ot forget. We do not mean that they set out
with saying to themselves, 'We must have examples, we must have
ideals;' very likely they never thought about it at all; love for their
holy men, and a thirst to know about them, produced the histories; and
love unconsciously working gave them the best for which they could have
wished. The boy at school at the monastery, the young monk disciplining
himself as yet with difficulty under the austerities to which he had
devoted himself, the old one halting on toward the close of his
pilgrimage,--all of them had before their eyes, in the legend of the
patron saint, a personal realisation of all they were trying after;
leading them on, beckoning to them, and pointing, as they stumbled among
their difficulties, to the marks which his own footsteps had left, as he
had trod that hard path before them. It was as if the Church was for
ever saying to them:--'You have doubts and fears, and trials and
temptations, outward and inward; you have sinned, perhaps, and feel the
burden of your sin. Here was one who, like you, _in this very spot_,
under the same sky, treading the same soil, among the same hills and
woods and rocks and rivers, was tried like you, tempted like you, sinned
like you; but here he prayed, and persevered, and did penance, and
washed out his sins; he fought the fight, he vanquished the Evil One, he
triumphed, and now he reigns a saint with Christ in heaven. The same
ground which yields you your food, once supplied him; he breathed, and
lived, and felt, and died _here_; and now, from his throne in the sky,
he is still looking lovingly down on his children, making intercession
for you that you may have grace to follow him, that by-and-by he may
himself offer you at God's throne as his own.' It is impossible to
measure the influence which a personal reality of this kind must have
exercised on the mind, thus daily and hourly impressed upon it through a
life; there is nothing vague any more, no abstract excellences to strain
after; all is distinct, personal, palpable. It is no dream. The saint's
bones are under the altar; nay, perhaps, his very form and features
undissolved. Under some late abbot the coffin may have been opened and
the body seen without mark or taint of decay. Such things have been, and
the emaciation of a saint will account for it without a miracle. Daily
some incident of his story is read aloud, or spoken of, or preached
upon. In quaint beautiful forms it lives