Sermons on the Song of Songs24 Sermon XXIV. I principally against the detestable vice of detraction : and in what rectitude in a man chiefly consists

Now at length for the third time, dear brethren, the eye* of Providence has looked favourably from heaven upon my return to you from Rome, and a more peaceful aspect of affairs has smiled upon us at length. The furious anger of the faction of Peter Leonis has cooled, their schism has come to an end, the Church has regained peace. That wicked one who for eight years almost has troubled it by a terrible schism, has been brought to nothing in the sight of all. Shall it be in vain that I have been restored to you after perils so great? Since I have been granted to your desires, let it be for your spiritual advancement also; the life which I owe to your merits, I desire to devote to cares for you and your salvation. Since then you wish that I should continue, what I began long since, my comment on the Song of Songs, I willingly do so, and I think it better to resume the discourse which was interrupted, than to commence something new. But I fear lest, my mind being at all times unequal to that duty, and having been for so long a time unused to the discharge of it, and distracted by matters very different, my thoughts should be too weak and unworthy for a subject so sublime. But that which I have, I give unto you; and it may be that God, having regard to my faithful endeavour to serve Him, may enable me to give even that which I have not. If it be 1 Delivered in the year 1138, on his return from Italy, after the schism of Peter Leonis was at length brought to an end.

2. Now, the place where we ought to commence, I think, is at this passage: The upright love thee (i. 4). But before we begin to explain it, let us see who it is speaks thus. For we ought to supply what the author does not say. Perhaps, then, we may attribute these words to the young maidens, whose are the sentences which precede them. For after they had said to her, * We will rejoice and be glad in thee, remembering thy bosom, which is better than wine' (and there is no doubt that there they speak to their mother); they continue with the words which follow: The upright love thee, I believe that they added this on account of some of their number who had not the same sentiments, although they seemed to run equally well; who sought their own advantage, not walking sincerely and in simplicity, but taking occasion to murmur against her, because she entered alone into the storehouses of the Bridegroom. Which is no other than that the Apostle makes mention of: Perils from false brethren (2 Cor. xi. 26). These are they, against whose taunts the Bride herself, later on, is obliged to defend herself, replying to them: I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem (i. 5). It is then to console her because of those who murmur and blaspheme, that it is said by those others who are souls good, simple, humble, and gentle: The upright love thee, 1 Have no care/ they say, for the unjust blame of those blasphemers, when it is quite clear that The upright love thee' It is a goodly consolation, in truth, when we do good and are spoken ill of by the evil, if the righteous love us. The esteem of the good, with the approving testimony of conscience, is sufficient for us against the tongues that speak evil. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof and be glad; yes, shall be glad (Ps xxxiv. 2). Let me be pleasing to those who are gentle, and I shall endure with equanimity whatsoever the envy of the abandoned (perditarum) shall be desirous to utter against me.

3. It is, then, in this sense, that I understand what is here said: The upright love T/iee, Not unfitly, as I think, since everywhere, 1 From the commencement of the sermon on to this point there is a great diversity of reading in the MSS. In some of them the entire exordium is omitted, and the sermon begins thus: 1 The upright love Thee. Whom are we to suppose are they who speak these words? If the young maidens, then without doubt they say this to their mother, in like manner as they had said to her *' We will rejoice and be glad in thee, remembering thy bosom, which is better than wine"; and continue " the upright love thee," etc. Other MSS. have our reading. From this variety arises great confusion in most editions, in which both introductions are reproduced, but wrongly. The explanation of this confusion is that St. Bernard preached the same sermon twice—the first time with the shorter introduction, in the year 1137, before he went to Rome for the third time; the second time in 1138, when he returned thence, and then he prefixed the longer introduction, in order to take up the interrupted work where he had left it in the previous sermon. One MS. in the Royal Library, No. 4,511, reproduces the sermon with the two introductions; and one Colbertine has it once here with the one introduction, and again after Sermon LX. with the other.

4. Nor is that wonderful to us when we perceive that this vice conflicts with, and persecutes, more even than others, charity, which is [the nature of God Himself, as you yourselves can easily discern. For everyone who slanders his neighbour gives proof, in the first place, that he is wholly void of charity. In the second place, what other object can he have in uttering the slander than to induce others to hate or despise those of whom the slander is spoken? The slanderous tongue strikes, therefore, a deadly blow at charity in all those who hear the calumny, and, as far as its power extends, entirely destroys and extinguishes it; and not only in them, but in all those who are absent, but to whom the calumny is, perhaps, repeated, as words fly from lip to lip by those who have heard it. You see, then, how a malicious report may in a brief space of time easily infect with the plague of its malice a great number of souls. Wherefore the prophetic spirit says of such: Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood (Ps. xiii. 3, Vulg. and Douay). And speech speeds as rapidly as the feet of a swift runner. If there be one only who speaks, and he speaks but one sole word, yet that one word enters into the ears of a multitude of hearers, and in one moment slays their souls; for a heart full of the venom of envy 5. Having said these few words respecting a vice so full of malignity, let me return to my orderly exposition, and show who are they who are spoken of here as the upright, I suppose that there is no one of right intelligence who imagines that it is ' uprightness' in a bodily sense that is predicated of those who love the Bride, therefore it is to be explained of spiritual uprightness, that is, rectitude of heart and of mind. It is the Spirit who speaks, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Therefore God * made man upright' according to the mind, not according to the earthy and material body. For He created him in His own image and similitude (Gen. i. 27), and as you sing in the Psalms, The Lord our God is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in Him (Ps. xcii. 15). God, then, who is upright, made man upright and similar to Himself, that is to say, without unrighteousness, even as there is no unrighteousness in Him. Now, unrighteousness is a vice of the heart, not of the flesh, and from this you know that the likeness of God which you have is to be preserved, or to be restored, in the spiritual part of your nature, and not in its earthy and clayey part. For God is Spirit, and it behoves those who desire to become like Him, or to persevere in His likeness, to enter into their heart, and to employ themselves in the spirit in that blessed work; so that with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, they may be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. iii. 18).

6. Perhaps it may be said, again, that God has bestowed upon man an upright stature in body also, so that this exterior and bodily uprightness, though of a lower kind, may admonish the inner man to AGAINST THE DETESTABLE VICE OF DETRACTION preserve his spiritual uprightness, and the beauty of the perishable clay may rebuke the deformity of the mind; for what can be more indecent than to bear a bent and deformed mind in an upright body? It is a thing unfitting and shameful that a frame of clay, which is what our earthly body really is, should have its eyes raised on high, directed freely towards heaven, and taking pleasure to contemplate the great lights of the heavens; but that the being of spiritual and heavenly nature should, on the contrary, have its eyes, that is, its inward senses and affections, drawn downwards towards the earth, and that which ought to be nourished upon golden and precious sustenance should be clinging to the soil, wallowing in filth, like an unclean swine. Blush with shame, O my soul, to have changed the Divine likeness for that of the brute; and being of the heavens, to be wallowing in the mire. Blush with shame, O my soul, says our body, when you consider yourself and me. You were created upright and similar to your Creator, and you received me for a helper like unto yourself, at least, as far as the lineaments of bodily uprightness were concerned. Whithersoever you turn, whether it be to God above or to me below (for no man ever hated his own flesh), on every side meet you the various kinds of your own excellence; everywhere you have the familiar teachings of wisdom, bidding you preserve the nobleness and dignity of the state in which you have been placed. Why, then, are you not stricken with shame for having lost your glorious prerogative, while I have preserved and retained mine, which I only received in order to be a companion and helper to you? Why shall the Creator have to behold His likeness obliterated in you, while He preserves yours in me, and it is always a representation of you? But now you have turned that companionship and assistance, which was due to you from me, into a cause of confusion and shame; you abuse the service which I render you; and, as if you had become a brute and bestial spirit, treat unworthily the noble human body which you inhabit.

7. Souls which are thus bent and deformed are not capable of loving the Bride, because those who are lovers of the world are not of the Bridegroom. Whosoever will be a friend of I he world is, it is said, the enemy of God (James iv. 4). Therefore, to seek and to have a love for things which are on the earth is to bend down and deform the soul; while, on the contrary, to think of, and to long for, the things which are above is its uprightness. And in order that this rectitude may be perfect, it must exist first in the mind, and then pass into the life (in sensu et consensu). I should, in fact, call you upright if you 1 In this passage, again, and for a similar reason to that given above, the discrepancy in the old MSS. has thrown the early editioos into confusion. In those in which the lengthy introduction here given is wanting, we find the following reading: ' And this uprightness, that it may be perfect in all respects, must be first in the mind, then in the life. I should say that he is upright in heart who has right sentiments in all things, and whose actions differ in no respect from the right sentiments which he has felt. See of whom it is said to the Bride, "The upright love thee": that is to say, those who know in all things what is right, and practise it accord- 8. Separation from charity is the death of faith. Do you believe in Christ? do, then, His works, that your faith may continue living. Let love animate your faith, and action prove its reality. Let not him be bowed to the earth by the works of earth, whom faith lifts up towards heavenly things. You who declare that you are abiding in Christ ought even so to walk as He walked. But if you seek your own glory, if you envy the prosperous, if you slander the absent, if ingly.' Then the sermon is concluded in these words: 4 May God gprant that we may be of those, and numbered with those who are loved by the Bridegroom, by the grace of the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, God for ever and ever. Amen.' But other MSS. prefer our reading.

Against THE DETESTABLE VICE OF DETRACTION you tender back evil for evil, you act quite otherwise than Christ acted. You confess that you know God, but in words you deny Him. You have acted not uprightly, but impiously, in thus giving your tongue to Christ, but your heart to the devil. Listen to the Saviour's words: This man Iionoureth me with his lips, but his heart is far from Me (Is. xxix. 13, and Matt. xv. 7). Assuredly you are not upright, who are so far from right in dividing your offering. You cannot lift up your head, for it is pressed down under the yoke of the devil. Iniquity rules over you, so that you cannot raise yourself, and stand upright. Your iniquities have gone over your head, as an heavy burden they are too heavy for thee (Ps. xxxviii. 4). As says the Prophet, Wickedness sits upon a talent of lead (Zech. v. 7). You see, then, that faith, which worketh not by love, even though it be right, does not make a man upright. But he who is without love is Hot able to love the Bride. Again, neither do works, however upright they be, suffice, without faith, to render the heart upright. For who can call a man upright, who is not pleasing to God? But without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. xi. 6). And he who does not please God is not able to find pleasure in God. But on the contrary, he who does please God cannot fail to find pleasure in Him. Furthermore, he who finds no pleasure in God can find no pleasure either in [the Church, which is His Bride. How, then, can a man be upright who loves neither God, nor the Church of God, of which it is said, The upright love thee? If, then, neither faith without works, nor works without faith, are sufficient for uprightness of soul, let us, brethren, who believe in Christ, study to make the works of our hands and the desires of our hearts alike upright Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God, that we may be found upright wholly; approving by right actions the rectitude of our faith, that we may be lovers of the Bride, and beloved by the Bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.