“But the report comes that you have been persuaded to abstain from lecturing. Hear me as to this. It is virtue to furnish the material of virtue. Thy new way of life calls for no partial sacrifice, but a holocaust. Offer thyself altogether to the Lord, since so He sacrificed Himself for thee. Gold shines more when scattered than when locked up. Knowledge also when distributed takes increase, and unless given forth, scorning the miserly possessor, it slips away. Therefore do not close the streams of thy learning.”[223]
Eventually William followed this, or other like advice. One sees Hildebert’s sympathetic point of view; he entirely approves of William’s renunciation of the world—a good bishop of the twelfth century might also have wished to renounce its troublous honours! Yes, William has at last turned to the true and most disburdened way of living. But this abandonment of worldly ends entails no abandonment of Christian knowledge or surrender of the cause of Christian learning. Nay, let William resume, and herein give himself to God’s will without reserve.
So the letter presents a temperate and noble view of the matter, a view as sound in the twentieth century as in the twelfth. And a like broad consideration Hildebert brings to a more particular discussion of the two modes of Christian living, the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, Leah and Rachel, Martha and Mary. He amply distinguishes these two ways of serving God from any mode of life with selfish aims. It happened that a devout monk and friend of Hildebert was made abbot of the monastery of St. Vincent, in the neighbourhood of Le Mans. The administrative duties of an abbot might be as pressing as a bishop’s, and this good man deplored his withdrawal from a life of more complete contemplation. So Hildebert wrote him a long discursive letter, of which our extracts will give the thread of argument:
“You bewail the peace of contemplation which is snatched away, and the imposed burden of active responsibilities. You were sitting with Mary at the feet of the Lord Jesus, when lo, you were ordered to serve with Martha. You confess that those dishes which Mary receives, sitting and listening, are more savoury than those which zealous Martha prepares. In these, indeed, is the bread of men, in those the bread of angels.”
And Hildebert descants upon the raptures of the vita contemplativa, of which his friend is now bereft.
“The contemplative and the active life, my dearest brother, you sometimes find in the same person, and sometimes apart. As the examples of Scripture show us. Jacob was joined to both Leah and Rachel; Christ teaches in the fields, anon He prays on the mountains; Moses is in the tents of the people, and again speaks with God upon the heights. So Peter, so Paul. Again, action alone is found, as in Leah and Martha, while contemplation gleams in Mary and Rachel. Martha, as I think, represents the clergy of our time, with whom the press of business closes the shrine of contemplation, and dries up the sacrifice of tears.
“No one can speak with the Lord while he has to prattle with the whole world. Such a prattler am I, and such a priest, who when I spend the livelong day caring for the herds, have not a moment for the care of souls. Affairs, the enemies of my spirit, come upon me; they claim me for their own, they thieve the private hour of prayer, they defraud the services of the sanctuary, they irritate me with their stings by day and infest my sleep; and what I can scarcely speak of without tears, the creeping furtive memory of disputes follows me miserable to the altar’s sacraments,—all such are even as the vultures which Abraham drove away from the carcases (Gen. xv. 11).
“Nay more, what untold loss of virtue is entailed by these occupations of the captive mind! While under their power we do not even serve with Martha. She ministered, but to Christ; she bustled about, but for Christ. We truly, who like Martha bustle about, and, like Martha, minister, neither bustle about for Christ nor minister to Him. For if in such bustling ministry thou seekest to win thine own desire, art taken with the gossip of the mob, or with pandering to carnal pleasures, thou art neither the Martha whom thou dost counterfeit nor the Mary for whom thou dost sigh.
“In that case, dearest brother, you would have just cause for grief and tears. But if you do the part of Martha simply, you do well; if, like Jacob, you hasten to and fro between Leah and Rachel, you do better; if with Mary you sit and listen, you do best. For action is good, whose pressing instancy, though it kill contemplation, draws back the brother wandering from Christ. Yet it is better, sometimes seated, to lay aside administrative cares, and amid the irksome nights of Leah, draw fresh life from Rachel’s loved embrace. From this intermixture the course to the celestials becomes more inclusive, for thereby the same soul now strives for the blessedness of men and anon participates in that of the angels. But of the zeal single for Mary, why should I speak? Is not the Saviour’s word enough, ‘Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken from her.’”
And in closing, Hildebert shows his friend the abbot that for him the true course is to follow Jacob interchanging Leah and Rachel; and then in the watches of his pastoral duties the celestial vision shall be also his.[224]