Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

HIS SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 145
and all the host of Christendom, like clay under his hand
to be moulded by his will.
The true spring of the incomparable power
which he
wielded was his noble simplicity, purity and unselfishness.
He embodied more than any man of his day the Christian
idea, as it was then understood, and men believed that
through Bernard it was Christ that was ruling their hearts.
He mistook, as we all in our measure mistake, the counsel
and spirit of the Master to whose service he gave himself
with passionate devotion. He did not understand,
it was
hard for such a man in those days to understand, that the
great world with all its temptations and snares is the
divinely appointed training school of man s spirit ; and that
the proscription of any faculty or element in our wonderfully
compacted nature avenges itself in the end with unfailing
retribution. No scheme which would re-make man s nature
on a simpler and more one-sided plan, has in it the elements
of more than a momentary success. Men we are, men we
must be ;
with passions and appetites as well as convictions
and sympathies ;
with a spirit which can believe, with an
intellect which can question, and with a flesh that can desire
its own satisfaction. Not in the proscription of any, but
in the harmony of the whole, lies the true dignity of our
nature and the true happiness of our lives. We are able
to understand this better in our day, because Bernard
and men like Bernard tried so thoroughly the ascetic
scheme of life in their own. Bernard was the saint
pure and simple. His ecclesiastical influence was enor
mous, his political influence was enormous ;
but they
were, if we may so say,
the mere accidents of his saintship.
The true core of his influence was spiritual ;
his
one great aim in his intercourse with men was to make
them more pure, more just, more merciful, more peaceful.
Even the Crusade was preached by him in the hope of