We must not, however, be supposed to deny that, through causes the character of which may partially be gathered from the preceding remarks, the doctrine of eternal punishment was very prominent in the middle ages. And how, it will be asked, did the church of those ages meet this extraordinary prominence? To have met it by merely insisting on the blessedness of heaven, would obviously have been most inadequate. Our natural constitution, and the circumstances of our life here, are such that our ideas of happiness, and especially of permanent happiness, are, as it has often been urged, far less definite and far less acute than our ideas of pain; and for this reason it has been wisely brought about that what has been made known to us of the blessedness of heaven is far less definite and complete, than is what we know of the punishment of the wicked. But for this very reason, the prominence of the doctrine of their eternal punishment could not be efficaciously met by insisting on this blessedness. But there is another set of ideas and feelings directly opposed to the despair and unmitigated fear which would be produced by the sole contemplation of the torments of the lost; and it is a set of ideas and feelings which nowhere find so natural a home as in Catholicism. From the manner in which the doctrine of the Incarnation is dwelt on in the Catholic system, and from the consequently almost human character which is given to the love of God and to the contemplation of the divine perfections as set forth in Christ, there results an ardor, an intensity, an active continuity of that love, which is simply incomprehensible to those who are external to the machinery of the Catholic Church. If it be asked, then, how did the church of those times meet the extraordinary, development of the doctrine we have been considering, the answer is patent to the most superficial reader of the mediaeval saints and theologians. They met it by an, at least, equal development of the doctrine of divine love. St. Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Anselm, all especially breathe in their works this sweet and devout spirit. The writings of St. Bernard, and those passages of such exquisitely tender devotion which occur in the writings of St. Augustine, became, in particular, the texts on which succeeding writers expanded and dilated. A spirit of meekness and tenderness of devotion, an intense and fervid love of God, are the themes on which they peculiarly delight to dwell, and the virtues on which they peculiarly love to insist. It was this age that produced the Imitation; toward the close of it appeared the Paradisus Animae: and whoever was the actual author of the former work, it possesses remarkable affinity with the spirit and even the style of Gerson. Nor was this temper of mind confined to purely mystical writers. The writings of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Sienna, and others, attest, indeed, that the type of sanctity was, in some sense, changing under its influence; but it passed on to the great theological teachers of the age. St. Thomas of Aquino, the best and greatest of them all, lived and struggled in the very midst of the conflict with infidelity which was then agitating the church, and yet even he found time to write a number of short spiritual treatises which display the most tender and the most delicate devotion. This is especially seen in his book De Beatitudine. Richard of St. Victor wrote a work De Gradibus Violentae Charitatis, "On the degrees of violent charity." St. Bonaventure received the name of "The Seraphic Doctor" from the ardor of his piety; the titles of a few of his works--De Septem Itineribus AEternitatis, Stimulus Amoris, Amatorium, Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum--will be sufficient to show its character. The tender and loving spirit which those great doctors manifested in their devotion, broke out also in their correspondence with their friends, as may be perceived even from the extracts from the letters and sermons of certain of them which the Count de Montalembert has inserted in his Monks of the West. { 93} Other momenta of a more general nature show the operation of the same tendency. For the first time detailed lives of our blessed Lord came into general circulation. Devotion to the passion assumed a far more prominent position than before; of the spirit which animated it we have a most touching example in the little book attributed to St. Juliana of Norwich. The Canticle of Canticles suddenly took a place in the affections of the pious, which even in the primitive church it had never known. St. Bernard composed on it his celebrated Sermones super Cantica, St. Bonaventure and Richard of St. Victor both wrote commentaries on it; St.