difficulty, especially where the honour of the Church is involved, and which is accompanied by just a suspicion of ethical discomfort. In reality, we may, with all sobriety, reverse Mr. Morison’s statement, and say it is ‘not far short of impossible’ that Bernard was ignorant of, or indifferent to, Abélard’s activity at that time. Ten years previously, when Bernard led his little band of white-robed monks to their wretched barn in the Vale of Bitterness, he went to Châlons to be consecrated by William of Champeaux. William conceived a very strong affection for the young abbot, and he shortly after nursed him through a long and severe illness. So great was their intimacy and so frequent their intercourse that people said Châlons and Clairvaux had changed places. This began only twelve months after William had been driven from Paris, in intense anger, by the heretical upstart, Peter Abélard. Again, Alberic was another of Bernard’s intimate friends. A year or two before Abélard founded the Paraclete—that is to say, about the time of the Council of Soissons—we find Bernard ‘imploring’ (so even Duchesne puts it) the Pope to appoint Alberic to the vacant see of Châlons after the death of William. He failed to obtain it, but afterwards secured for him the archbishopric of Bourges. Anselm of Laon was also a friend of Bernard’s. Moreover, Clairvaux was only about forty miles from Troyes, where Abélard’s latest feat was the supreme topic. It is thus quite impossible for any but a prejudiced apologist to question Bernard’s interest in the life of the Paraclete and its founder. Even were he not the heresy-hunter and universal reformer that he notoriously was, we should be compelled to think that he had heard all the worst charges against Abélard over and over again before 1124. To conceive Bernard as entombed in his abbey, indifferent to everything in this world except the grave, is the reverse of the truth. Bernard had a very profound belief in what some theologians call ‘the law of secondary causes’—God does not do directly what he may accomplish by means of human instruments. Prayer was necessary; but so were vigilance, diplomacy, much running to and fro, and a vast correspondence. He watched the Church of God with the fiery zeal of a St. Paul. He knew everything and everybody: smote archbishops and kings as freely as his own monks: hunted down every heretic that appeared in France in his day: played even a large part in the politics of Rome. And we are to suppose that such a man was ignorant of the presence of the gay, rationalistic colony a few leagues away from his abbey, and of the unique character and profound importance to the Church of that vast concourse of youths; or that he refrained from examining the teaching of this man who had an unprecedented influence over the youth of France, or from using the fulness of his power against him when he found that his teaching was the reverse of all he held sacred and salutary.