II. =The Mystic Side of the Gulf.=--Abælard’s most famous opponent was =St. Bernard of Clairvaux= (§ 98, 1), born in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything before it (_doctor mellifluus_), he was the protector and reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade, and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven, leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations of life. His theological tendency was in the direction of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm; for the ideal of theology with him was not the development of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination and holiness, was for him the only true theology. _Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur._ The Bible was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures. But in ecstasy (_excessus_) which consists in withdrawal from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so that “_more angelorum_” it reaches a blessed vision and enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only