a God for whose sake she knew she had done nothing. Not as a free, self-consecrated offering, but only as a victim she came. It was to Abelard, not to God, she yielded obedience. In the tedious round of ceremonies through which she was to pass each hour of each day and night for long weary years, she has no religious aspirations to sustain her, no ascetic views to be gratified. She cannot then look up; and she has no taste for what is around her. The convent to which she is condemned has no enviable reputation; and she probably had no one to direct her thoughts to Him who would freely forgive much, that she might love much. There she remains for long years in what must have seemed to her vigorous intellect and ardent imagination, a dreary and deadly tomb, in the plenitude of her rich, natural, and educational endowments, and with a heart bounding with life and passion, to waste the matin lamp, assume devout attitudes, march in solemn processions, drop her beads, and watch the nod of her superiors. One kind of employment is open to her, and to this, when her feelings are somewhat softened by time, she devotes herself with intense predilection. This is the study of classical literature. Gradually, too, she gropes her way to to a knowledge of the true salvation, for the profound sincerity of her nature could not satisfy itself with a mere external righteousness. When we meet with her again, in spite of the passion which agitates her, we shall find her by degrees calming her spirit on the firm basis of evangelical truth. It is hard to censure one so lovely, so disinterested. She sinned indeed; but who can cast a stone at her, recollecting her youthful inexperience, her utter want of religious culture and guardianship, the powerful fascination under which she came, the strong impulses of her own ardent nature, and the corrupt examples which prevailed immediately around her?

A few days only elapsed before he on whom these sorrowing thoughts were fixed, retired also from the world, and became a Benedictine monk in the convent of St. Denis, two leagues north of Paris. This was one of the richest monasteries in France. Its royal founder, in the seventh century, and his successors, had lavished upon it such enormous treasures as

they hoped might purchase heaven. Some of its wealth, and especially its roof of silver, had been applied to more useful purposes, and once it had been reduced to a heap of ruins. Recently it had been restored to nearly its former splendor. Here the kings of France, for several dynasties, had been buried; but its most precious treasure was the tomb of the nation's patron saint. Its literary wealth, however, exceeded even its outward splendor, and a learned leisure within its walls was a privilege coveted by many, but obtained by few. Abelard was received with open arms; and here, for the moment, he hoped the world would forget him. Religion had as little to do with his choice as with Heloise's. Thoughts of vengeance for a while occupied him in spite of his acknowledg ment that he had justly provoked his enemies, but soon his spirits assume a sadder, if not a more devotional turn. It was long, however, before he thoroughly humbled himself, and received with meekness the chastisement of the Lord. But the work of subduing him had now been commenced, and was never to cease until his soul should become as a weaned child. Every cherished purpose of his selfish heart was to be crossed and thwarted, until no alternative should remain to him but a life of faith.

We are compelled to defer the remainder of our Article to a succeeding Number of the Review.

ARTICLE II.

A Year among the Jesuits. By ANDREW STEINMETZ.
CRETINEAU-JOLY: Histoire des Jesuites.

F. BARTOLI: Vita di Ignacio.

"To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever" is the substance of all Christian statements of the end for which man was created. Man is to aim at future happiness in the full enjoying of God, as this end. As the way to this end, he is to glorify God here. And God is 'to be glorified by whatsoever in life and action makes up the sum of Christian virtue or holiness. On this point there is no dispute. Fathers and schoolmen and Reformers-Protestant and Romanist-Jesuit and Jansenist-all comprise, under varying forms of statement, the essentials of this proposition.

But when we come to ask How that holiness is to be cultivated, by which we must glorify God, the divergence of opinion begins. And the settlement of it involves no less than the whole question at issue, not simply between Romanism and Protestantism, but between different portions of the Protestant and of the Romanist body.

Particularly-for our present purpose-is to be noticed that great question, running through so many centuries, of the outward condition in which God may best be glorified. Whether in the world' or in the cloister, in the religious discharge of the social duties as they naturally arise, or in fleeing from those duties and relations as incompatible with the highest perfection, and devoting the whole life to the practice of religious obser

vances.

The early Christian ascetic found family and work such hindrances to devotion, that he must renounce them for his soul's good. Interpreting Christ's command grossly, he would FORSAKE father and mother, house and lands, for the kingdom

of heaven's sake. Temptation met him at every step in society. He would flee to the desert, where it could not follow, as if he could leave sense, and memory, and imagination behind him. It was in search for holiness that St. Jerome betook himself to the wilderness, St. Anthony to his cave, and St. Simeon to his pillar. The employments of everyday life would not do for saints; more carnal persons might plant, and build, and marry. For such as aimed at a higher Christian perfection, fasting, vigils, and prayer, sufficed as the exclusive occupation of life.

The cenobite institution came in place of the solitary, but with the same end still in view. Instead of fleeing to caves and scattered oases in the desert, the principle of sympathy and the need of government brought the aspirants for perfection into convents. They might fast and flagellate in the cell; but they must chant and pray in common. They must cultivate holiness, not henceforth at their own discretion, but under the guidance of a stringent rule. The whole discipline of the monk looked simply inward, and was designed to terminate on himself. The conquest of the passions; the eradication of selfwill; had no reference to an increased efficiency in the service of mankind. It was not as a means to outward activity that self-conquest was struggled for by the disciple of St. Basil or St. Benedict. He was vowed to live and die in the cloister; and the prayers and vigils, the mortifications and penances, answered all their end, if they made him a better monk; if they made him more dead to the world, more sublimely indifferent to everything outside the wall of his cloister.

Even that modification of monachism, under the Benedictine rule, by which agricultural labor came to make a part of the monastic life, though attended with great advantages to society, was not the fruit of any change in the principle of monachism. It only lengthened the abbey wall to inclose a farm, instead of inclosing a courtyard. Monachism was not-in the intention of St. Benedict-a discipline by which men were trained for outward activity; not a school in which they were taught professional or even practical knowledge-agriculture for instance—

with a view to their becoming the teachers and helpers of others. It was all to turn inward. The farming as much as the praying looked only to the welfare of the brethren of the convent.*

And this was a vita angelica. This course of monotonous chanting and prayer; of regulated fasting and physicking; of merely selfish and narrow-minded working, was, compared with the ordinary pursuits and relations of social life, as God has ordained them, a life of angels. The confident assurance was, that this was the road to holiness, and the rewards of holiness. "Bonum est," said St. Bernard beautifully, if the fruit had only corresponded to the promise, "Bonum est nos hic esse quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius, purgatur citius, præmiatur copiosius." A sentiment which the admirers of Wordsworth will remember as well rendered in one of his ecclesiastical sonnets:

Here man more purely lives; less oft doth fall;
More quickly rises; walks with greater heed;
More safely rests; dies happier; is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires; and gains withal,
A brighter crown. On yon Cistercian wall,
That confident assurance may be read,

And to like shelter from the world, have fled

Increasing multitudes. The potent call

Shall cheat, full oft, no doubt, the heart's desires.

The cheat was twofold. First, in teaching that God could not be served acceptably by men involved in the ordinary relations of life. Second, in promising assured acceptance to those who would forsake them for the devotion of the cloister. The motto usually prefixed to Thomas A'Kempis, expressed the whole of it:

*It is admitted that Benedictine monachism became gradually more and more outwardly active, and led to arrangements for elementary, medical, and theological instruction. But this was no part of the plan of monachism. The monk could not be, except under special Papal authority, a teacher, missionary, or physician, without the abbey. His vow bound him to live and die in the cloister.

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