The Evangelical Succession; A Course of Lectures (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1882 Excerpt: ... BEENARD OF CLAIRVAUX. THE subject of this evening's Lecture is Bernard of Clairvaux, whom I am tempted to call Statesman and Revivalist. He lived in a far-off time, when Europe was very unlike the Europe of our own days: so unlike that it is difficult for us to understand how men could think, feel, and act as we know they did, and yet not so unlike but that we find the same human nature, with the same yearning, the same weariness, and the same havens of rest. He lived in the first half of the twelfth century. He was born a few years after William the Conqueror died. David I. of Scotland was covering our own land with churches and monasteries during Bernard's manhood. Henry II. had not begun the conquest of Ireland when he died. It is difficult to describe such a time, so unlike was it to anything we can now see and are accustomed to, and yet to know Bernard we must know something about the times he lived in. He was bone of the bone, flesh of the flesh, spirit of the spirit of that twelfth century. His extraordinary power over his contemporaries lay in this, that he was in the fullest possible sense one of themselves. He felt what all men were feeling, he said what all men were saying, or were thinking should be said. The prior of a monastery in an obscure part of France, men knew more about him, and thought more about him than they knew or thought about pope and emperor. If we have to speak about the first half of the twelfth century, we call it the time of Bernard, and that describes it. Bernard was born in 1091, at the Castle of Fontaines, which, built on a lofty and steep rock, overlooked the Burgundian town of Dijon. His father, Tescelin de Fontaines, was a wealthy, sagacious, and pious baron, vassal and friend of that Duke of Burgundy who went on the F...