intractable, unforgiving, haughty and tyrannical." There was, however,
no note of insincerity in his work or writings, and no tinge of
hypocrisy in fervent zeal. He was brave, honest and pure; controlled
always by a consuming passion for the moral welfare of the people.

Our chief interest in Bernard relates to his monastic work which shed
undying luster on his name. Vaughan, in his "Hours with the Mystics,"
says of him: "His incessant cry for Europe is, Better monasteries, and
more of them. Let these ecclesiastical castles multiply; let them cover
and command the land, well garrisoned with men of God, and then, despite
all heresy and schism, theocracy will flourish, the earth shall yield
her increase, and all people praise the Lord.... Bernard had the
satisfaction of improving and extending monasticism to the utmost; of
sewing together, with tolerable success, the rended vesture of the
papacy; of suppressing a more popular and more scriptural Christianity
for the benefit of his despotic order; of quenching for a time, by the
extinction of Abelard, the spirit of free inquiry, and of seeing his
ascetic and superhuman ideal of religion everywhere accepted as the
genuine type of Christianity."

But in spite of Dunstans, Brunos and Bernards, the monastic institution
keeps on crumbling. The edifice will not stand much more propping and
tinkering. While we admire this display of moral force, this commendable
struggle of fresh courage and new hope against disintegrating forces,
the conviction gains ground that something is radically wrong with the
institution. There is something in it which fosters greed and desperate
ambition. "Is it not a shame," we feel compelled to ask, "that so much
splendid, chivalrous courage and magnificent energy should be expended
in trying to prevent a structure from falling, which, it seems, could
not possibly have been saved?" But while the decay could not be stayed,
we must admire the noble aims and pious enthusiasm of the reformers who
sought to preserve an institution which to them seemed the only hope of
a sinful world.

Dr. Storrs, in his life of Bernard, says: "His soon-canonized name has
shone starlike in history ever since he was buried; and it will not
hereafter decline from its height or lose its luster, while men continue
to recognize with honor the temper of devoted Christian consecration, a
character compact of noble forces, and infused with self-forgetful love
for God and man."