"My soul thirsteth after thee," said holy Israel's king. "Mark," adds St. Augustin, "how he thirsted. There are who thirst, but not after God. Whoever feels the ardor of desire, that desire is the thirst of his soul. And see how many desires are in the hearts of men! One desires gold, another possessions, another cattle, another houses, another honors. See how many desires, and how few there are who ever say, 'my soul thirsteth after Thee,' for men thirst after the world, and they know not that they are in the desert of Idumæa, where their souls ought to thirst after God."* : men In submitting history to the investigations required here, there are many and various points to be kept in view. We should, in the first place, remark, how the need of a divine object for the wants of the soul was recognized, from which in a great measure followed the offices and festivals of religion, which must, therefore, be surveyed in order. This research will demonstrate what a zeal for religion animated men in all classes of society. And thus far our attention will seem to have been confined to verify the existence of the thirst which is blessed but from this point, its fulfilment will be our theme; for I shall then proceed to show in how admirable a manner the religious sentiment was reduced to action, which will lead on to a particular investigation of the state of morality in the ages which we review; when I shall have illustrated this statement by the evidence of contemporaneous authorities it will be necessary through regard for the mistakes and errors of later times, to show on what principle that whole system of morality depended, and what was its peculiar tone. After which inquiry, I shall bring the sixth book to an end. All ages have been characterized by certain leading passions, which have impelled men to pursue some particular object of apparent good. Some, like the epoch which is distinguished by the rise of the new opinions in the fifteenth century, have been ages of avarice, of the reign of gold, when men thirsted after riches as the supreme felicity for which they were ready to make the sacrifice of their souls, pledging them to Satan, and of their bodies, literally offering them to the Jews. Others, like those we read about in times more remote, have been ages of what was vainly termed military glory; others, like those associated on every tongue with names illustrious, ages of art and literature, because though no error of philosophy and no temporary delusion of the multitude could totally suppress the cry of nature, yet during those intervals, the possession of gold, military glory, art and literature, were held up to the admiration of men who always assent to a resolute affirmation, as being the proper object and the farthest end of their desires and activity. We judge thus of times prior to Christianity from what we find in the writings of their eminent men, and from what has been transmitted to us respecting their customs and institutions, and by using the same process of investigation in reference to the middle ages, we shall find reason to conclude, that during the long period which they comprise, the object recognized as *Tractat. in Ps. 62. being the legitimate end of all mortal desire, of all civil legislation, and of all individual exertion, was not gold, not military glory, not art or literature, but, strange and wondrous as it may seem to many, the eternal happiness of the soul, or the fulfilment of justice in accomplishing the will of God. The conclusion would not be that these were ages of perfect justice or of social perfection, which can only reign within the supernal city of God triumphant. Nay, where souls are imbruted in matter, the face of external things may often seem less disturbed than where men of desire with heavenly thirst inspired, are struggling to set them right; but that the ruling passion which can be always discerned in the history of these times amidst the innumerable disorders to which as at all other periods of the world men were subject, cannot be otherwise designated than as the thirst after justice; and if the proof be demanded, we find it in the institutions, legislation, and whole form of society which distinguished them, for which no parallel can be found in the annals of mankind, and which no ingenuity can trace to any other origin. The blessed mourning from which we have so lately turned seems to present itself to us again in this place; for in the thirst after justice lies the secret of the inexhaustible tears and profound genius of the middle ages. Precious tears, which flowed in limpid legends, in admirable poems, in sublime imagery. Yes, these complaints which they make of the course of things around them, from which modern writers attempt to deduce such calumnious inferences, prove only that they felt the eternity of that mystery which had its consummation on Calvary. They saw, as a living historian remarks, that Christ was still on the cross, and not likely soon to descend from it—that the passion continues and will continue. Behold, these old statues in the cathedrals of the middle age. plore with joined palms the long wished for and terrible for judgment is to wake from clay, wake for that great sentence of universal retribution which is to put an end to the ineffable sorrow which has so long oppressed them. The present race of men are accustomed to look with indifference at the great crimes of nations, referring them either to the blind decrees of inexorable fate, or only founding on them commercial speculations, with the hope of enriching their own coffers. France, encouraged by some secret source of meanness and profligacy in the administrators of greater power, is thus permitted to run her career from Ancona to the Tagus, unstigmatized by common voice, as if all sense of shame and honor were extinct in human breasts; but the cry of the middle ages in view of the calamities and injustice of men, while waiting for the hour of Almighty vengeance, might remind us of those words from the summit of the mystical cross, "Tristis usque ad mortem." See how they immoment when man The sages of antiquity were not wholly insensible to the necessity of having in view amidst the perturbations and vicissitudes of life, a divine instead of a human end. Well had the Athenian in Plato maintained χρῆναι τὸ μὲν σπουδαῖον σπονδάζειν, τὸ δὲ μὴ σπουδαῖον μὴ,* and Plato himself continually shows * De Legibus VII. the importance of having one supreme object, to which looking aways, we may direct all our words and actions. He would have this question constantly addressed to his disciples, Ω θαυμάσιε σὺ δὲ δὴ ποῖ ακοπεῖς; τί ποτ' ἐκεῖνό ἐστι το ἕν;* profound and searching words, at which even the children of light might sometimes tremble. Cicero in explaining why philosophy does not produce equal effects upon all minds, adduces the disposition of the youth with whom he converses to feel unsatisfied with every thing human, as an evidence of the superior nobleness of his nature, and of its capabilities to profit by philosophy. "Te natura excelsum quemdam videlicet, et altum, et humana despicientem genuit."+ Thus we read of Schiller,"his mind was not of that sort for which rest is provided in this world." Faith imparted the privileges of genius, so as to make applicable to every man the mystic name of that founder of the religious metropolis of the Gauls, Tooεivòs, the man of desire in whose breast was extinguished the expectation and even the desire of happiness on earth. His could only be a life of wishes, of longing, of labor, and restlessness; it must be made up all of sighs and tears, it must be all made of service, all made of fantasy, all made of hopes and fears, all adoration, duty, and observance, all humbleness, all patience, all purity, all trial. But while the thirst of the world appears in that real heart-rending sadness, which no imagination can ennoble, the affliction of soul arising from the thirst. for justice, is always sublime in its expressions, and full of ideal grandeur, as is the piercing melodies of the choir. It was, however, in the schools of the true philosophers, and in the ages illuminated by the light of faith, that the vague and imperfect speculations of the ancient sages assumed the character of exact knowledge. "The reasonable spirit," says Louis of Blois, "is so noble, that no frail good is able to satisfy it." Mundus propter te factus est," says St. Bernard, ❝ideo mundum non ames, quia mundus non est te dignus, quum sis eo longe dignior." Fallacious are the things which cannot always remain with us; things, adds St. Gregory, "which cannot expel the wants of our minds." "Great is the dignity of the rational creature," exclaims Hugo of St. Victor," to whom nothing less than the supreme good suffices, and great is its liberty, since it cannot be compelled to accept it."§ St. Augustin had said the same. "Nothing temporal can satisfy the soul, whose seat is eternity," a proposition admitted by the modern poet, though with a senseless restriction. Of aught but rest; a fever at the core Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore."* The feeding of this fire is nevertheless represented by Plato, not as a fatal exercise, but as preserving the sustenance necessary for the intellectual health. "The entire soul," saith he, "in the best natures, receives a more honorable condition from possessing temperance and justice with wisdom, that the body acquires strength and beauty from health, in the same proportion as the soul is more honorable than the body; therefore, whoever has sense, will live, making all things tend to this end; in the first place honoring instruction which gives him such a soul, and despising every thing else."+ How brightly that heavenly fire did burn even in the breath of warlike men in the most chivalrous ages, may be witnessed in Godfrey, when in a vision he is represented beholding the contrast of heaven and earth. -"He bended down His looks to ground, and half in scorn he smil'd; To set his heart on things so base and vilde, That servile empire searcheth, and dumb fame, And scorns Heav'n's bliss, yet proff'reth Heaven the same."‡ In vain are all these public and private contrivances, day by day, continually throughout the year, to repel, as Thucydides says, Tò λvяпрóv.§ "Born," says St. Gregory, "to the sorrows of this journey, we may indeed have arrived at that degree of fastidiousness as not even to know what we ought to desire." But what is naturally wished by the human will, is justice, as Duns Scotus profoundly observes, for that is its perfection; since, as the inferior irrational nature has a principle of tending to that which naturally agrees with it, so the will has necessarily a principle of tending to justice, which is the end that agrees with its nature. Hugo of St. Victor makes a curious remark to show how clearly the human heart discerns that this is made for higher than earthly joys. When speaking of the words of Ecclesiastes, that all things under the sun are vanity, he adds, "I know not wherefore, but these words when they are read sound sweet in our ears. We are glad to be told of our evils, and what we do not love we nevertheless love to hear, for we do not love our evils, and yet we love to hear of them. The reason must be, that by hearing of the evil which we do not love, we are reminded of the good which we love; and this remembrance of good, even amidst evils, is sweet to the mind, and so much the sweeter as his evils are more bitter, which when hearing or feeling we discern to be far removed from the good to which we aspire. So that when the sorrows of our exile are described *Childe Harold. III. |Hom. in. Ev. 36. † De Repub. lib.IX. and the extent of our misery declared, our mind awaking as if from a long sleep, suddenly remembers where it once was, and from a view of the mighty ruins, it calculates the height of the summit from which it fell. This is what renders lamentation so sweet to the miserable, and which converts the sighs and tears into such delicious food."* The need, however, of a divine object appeared obvious, not only from a consideration of the dignity of our nature, but also from a sense of what was requisited to procure it so much of present happiness as was allowable in the world of wishes or innocent amidst the phantoms of sin and vanity. Did any one hope to satisfy his thirst from the broken cisterns of the world's joy? Phædra, in her sickness, was a symbol of the destiny which awaited him; for of him it would soon be said with truth, you take pleasure in nothing; you change from one place to another; the present is displeasing, the absent is thought dearer. The reason of which calamity was remarked by Cicero, when he says, that lust can never find an end. The ambitious, as Cardan remarks, are all inconstant,‡ for no one who thirsts for visible things can ever be satisfied; since, as Hugo of St. Victor says, "the whole world would not suffice to man, who is the lord of the world. The eye cannot be satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing."§ "The world cries, I fail; the flesh cries, I corrupt; the demon cries, I deceive; Christ cries, I restore; and yet," adds St. Bernard,"such is the blindness and madness of our minds, that leaving Christ who invites us with loving words, we follow the failing world, the corrupting flesh, and the deceiving demon." "The more one drinks," says Richard of St. Victor, "the more one thirsts, for to satisfy the appetite of sensuality, the whole world would not suffice."|| Nor is it more able to satisfy any of those vague desires which are so powerful in men of acutely sensitive minds, and which attach them with such affection to the remembrance of their youth, to the days that were embalmed with friendship and with poesy. "There was a time too, when I could weep," cries Schiller; "O ye days of peace, thou castle of my father, ye green lovely valleys ! O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood! will ye never come again, never with your balmy sighing cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me nature! they will never come again, never cool my burning bosom with their balmy sighing-they are gone! gone! and may not return." Return, perhaps, he would not that they should, as the profound thinkers of the middle age would remark, though his words express that wish. Hugo of St. Victor felt this mystery of our heart. "O ancient time, where art thou?" he exclaims. *Annotationes Elucidatoriæ in Ecclesiast. Hom. II. Tuscul. v. 7. Instit. Monast-XXIX. De Sapientia, Lib. III. De præparatione animi ad contemplationem. cap. VI |