The Coming of the Friars | Page 5

divine Spirit blow and reanimate them. Did not the voice
mean that? What remained but to obey?
In his journeyings through France it is hardly possible that St. Francis
should not have heard of the poor men of Lyons whose peculiar tenets
at this time were arousing very general attention. It is not improbable
that he may have fallen in with one of those translations of the New
Testament into the vernacular executed by Stephen de Emsa at the
expense of Peter Waldo, and through his means widely circulated
among all classes. [Footnote: See "Facts and Documents Illustrative of
the History, Doctrine, and Rites, of the Ancient Albigenses and
Waldenses," by the Rev. S. R, Maitland, London, 8vo., 1832, p. 127 _et
seq._] Be it as it may, the words addressed by our Lord to the seventy,
when he sent them forth to preach the kingdom of heaven, seemed to St.
Francis to be written in letters of flame. They haunted him waking and
sleeping. "The lust of gain in the spirit of Cain!" what had it done for

the world or the Church but saturate the one and the other with sordid
greed? Mere wealth had not added to the sum of human happiness. Nay,
misery was growing; kings fought, and the people bled at every pore.
Merchants reared their palaces, and the masses were perishing. Where
riches increased, there pride and ungodliness were rampant. What had
corrupted the monks, whose lives should be so pure and exemplary?
What but their vast possessions, bringing with them luxury and the
paralysis of devotion and of all lofty endeavour? It was openly
maintained that the original Benedictine Rule could not be kept now as
of yore. One attempt after another to bring back the old monastic
discipline had failed deplorably. The Cluniac revival had been followed
by the Cluniac laxity, splendour, and ostentation. The Cistercians, who
for a generation had been the sour puritans of the cloister, had become
the most potent religious corporation in Europe; but theirs was the
power of the purse now. Where had the old strictness and the old
fervour gone? Each man was lusting for all that was not his own; but
free alms, where were they? and pity for the sad, and reverence for the
stricken, and tenderness and sympathy? "O gentle Jesus, where art
Thou? and is there no love of Thee anywhere, nor any love for Thy lost
sheep, Thou crucified Saviour of men?"
* * * * * * *
Knocking at his heart--not merely buzzing in his brain--the words kept
smiting him, "Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses,
neither scrip for your journey, neither two coats, nor yet staves, for the
workman is worthy of his meat!" Once men had changed the face of the
world with no other equipment. Faith then had removed mountains.
Why not again? He threw away his staff and shoes; he went forth with
literally a single garment; he was girt with a common rope round his
loins. He no more doubted of his mission, he no more feared for the
morrow than he feared for the young ravens that he loved and spake to
in an ecstasy of joy.
Henceforth there was "not a bird upon the tree but half forgave his
being human;" the flowers of the field looked out at him with special
greetings, the wolf of the mountains met him with no fierce glare in his
eye. Great men smiled at the craze of the monomaniac. Old men shook
their grey heads and remembered that they themselves had been young
and foolish. Practical men would not waste their words upon the folly

of the thing. Rich men, serenely confident of their position, affirmed
that they knew of only one who could overcome the world--to wit, the
veritable hero, he who holds the purse-strings. St. Francis did not speak
to these. "Oh, ye miserable, helpless, and despairing; ye who find
yourselves so unutterably forlorn--so very, very far astray; ye lost souls
whom Satan has bound through the long weary years; ye of the broken
hearts, bowed down and crushed; ye with your wasted bodies
loathsome to every sense, to whom life is torture and whom death will
not deliver; ye whose very nearness by the wayside makes the traveller
as he passes shudder with uncontrollable horror lest your breath should
light upon his garments, look! I am poor as you--I am one of yourselves.
Christ, the very Christ of God, has sent me with a message to you.
Listen!"
It is observable that we never hear of St. Francis that he was a
sermon-maker. He had received no clerical or even academical training.
Up to 1207 he had not even a license to preach. It was only after this
that he