Half-an-hour was the extreme limit allowed by St Ambrose long ago. The Fathers were notoriously short. Sermons of ten minutes' length would attract the common people more frequently to the house of God. [Mullois is favourable, in the case he specifies, to seven minutes; having found by lengthened experience that short term most advantageous at once to the church and to the hearer.] In fifteen months, with a single discourse on Sunday of this brief duration, one may complete a course of Christian divinity, if thorough preparation be made on the part of the preacher, for this pregnant brevity demands more serious study than a loose and careless style of composition. All the world will flock to hear the sermon of seven minutes' length; but, if they do not, then advertise a sermon specially addressed to men, and the women will crowd your church to suffocation. Get the women to patronise you, and the men will be sure to follow. [This last hint is shrewd, and displays some knowledge of human nature, but we fail to detect in it the crystalline transparency of the man of God. What follows is still less in harmony with our view of the dignity and sincerity of the sacred desk.] Gather the men immediately about you in a circle round the pulpit, and if the women even hint at your exclusion of them from this nearer position, soothe them with the compliment that you know their charity, and that certainly they could not wish to hinder your announcing the Word of God in the most favourable position to those who need it so much more than they, It is bad policy to adopt a desponding tone in regard to scepticism, and say, faith is departing from the church; hell is let loose on society, and sundry other plaints of the same species; for the multitude will be apt to take you at your word, and abandon that religion which is losing all its followers.

Nor must you oppose the prejudices of the age in the strong phrase of the preacher, who said, 'it appears that we belong to a period of wonderful light: if so, it is the devil who holds the candle.' Rather seem to fall in with them, only the more effectually to overturn them in the end.

Condescend to the weakness, and adapt yourself to the usages, of those with whom you have intercourse. One of the best preachers of the city of Paris lost himself completely with a country congregation, because he omitted the customary Hail, Mary,' when beginning his sermon, and because, in the course of it, he stopped nowhere to give the people an opportunity of clearing their throats and blowing their noses. He almost made them, by his thoughtlessness, question his orthodoxy.

Above all things, the grand point is to interest the people. When interest is seen to flag, it may be revived by a piquant expression, such as may possibly clothe the lips with an approving smile, but at the same time warms and expands the soul. The great Chrysostom scorned not the use of this trait on occasions. Observing a dandy walk in on tiptoe for fear of soiling his shoe, he said to him, 'Ah, my friend, if you are so concerned for the polish of your shoe, why don't you wear it on your head, where it will be safe from dust?' Lacordaire is noted for these witticisms (malices, strokes of humour combined with sarcasm). Of rationalism he once said, 'I will not say one word in disparagement of rationalism, except that I never heard of a rationalist being beaten to death with clubs in Cochin-China. These geniuses are too refined and too clever to risk martyrdom for the promulgation of truth. Their ambition is to fill the next vacant seat at the Academy. We offer them not the tree of life which is for the healing of the nations as their crown, but the laurel of worldly renown, with which they are quite satisfied.'

To persons affecting infidelity he said, 'Ah! gentlemen, you have wit, no doubt -a large share of it-yet remember, it was God who gave you it, which shows that he is not afraid of all you can do with it.'

Lecourtier is full of these sayings. Addressing married women, he spoke once thus, 'Don't seek to domineer at home, you wives; there is nothing in all the world so outrageously ridiculous as a domineering wife, except the husband who allows her to act so.'

Reasoning should be lively and convincing, logical, of course, without its technology, and pushing on ever to definite and easily-ascertained conclusions. Our logical discourses, on the contrary, are cold, dogmatical, heavy, sometimes even hard to understand, and this we call solid preaching. It may be solid, but so is stale bread solid, which no one likes, and if you have no bread but this upon your table, you may calculate upon entertaining few guests. Reason must be quickened with life, and stirred with passion. Such was the method of Demosthenes, and of all the great orators. Truth itself must be dressed up with dramatic skill, and delivered with dramatic effect. It must go, come, speak, question, answer; in every mood it must live before the eye in a picturesque propriety, and thus give variety and interest to the speaker's strain. You need not care to say everything that can be said on a subject, only to say well what you do say. A sample of this dramatic address we quote from Lacordaire. In his discourse on the 'Foundation of Intellectual

same.

Society laid by the Church,' he represents the immutability of the Catholic system in the following style-'a doctrine which resists the course of time, the dream of sages, the plans of kings, the fall of empires, always one, consistent, and identically the All generations have sought to put it down by falsehoods, or to silence it by force. They have come to the doors of the Vatican; they have knocked there with the buskin of courts and the armed heel of the soldiery; that doctrine has presented itself, on their summons, under the frail and exhausted form of an aged man of seventy years, and has asked, "What do you want with me?"-"We want change." -"But I never change!"-"How is that, for everything in the world changes? Astronomy changes, chemistry changes, philosophy changes, empire changes-and how comes it that you are always the same?" -"Because I came from God, and God is always the same."-" But don't you know that we are now conquerors, and claim their rights? We have a million of men under arms, and the sword which upsets thrones can easily slit the windpipe of a weak old man, and tear in pieces the leaves of a single work!"-" Work your will in that way, if such it be, for the blood of self-sacrifice is the wound which renews my youth."- Very well, we shall not shed blood, but mark the purple of our power: sacrifice somewhat of your pretensions for the sake of peace, and we shall live in amity on equal terms." Keep your purple, Cæsar, to yourself, for to-morrow you will need it for your pall; while we, who change not, will remain to sing over you the Alleluia' and 'De profundis,' which pass not away with mortality and worldly power!

66

The accent of conviction, the earnestness of sincerity, must mark the preacher of the gospel, if he would produce any effect whatsoever. It has come to be a question in France, when any preacher is named, to ask, 'Has he faith? (A t'il la foi) which means, Does he seem to believe what he says? If one answer, No, but he is a splendid orator, oh, replies the querist, if that be the case, I won't go to hear him; I wish to hear a man who believes what he says. The absence of this earnest startling tone, which carries conviction to the heart, gave occasion to Mirabeau to say of Barmave the citizen, 'I never heard any man speak so long, so rapidly, and so well, but he had no divinity within him:' he wanted that aspect of deep conviction and burning zeal which no talents could compensate.

The importance of a graceful and expressive delivery and action in a public speaker can scarcely be exaggerated. 'Utter won

ders of eloquence, and utter them badly,' says St Francis of Sales, and you produce no effect; but say little, and say it well, and you can scarcely calculate its power to charm and convince.' Action should have the following characteristics: it ought to be true and natural, concentrated and self-possessed, and edifying and profitable.

The curse and the blessing must not be pronounced in the same tones of softness and sing-song. Hence, when a monotonous and delicate preacher lisped out, Depart, ye cursed,' a shrewd fellow standing by said he meant Come here, my darling, and let me kiss you.' The critic in the case quoted must have been himself a preacher.

People converse in all places of public resort, but in the pulpit they declaim, or intone, adopting a fictitious, and altogether unnatural mode of utterance. This must be avoided. Be in voice, manner, and gesture as much yourself as possible, and be satisfied that to be yourself is quite enough to meet the expectations and wishes of your hearers. Let your outside be a reflection of your soul, and your soul show itself by natural and appropriate signs. Look at a man who pleads his own cause, or is possessed by an overmastering passion; he is always true, and more than this, in a sense beautiful. If disposed to the faults now condemned, the best mode of cure is to go and hear some of the monotonous and sing-song preachers; as a dose of homily from such tuneless nightingales is enough to inspire a disgust for an unnatural utterance during life.

By concentration is intended self-command, never being thrown off one's balance -a husbanding of energy, to be exhibited on fitting occasions; like the burning heat of the volcano, flaming into eruption only now and then.

Some folk think themselves orators when they speak loud; but true feeling speaks low, says little, and that little often in broken words. Vocal power is the animal part of man, but the consonant is the mark of reason. The vowel is the letter which kills, the consonant the spirit which gives life. Much gesticulation wearies the speaker, and in the long run fails to move the auditory. The appearance in the pulpit which edifies is compounded of kindness and truth. Over-attention to dress or style of perruque is ruinous to usefulness. A petit-maitre showing off his paltry airs in the desk of the preacher only awakens disgust. An honest negligence of personal appearance is far more impressive. The style of articulation demanded is one which detaches, burins, and chisels a thought, which fills the ear with

harmony and the soul with truth, which gives the orator a force of uncommon life, by putting in play the whole nervous system. All the virtue of expression in a word rests in its consonants, whereas most people suppose it in the vowels. The vocal utterance is the unfashioned block; the consonant is the chisel of the artist which brings out of it his chef d'œuvre. To do all this with effect, one must practise-but not so as to rehearse each single sermon, for this would not be to favour nature, but rather to induce artifice. This would lead, according to M. Cormenin's bantering instruction, to 'thunder, storm, and weep at the fifth word of the third line of the tenth paragraph on the tenth folio.' Such minute preparation is possible, but the result is not nature. One should rather have made such good preparation as, when in the pulpit, to forget all preparation. The grandest effects of oratory are the results of the studious habits and conscien

tious devotion of years. Sometimes priests tell us they have no time for laborious and protracted studies; to which we reply, that they find time for everything else, and that, if they would be respected and useful, their pulpit exercises must be based on solid learning and conscientious labour; since nothing can be more fatal to the influence of a public religious teacher than for his hearers to have to say, 'Oh, he is a very good man, but a perfect ignoramus.' The world demands some science on the part of the preacher, and receiving this, will consent to take along with it a portion of the religion which science is employed to

commend.

And all this must be sustained by a zeal that tires not in its effort to do good, and in its ingenuity in the application of the means. The zeal of Moses, the zeal of Paul, the zeal of Christ, must animate our priest hood, or we are lost. Our profession is a warfare from which there is no release, and the good minister of Jesus Christ seeks not release. The word of command which he obeys is, Go and defend that outpost

till death, for till death there can be no peace. The enemy you contend with is not this nor that generation of mortals, but the unsubdued passions of ever-fresh generations of men. In the presence of such foes as these, no good man can be idle, no zealous man careless, no conscientious man ready for compromise. We must be faithful unto death for the interests of souls, of the empire of our native land, of civil society, and for the weal of the church. To be and to do this, and succeed in saving and reforming even one soul, is ample repayment for our labour and self-denial, and bestows joys on the happy minister of salvation which are truly apostolic. With

what an outpouring of the heart, in the realisation of this blessed result in a single case, we say, thank God for this great blessing! may every day resemble this day in its labours and results!

Two volumes of short sermons, of ten and of seven minutes' length, follow that essay of which we have presented the leading thoughts. One of these, at least, we should have translated, as a specimen for the benefit of our readers, but that our space forbids encroachment to the further length which its insertion would demand.

We must not close, however, without an observation or two springing directly out of the volume which we have analysed. And our first must refer to the moral condition of the French population as it is represented here, on the testimony of a witness ostentatiously desirous of conciliating their regard, and of magnifying their good qualities. The whole strain of the book shows what a thousand passages explicitly express-that the people of France do not respect religion, nor like the Romish priesthood; that the masses are alienated from Christianity; and that it requires the employment of means legitimate and illegitimate-such as scarcely consist with Christian simplicity and godly sincerity—to bring them

the abbé expresses this, and once in the following terms:-'We preachers sometimes take things for granted which do not exist; for instance, we assume churches to be full, bad Christians to frequent them, and confessionals to be thronged with penitents, when we are making our preparations for the pulpit; but, alas! the presumption is often gratuitous, and the reality is the very reverse of this.' Again, the middle classes are represented as egotistical, materialistic, Voltairian, vain, and sensual to an excessive degree; while he gives circulation to the frightful fact,

to the churches at all. Often and often

that two hundred millions of immoral publications are sapping the virtues of society and the foundations of religion throughout the land. It is remarkable how the conciliatory and apologetic tone which he recommends in intercourse with all classes, is not urged so much on evangelical grounds, and for the sake of copying the gentleness and meekness of Christ, as to deprecate the enmity against his class of a people,

'Who tower in pride, like pale Mont Blanc,

With sneer for earth, with curse for heaven.' One cannot but feel grateful for the con

trast which a worshipping England presents, where twenty thousand places of Christian assembling number their moral, devout, regular, and amply numerous attendants every Sunday, not one of whom but echoes the ancient strain of the bard of Israel, 'I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.' The sentiment of our people is on the side of religion and its ministers, and our services, though quite as long as the divine office with its conferences, and our sermons, though longer, and not nearly so vivacious as those of France (although, it will be gladly owned, richer in gospel unction and saving truth), are relished and enjoyed by Christians; while in France, on the showing of a partial witness, the painful reverse of all this prevails. Let us be thankful for what we Britons enjoy, and secure and improve it; but let us not shrink from availing ourselves of every adequate means of forming an estimate of the practical results of Popery, in a land where it has been dominant and endowed for centuries. The people are infidel, the priests are scouted, civil liberty is unknown, and as large an amount of practical heathenism is found, and as gross and wide a corruption of morals, as perhaps exist in the world. In sober sadness, the picture is dark; but its most sombre hues are laid on by the not unfriendly hand of its own son.

Our next observation will refer to the strain of denunciation of the artificial and declamatory as common in the French pulpita representation seemingly at variance with the remarks with which we ourselves began. But it is not so: Mullois's essay is didactic, and he is bound to notice and condemn the unnatural, forced, and feeble, which doubtless has its place amongst the better exercises of the sacred desk. Now, so far as preaching is an art, and learned by practice, and taught by rule, and, further, in so far as it is an imitative art, it is liable to become artificial and frigid, and justly calls for warning and dehortation. And this is all which our author does.

Our polished abbé's taste is correct and good. The natural and the simple buttressed with good sense, and launched with evangelical fervour, is always acceptable, pathetic, and effective. It may be said, without fear of contradiction, that this is the style of the men of the most refined and cultivated habits, who possess the natural gift of oratory. But, amongst

the forty thousand clergy of France, there must be an immense majority who do not possess these gifts in the perfection which the abbé demands, and the tendency in all such persons will be to substitute something they can make for something they can do-a stilted oration, a noisy declamation, a frigid cento of miserable patchwork, for natural eloquence. We have not heard such persons ourselves, although, doubtless, many such exist, who are not up to the level of their divine function, nor accomplished in the use of the glossary of their most flexible and expressive tongue. When we think of the class from which the sacerdotium are taken, of the processes, indurating and mechanical, by which they are fashioned into priests, and of the gross neglect of preaching as a divine ordinance in the Romish Church, until, awaking from her slumber of centuries, she is forced to adopt and advocate it, to bring back her scattered congregations to her fold, we shall not wonder if her inferior preachers be legion in number. Be that as it may, our lot has been more favoured, and our conviction, drawn from the discourses we have heard, has been, that as a vehicle of popular address on any subject, and on sacred subjects pre-eminently, no language possesses advantages superior to the vernacular of France.

Our Protestant brethren wield this exquisite implement with consummate skill, for, while they can rise to the heights of a very sublime eloquence upon occasion, their ordinary style of ministration is the beau idéal of Mullois-sensible, impressive, easy, and eminently evangelical conversation. God has placed those brethren in a position of singular difficulty-lambs in the midst of wolves, believers surrounded by infidels-yet their spirit, their manner, their gifts, their life, and their public ministrations, combine to crown them with singular influence. And influence they have of various kinds, derived from their goodness, and all enlisted in the cause of goodness. Not one of the least of those influences, which they find most potent to pull down strongholds and build up the church of God, is the gift of preaching, wherein they excel, aided by the extemporaneousness of their address, the liveliness of their fancy, and by the happy, pliant, expressive language in which they shape their thoughts.

Not one of them, however, but one of another creed, employed his fancy thus