Nil generis potentia,
Nil rerum affluentia,
Plus pura conscientia
Valet mundi scientia.
Sancte et misericors Salvator,
Amarae morti ne tradas nos.”
It is perfectly plain, then, that this “third sequence”—the Media vita being the second—is derived from the “verses” whose authorship Canisius cannot discover, and the date of which cannot be far from the fourteenth century.
But when we imagine the good monk watching the workmen from the brink of the Goldach, which hurries down through St. Gall toward the Boden-See, we can bring to mind the whole picture. The present bridge is one hundred and sixteen feet long and fully one hundred in height from the swift little stream. It is of wood, and was constructed in 1468. Here, dizzily balancing in mid-air, tradition says that a man, even as Notker gazed, lost his footing and plunged into the abyss. The eternities came together! A spark from the infinite kindled within the poet’s soul. Heaven from on high beheld this single life suddenly hurled to ruin. Earth from beneath reached up and seized upon the thing of earth. And thus it was with us every moment! In the midst of life we were in death, and from none could we seek for help save from God alone—that God, displeased at sinners, who is the sinner’s only hope!
Standing once before the graves at Gettysburg, the tall gaunt figure of Abraham Lincoln paused upon such an eternal edge. His soul took in at one sweep the heroic past and the historic future. And those words which came, so men assure us, almost without premeditation from his lips are the noblest utterance of our time. That compact, terse, brief expression is the essence of national strength. The phrases are vivid with a supernatural brightness: “Government of the people, for the people, by the people must not perish from the earth.” It was so with Notker; and now, wherever that beautiful service is uttered above the dead, the forgotten monk of St. Gall speaks with a voice which touches unaltering humanity, and utters that grave, great thought, preciously protected in its small casket of language, that death is beneath and God is above, and that all our hope must come from Him!