. This is the lodge of the then comp

troller of Woodstock park, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. But there is a stillness about the house: the French valet slips with noiseless tread over the polished oak stairs; the countess passes like a ghost, pale and silent, down the corridor; the Earl is dying. In the war with the Dutch he had proved himself the bravest officer of the fleet; he had become one of the most fashionable poets, one of the most profligate peers in that court of which the historian has said, that "it was a school of vice." No more gallant shape walked in the mall; no wilder wit spoke against grace and virtue in the circle of Sedley, and Etheridge, and Buckingham; no more reckless hand flung down the gold in that gallery where Charles the Second played with the Duchess of Portsmouth. But now, in his thirty-fourth year, he is dying. It appears that for many months he has been a changed man. This change was mainly owing to the ministry of Dr. Gilbert Burnet, who has left an account of it in a book, of which Dr. Johnson says: "The critic ought to read it for its eloquence, the philosopher for its argument, and the saint for its piety."

Let us give to the Tenth of St. Matthew an illustration similar to those already attempted. The place is not far from that in which the penitent Rochester went to his rest-it is the University of Oxford. The time is about a hundred and fifty years earlier, the end of 1527 or 1528. The hero of the story is one Anthony Dalabar, an undergraduate of St. Alban's Hall, whose narrative is given to us in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," in the lad's own words. Its vivid pictures of the treatment of the Christian Brethren, as the Protestants were termed its life-like and unaffected pathos-its minute touches of University life make it one of the most precious records of the time; one learns more of the age from that narrative than from many an eloquent chapter in a regular historian. Shortly before this time, Cardinal Wolsey had founded the great seminary now called Christ Church, at first Cardinal College. The great minister was anxious to attract to his newly established college the rising talent among the young men of England. From Cambridge he invited those students who were the greatest proficients in the elegant literature of the day: John Clarke, Sumner, and Taverner. All three had imbibed Protestant principles, though the

tracts and Testaments of the Christian and old Dr. London puffs and blusters up Brothers and London Protestants. Clarke the aisle, and the brethren are sorely was in the habit of reading St. Paul's tried. Here we must bid Dalabar adieu; Epistles in his chambers, and drew round only remember some of the words that he him a knot of young men whose hearts read and prayed over: "Beware of men, had been touched by grace. At this time, ... when they deliver you up; take no one Garret, a Fellow of Magdalen Col- thought how or what ye shall speak..... lege, came back from London with a sup- Ye shall be hated of all men for my ply of books. The Cardinal, though some- name's sake. . . . . He that taketh not what tardily, was beginning to set the his cross and followeth after me, is not bull-dogs upon the track of heresy. The worthy of me." proctors accordingly were on the look-out We can not do more than briefly remind for Garret, and a meeting was held by the our readers of several remarkable associabrethren, among whom was our young tions with many other passages of Scripfriend, Anthony Dalabar. Anthony's ture, which we have noted, but have not brother was a priest; and, as Garret was space to set even in so contracted a framin orders, it was arranged that he should ing. The "Hora Biblica Sabbaticæ," of go under a feigned name, and take this that great and good man, Dr. Chalmers, priest's curacy, in Dorsetshire. Upon his entwine some recollections of him with departure, poor Anthony, who had got a nearly every chapter in the Old Testament bad name, began to think of number one, to the end of the books of Kings, and and resolved to leave his Hall, and enter with every chapter in the New Testahimself at Worcester College. But as ment. We see his earnest features kindhe is spending his last night at St. Alban's ling over the book. His spirit, wearied with Hall, and reading a precious commentary the Sunday's toil, refreshes itself with an on St. Luke's Gospel, a thundering knock evening plunge into the Bible fountain. comes to his door, and who should walk His strong sense, his fervent piety, his in but Garret, foot-sore, splashed, half rugged honesty, his manly tenderness, dead with fright and hunger. Garret find vent in pithy expressions that come utters an imprudent exclamation, and a home to us, because so true and unaffected. person, who in the year 1858 would be In his writings theoretically we find the called a scout, slips out, evidently to in-point of conciliation between religious form.

predestinarianism and the religious theory of free-will; and practically this work has none of the nebular style, and young ladyish morbidness of feeling, which so generally characterize the detail of per

too often deplores deficiency in transcendental feelings, while it ignores selfishness, idleness, lust, and vanity, as words too ugly for its unctuous style. There is nothing of this in the "Hora Sabbaticæ." Hence the charm it possesses for men of cultivated intellect and shrewd judgment.

"Then," says Dalabar, "kneeled we down together upon our knees, and lifting up our hands to God our Heavenly Father, desired Him, with plenty of tears, so to conduct and prosper him, that he might well escape the dan-sonal experience. The religious diary ger of all his enemies, if His good pleasure were SO. And then we embraced and kissed the one the other, the tears so abundantly flowing, that we all bewet both our faces, and scarcely, for sorrow, could we speak one to another. When he was gone down the stairs from my chamber, I straightway did shut my chamber-door, and went into my study; and taking the New Testament in my hands, kneeled down upon my knees, and with many a deep sigh, and salt tear, I did with much deliberation read over St. Matthew 10, praying that God would endue his tender and lately-born little flower, in Oxford, with heavenly strength, by his Holy Spirit."

Had we time, we might go on to St. Frideswide's Church that evening. We might see the deans and canons in their grey amices at even song, and the chapel blazing with lights. The music of the Magnificat swells under Taverner's fingers. Then the commissary comes in,

But we must pass on from Chalmers. The fifth of Genesis gives the genealogy from Adam to Noah. We all own the importance of this record, historically; but in a religious point of view, one might be inclined to overlook its significance. We believe it to be a fact that this particular chapter, read in a church, without note or comment, led to a train of thought, which, in one instance, tended to produce a complete change of life. "All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died. All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve

years; and he died. . . . . And all the | Izaak Walton says in his noble and beaudays of Methuselah were nine hundred, tiful life of Robert Sanderson, Bishop of sixty, and nine years; and he died." Lincoln. "Now his thoughts seemed to These lives, of enormous length, crowded be wholly of death. He continued the into the epitaph of awful brevity-this remaining night and day very patient, and passing bell of death, hanging silent in the thankful for any of the little offices that air, whose solemn tongue tolls out its mes- were performed for his ease and refreshsage only about once in a thousand years, ment: and during that time did often say and hardly seems to make a vibration in to himself the 103d Psalm, a psalm that the atmosphere of eternity-led the is composed of praise and consolations, thoughts of the man we speak of to the fitted for a dying soul." things which are unseen. Glance at the twenty-third verse. When Leighton's sister spoke laughingly of his deadness to the world, and remarked, that if he had a family it must be otherwise, the Archbishop's reply was: "I wot not how it would be, but I know how it should be. Enoch begat sons and daughters, and he walked with God.'"

The enanations of Augustine leave shadows of that great writer on each of the Psalms. How happily does he observe of their poetical form:

"When the Holy Spirit saw the mind of man struggling against the way of truth, and rather inclined to the sinful pleasures of this life, he mingled the might of his doctrine with delightful modulations of poesy, after the fashion of skillful physicians, who are sometimes compelled to offer most unpleasant medicines to their patients; and lest the sick man should decline the utility of the drug for its disagreeable taste, smear with honey the lip of the cup in which they offer the remedy. ... The Psalms are the one voice of the whole church; they beautify solemnities; they soften the sorrow which is for God; they bring tears even from the heart of stone. .. .. What we receive with pleasure seems somehow to sink deeper in the mind, and adhere more firmly to the memory."

The 101st Psalm is a strong declaration of David's purpose as a head of a family. "I will walk within my house with a perfect heart." There is a fact connected with it which adds to it an especial interest. When Nicholas Ridley was Bishop of London, he used to assemble his household at Fulham, "being marvelously careful over his family,' and this was a psalm which he constantly chose. He often used it in the presence of "his mother Bonner," as he affectionately called her, whom he used to place at the head of his table, in presence of the highest of the land-the aged mother of the notorious persecutor.

The 103d Psalm will be even more deeply felt by those who recollect what VOL. XLIV.-NO. I.

Take that verse of the Sixty-eighth Psalm: "Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death." We may transport ourselves, in thought, to the month of February, 1630. Let us enter the chapel, full of quaint recollections of Holbein and bluff King Hal, so lately the scene of the nuptials of a daughter of England. The Chapel Royal is crowded to excess; for the first preacher in England, Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, has been summoned in his turn: "When he appeared in the pulpit," says his biographer, "many thought he presented himself, not to preach mortification by a living voice, but mortality by a decayed body and dying face." He gave out the text which we have quoted, and the discourse was a me

ditation

upon death. The pale sad face of the King, so familiar to us from the pictures of Vandyke, grew sadder and paler. The high-born ladies of the court, the youth and beauty of England, had, it may be with some few exceptions, been too much habituated to that particular sort of political sermon, which had grown fashionable in the previous reign of the pedant, who had spent so many months in solving the question, "Why the divel doth most deal with auncient weemen ?" But now some of these noble and gentle faces began, for the first time, to grow thoughtful; life, it seemed, had other ends than a court masque, or a cavalier's serenade. The preacher's streaming tears and hollow voice were never forgotten by many then present. Dr. Donne had delivered his own funeral sermon. He went straight home from the pulpit to his house to die. Or notice one verse in the Canticles, in passing: "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away." This was exquisitely chosen by the parents of a young lady, who died at Rome of consumption, to place upon her tombstone; but the cardinal censor is said to have refused his permission.

Pass to the New Testament. Who for

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