Science could not do that in the middle age. But if Science could not do it, Religion would at least try to do the next best thing to it. The monasteries were the refuges, whither the weak escaped from the competition of the strong. Thither flocked the poor, the crippled, the orphan, and the widow, all, in fact, who could not fight for themselves. There they found something like justice, order, pity, help. Even the fool and the coward, when they went to the convent-door, were not turned away. The poor half-witted rascal, who had not sense enough to serve the king, might still serve the abbot. He would be set to drive, plough, or hew wood--possibly by the side of a gentleman, a nobleman, or even a prince--and live under equal law with them; and under, too, a discipline more strict than that of any modern army; and if he would not hew the wood, or drive the bullocks, as he ought, then the abbot would have him flogged soundly till he did; which was better for him, after all, than wandering about to be hooted by the boys, and dying in a ditch at last. The coward, too--the abbot could make him of use, even though the king could not. There were, no doubt, in those days, though fewer in number than now, men who could not face physical danger, and the storm of the evil world,--delicate, nervous, imaginative, feminine characters; who, when sent out to battle, would be very likely to run away. Our forefathers, having no use for such persons, used to put such into a bog- hole, and lay a hurdle over them, in the belief that they would sink to the lowest pool of Hela for ever more. But the abbot had great use for such. They could learn to read, write, sing, think; they were often very clever; they might make great scholars; at all events they might make saints. Whatever they could not do, they could pray. And the united prayer of those monks, it was then believed, could take heaven by storm, alter the course of the elements, overcome Divine justice, avert from mankind the anger of an offended God. Whether that belief were right or wrong, people held it; and the man who could not fight with carnal weapons, regained his self-respect, and therefore his virtue, when he found himself fighting, as he held, with spiritual weapons against all the powers of darkness {214}. The first light in which I wish you to look at the old monasteries, is as defences for the weak against the strong.