Another man might not have made them convincing, as we have seen in our times. Then came the conflict with Abelard and the Council of Sens, from whose sentence of heresy Abelard appealed to the pope and died on the way to Rome.

Bernard lived on for still greater achievements. He lived to see himself of more consequence than the pope, and in this way: the Christian kingdom in Palestine, which had been established by the first crusade, was rent by intestine feuds and menaced by the gathering forces of the Saracens returning to claim their lost territory. A call for aid was sent to the West from the East. Bernard took up the mission of Peter the Hermit. Through France and Germany he hastened, stirring up the high and low, calling saints and sinners to join in a holy war. He made the rich pour out their treasures; to the poor he promised spoils, to the profligate he offered pardon. The power of his eloquence had been equaled but once before. His success was immediate and marvelous. Time and again his robe was torn in pieces to make crosses for volunteers. Cities and castles were deserted. Like Peter he had to check the torrent of enthusiasm which his preaching had roused. Two great expeditions

The usual confusion

set out in the same year, 1147. and disaster attended them, but no less on this account was Bernard's oratory the inspiring power. He had deprecated the evils and protested against the blunders of the campaign; but when the ill-starred expedition was over he was cursed for its fatal result. In vain afterward did leaders try to engage him in the preaching of another crusade. Instead he turned his efforts to a

warfare with heresy in Languedoc, like a second Athanasius. Soon after his public life was finished, and his days were ended in comparative retirement at Clairvaux. The public voice demanded his immediate canonization, and few men have better deserved this medieval token of distinction for goodness and greatness. The grandeur of his eloquence is of chief interest here among his manifold attainments and virtues. His marvelous powers of oratory won all who heard him. Wives kept their husbands away from the spell of his eloquence, and mothers the sons whom they did not wish to be swept into the crusading host by his irresistible persuasion. Kings, councillors, and the pope himself were alike subject to its universal sway. It was not the wild harangue of a fanatic, accompanied by dramatic contortions and convulsions, but the earnest, clear, sincere expression of profound conviction. The impressiveness of his discourse, the magnetism of his presence, the winning tones of his voice, the power of his personal character are all matters of tradition, but history gives the best testimony to his eloquence in its records of the results he accomplished.

Of other lights in an age of comparative darkness there are but few who are worth mentioning. No doubt that many of them had a local and temporary fame, but for only two or three can be claimed a lasting renown. ANTHONY of Padua was an effective and popular preacher at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but his circuit was limited to the north and centre of Italy. Churches were thronged from daybreak whenever he was going to preach. Often he had to come out and address

multitudes that could not find room within. Shops were closed and places of business deserted. Thirty thousand was an ordinary attendance. Nor were the effects of his preaching less remarkable. Enemies were reconciled, lives reformed, treasure poured out. It cannot be seen why, from the meagre transcript of his discourses that has been preserved. Ultra-mystical, crammed with Scripture quotations, quaint and distorted in illustration, the hearer, to understand them, must have been almost equal to the preacher in his invention. It is probable that his wondrous facility of homely comparison entertained simple-minded hearers, and not them only; for if this faculty is the highest, according to Bacon and Sir William Hamilton, there were men of strong minds who would appreciate this power of his to make mysteries clear by the things that are seen. He makes most singular comparisons, however, drawing out the likeness between virtues and a ship's rigging, between saints and eagles, hypocrites and hyenas, penitents and elephants, apostles and ichneumons, merciful men and cranes, sinners and hedgehogs. "Note," he says, "that the hedgehog is full of prickles, and if anyone tries to take it, it rolls itself up and becomes a ball in the hands of the holder. So a sinner, if you try to convince him of sin, he immediately rolls himself up and hides by excusing his fault." It is not by such discourse alone that he could gain eminence. It is by something more than sensationalism in any age that preeminence is attained. It is rather the same secret over again, of a living, intense personality. He threw himself into his discourse.

Bonaventura, his contemporary, did the same, and

Albertus Magnus and Thomas à Kempis; and in a more eminent degree the later preachers, one of whom is full of illustrative anecdote, with a fondness for mystical interpretation which was a fashion of his age. Once he was preaching in a most scandalously demoralized city on the seashore, and being disgusted with the inhabitants he preached a sermon to the fishes in the water close by, from the text, "Ye are the salt of the earth." He begins by saying that they have at least two good qualities, they can hear and cannot speak; also they were created first of all living creatures, and cannot be tamed or domesticated, and none of them trust man but all avoid him. They fared best in the flood, and though they eat one another it is no worse than the men of this city. The bully-fish he upbraids, and the flying-fish he despises for setting up to be a bird. "He that can swim and desires to fly, the time will come when he can neither fly nor swim.

"With this last remark, I bid you farewell, my brethren and fishes. As you are not capable of grace or glory, so your sermon ends neither with grace nor with glory."

The same may be said, in general, of the oratory of this period.

XV.

ECCENTRIC ELOQUENCE.

Y THE close of the fourteenth century oratory

By had become sadly debased, though a few great BY

preachers still kept up the traditions of brighter ages. Among these Savonarola at Florence, Philip of Narni at Rome, and Louis of Granada in Spain, shone as beacon lights. But for the most part there was affectation and vanity, not to say profanity and buffoonery. All natural eloquence was stifled and distorted. Free action was cramped by artificialities. Sermons had marginal directions such as, "cough here, sit down, stand up, mop your face here, now shriek like a devil." An aged doctor of divinity tells a young preacher to "bang the pulpit, roll his eyes toward the crucifix, and say nothing to the purpose," if he will be a great preacher. In all this century sermons are hammered out in this way; sixtyeight sermons on the one text "Come up into the mount." Having given out his text the preacher pronounced a long exordium, containing, perhaps, an allegory or an anecdote from the classics, or a supposed fact from the science of the day. Then he would return to the text and begin to discuss a question in theology, and one in civil law remotely connected. Division and subdivision would each be illustrated by a classic saying or