Letter CVI. To Magister Henry Murdach

He urges him to embrace the religious life, briefly describing its delights.¹

O <b To his beloved HENRY MURDACH, BERNARD, called Abbot of Clairvaux, wishes eternal life.

1. What wonder if you are tossed to and fro by the waves of prosperity and adversity, since you have not yet set your feet upon the rock? But if you are quite resolved to keep the righteous judgments of the Lord, can anything sever you from the love of Christ? O, if you only knew, and if I were able to convey to you! but Eye hath not seen, without Thee, O God, the things that Thou hast prepared for them that love Thee (Is. Ixiv. 4). But you, my brother, who, as I hear, read the prophets, and no doubt suppose that you understand the sense of their writings, is it not clear to you if you understand that the meaning of the prophetic declaration refers to Christ? And if you desire to lay hold on Him, I assure you that you can attain to Him sooner by following Him than by reading, merely reading of Him. Why do you seek in the Word written, the Word who is already here before your eyes, the Word made flesh? He has long quitted his hiding-place among the prophets to come forth before the eyes of Fishermen; already He has left the deep, shady hills of the ancient Law, as a bridegroom leaves his chamber, and has leapt forth to the plain of the Gospel. Now let him who hath ears to hear, hear Him crying in the Temple, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink (S. John vu. 37), and Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will refresh you (S. Matt. xi. 28). Do you, then, fear to fail where Truth promises to sustain you? Surely if the storm-rain from the clouds of heaven so delights you, how much sweeter will be the draught that you may draw from the pure fountains of the Saviour?

2. If you could once for a moment taste of that bread with which Jerusalem is satisfied, how gladly you would leave your dry crusts for Jewish scholars to gnaw! How happy should I be to have you for my companion in the school of piety under the Master, Jesus! Would that it were mine first to purge the vessel of your heart that it might be filled with the unction that makes wise about all things! How willingly would I break with you those loaves, still warm and steaming, and, as it were, freshly drawn from the oven, which Christ of His heavenly bounty often breaks unto His poor! Would that, if God deigned of His sweetness to shed at any time on my poor soul some drop of the free rain which He keeps for His inheritance, ah! would that then I could pour it out upon you, and again receive from you in turn that which you had felt! Believe one who has tried: you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from masters. Do you think that you cannot draw honey from the rock and oil from the hardest flint? Do not our ^ mountains drop sweetness? the hills flow with milk and honey? and the valleys stand thick with corn? When so much occurs to me to say to you I scarce restrain myself. But inasmuch as you ask not for a lecture, but for prayers, may God open your heart in His law and in His statutes. Farewell.

3. Let William and Ivo, too, have share in this my prayer. What more shall I say to you? You know that I long to see you, and why; but how much I long neither 1 can tell nor you can know. So I pray God that He may grant you even to follow whither you ought to have preceded me, since in this matter I hold you to be master VOL. I. 23 of so great humility as not to disdain, though a master, to follow your disciples.

Footnotes

1. This Henry was by birth an Englishman, and master of a school in England. Among His disciples were William and Ivo, as appears from the end of the epistle. He yielded at length to the exhortations of Bernard, and became a monk of Clairvaux; afterwards he was Abbot of Vauclaire, and then third Abbot of Fountains, in England (see Letters 320 and 331); and, lastly, after the deposition of the Treasurer, William, by Eugenius III., Archbishop of York, on which subject several letters occur below. See also William of Newburgh, B. i. c. 17; Roger Hoveden, under the year 1140; Robert du Mont, Appendix to ↩