Bernard. She replied, kindly as ever, as though she were still
the young mother of to-day, with a sort of patient pity for
masculine dulness: "My dear outcast, what is it you seek? This is
the Church of Christ! If you seek him through me, you are
welcome, sinner or saint; but he and I are one. We are Love! We
have little or nothing to do with God's other energies which are
infinite, and concern us the less because our interest is only in
man, and the infinite is not knowable to man. Yet if you are
troubled by your ignorance, you see how I am surrounded by the
masters of the schools! Ask them!"
The answer sounded singularly like the usual answer of British
science which had repeated since Bacon that one must not try to
know the unknowable, though one was quite powerless to ignore it;
but the Virgin carried more conviction, for her feminine lack of
interest in all perfections except her own was honester than the
formal phrase of science; since nothing was easier than to follow
her advice, and turn to Thomas Aquinas, who, unlike modern
physicists, answered at once and plainly: "To me," said St.
Thomas, "Christ and the Mother are one Force -- Love -- simple,
single, and sufficient for all human wants; but Love is a human
interest which acts even on man so partially that you and I, as
philosophers, need expect no share in it.
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