These are the maxims of an orator as well as of a statesman. And the junction of imagination, analysis, logic, fervor, and faith, made this man what he was. Already he had tried his wings in preaching to his own monks at morning and evening; and they had listened to him as though he had come from another world. He dealt with the great and vital questions of the moral nature. Like the best of our modern preachers, he aimed to sustain the soul, to arouse and to cheer it, and to bid it press forward to a victory which he himself foresaw. He might have said of such aspiring saints as surrounded him what Roscoe says: “I see, or the glory blinds me Of a soul divinely fair, Peace after great tribulation And victory hung in the air.” He felt, with Lacordaire, that the Gospel had a new meaning, when he discovered that it was intended for the comfort of the human heart. He was at one with his monks; and as he reached out toward the social life about him, and toward the turbid torrents of politics and ecclesiasticism over which he must throw the bridge of charity or of faith, he simply transferred the Clairvaux method into the affairs of men. It was an age of destruction, and into it he was casting the salt of the Gospel, hoping at least to make it salvable. Around his life needless legends and superstitious traditions have combined to cluster, but the real Bernard is distinct from both. He never relaxed his grip upon himself or upon others. And while this is not yet the place to speak of the famous controversy with Abelard, it may be properly said that Bernard saw tendencies in that philosophy which were genuinely dangerous; and that he defeated them because truth (however narrow and selfishly employed) is always stronger than error. Such was also his power in preaching the crusade in 1145, when he was about fifty-five years of age. It sprang from the quenchless fire of his zeal, as when at Vezelai, standing by the side of Louis VII., he caused such enthusiasm in the crowd beneath, that he did nothing so long as he remained in the town but make crosses for them to wear in sign of their holy purpose.