gy of the early church had done and
the clergy of the early English church were exhorted to do); he was to
receive no money; he was to earn the actual necessaries of life, though
what he could not earn he might beg. To ask for this was a right, so
long as he was bringing a better life into the world. All in excess of
this he gave to the poor. He would possess no property, buildings or
endowments, nor was his order to do so. The fulness of his life was in
the complete realization of it now, without the cares of property and
without any fear of the future. Having a definite aim and mission, he
was ready to accept the want that might come upon him, and his life was
a discipline to enable him to suffer it if it came. To him humility was
the soul making itself fit to love; and poverty was humility expanded
from a mood to a life, a life not guarded by seclusion, but spent
amongst those who were actually poor. The object of life was to console
the poor--those outside all monasteries and institutions--the poor as
they lived and worked. The movement was practically a lay movement, and
its force consisted in its simplicity and directness. Book learning was
disparaged: life was to be the teacher. The brothers thus became
observant and practical, and afterwards indeed learned, and their
learning had the same characteristics. Their power lay in their
practical sagacity, in their treatment of life, outside the cloister and
the hospital, at first hand. They knew the people because they settled
amongst them, living just as they did. This was their method of charity.

The inspiration that drew St Francis to this method was the
contemplation of the life of Christ. But it was more than this. The
Christ was to him, as to St Bernard, an ideal, whose nature passed into
that of the contemplating and adoring beholder, so that, as he said,
"having lost its individuality, of itself the creature could no longer
act." He had no impulse but the Christ impulse. He was changed. His
identity was merged in that of Christ. And with this came the conception
of a gracious and finely ordered charity, moving like the natural world
in a constant harmonious development towards a definite end. The
mysticism was intense, but it was practical because it was intense. In
that lay the strength of the movement of the true Franciscans, and in
those orders that, whether called heretical or not, followed
them--Lollards and others. Religion thus became a personal and ori