We have done what your holiness commanded, not perhaps as it was worthy to be done, yet as well as was possible considering the time in which we live. So great evil everywhere struts about among us that it was scarcely possible to do the little that has been done. We have sent only a few grains of seed,[951] as you see, to sow at least a small part of that _field_ into which the true _Isaac_ once went out _to meditate_, when _Rebekah_ was first brought to him by Abraham's _servant_, to be happily joined to him in everlasting marriage.[952] And the seed is not to be despised concerning which we find that word fulfilled at this time in your regions,[953] _Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha._[954] _I_, therefore, have sown, do you _water_, and _God shall give the increase_.[955] All the saints who are with you we salute through you, humbly commending ourselves to their holy prayers and yours. Farewell. III To Malachy. 1143 _or_ 1144.[956] (Epistle 357.) To our most loving father and most revered lord, Malachy, by the grace of God bishop, legate of the Holy and Apostolic See, the servant of his holiness, Brother Bernard, called to be abbot of Clairvaux, health and our prayers, of whatever value they may be. 1. _How sweet are thy words unto my taste_,[957] my lord and father. How pleasant is _the remembrance of thy holiness_.[958] If there is any love, any devotedness, any good will in us, without doubt the charity of your belovedness claims it all as its due. There is no need for a multitude of words where affection blossoms abundantly. For I am confident that _the Spirit which_ you have _from God_[959] bears _witness with your spirit that[960] what we are_,[961] however small it be, _is yours_.[962] You also, most loving and most longed-for father, _deliver not_ to forgetfulness _the soul of the poor man_, which cleaves _to thee_ with the bonds of charity, _and forget not the soul of thy poor man for ever_.[963] For neither, as it were anew, _do we commend ourselves unto you_[964] when now for a long time we _glory in the Lord_[965] that our littleness has been worthy _to find grace in the sight of_ your holiness;[966] but we pray that our affection, no longer new, may advance with new accessions day by day. We commend to you our sons, yea also yours, and the more earnestly because they are so far removed from us. You know that, after God, all our trust was in you, in sending them, because it seemed to us wrong not to fulfil the prayers of your holiness. See, as becomes you, that with your whole heart of love you embrace them and cherish them. In no wise for any cause let your earnest care for them grow cold, nor let that perish _which thy right hand hath planted_.[967]