Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/17

 " that he would not preach like them," not through a presumptuous confidence in his superiority, but through an equally just and mature idea, that if the minister fail, with such a theme, he must be destitute of Christian eloquence. He was persuaded that if the preacher of God's word, on the one hand, degrades himself by uttering common truths in trivial language; on the other, he misses his purpose by thinking to captivate his audience with a long chain of reasoning which they are incapable of following: he knew that if all hearers are not blessed with an informed mind, all have a heart, whence the preacher ought to seek his arms ; that, in the pulpit, man ought to be shown to himself, not so much to disgust him by a shocking [portrait, as to afflict him by the resemblance; and, in fine, that if it is sometimes useful to alarm and disquiet him, it is still more so to draw from him those tears of sensibility which are much more efficacious than the tears of despair.

Such was the plan Massillon proposed to himself, and he executed it like one who had conceived it: that is, like a master. He excels in that part of oratory which may stand instead of all the rest, that eloquence which goes right to the soul, but which agitates without confounding, appals without crushing, penetrates without lacerating it: he goes to the bottom of the heart in search of those hidden folds in which the passions are enwrapped, those secret sophisms which they so artfully employ to blind and seduce us. To combat and destroy these sophisms it merely suffices him to develope them; but he does it in a language so affectionate and tender, that he subdues less than he attracts; and, even in displaying before us the picture of our vices, he knows how to attach and please us. His diction, always easy, elegant, and pure, never deviates from that noble simplicity without which there is no good taste, nor genuine eloquence. This simplicity, being joined in Massillon to the softest and most seducing harmony, borrows from it still new graces; and, what completes the charm of this enchanting style is, that so many beauties are felt to flow freely from the spring, without expense to their author. Sometimes, even, there escape from him, either in the expressions, the turns, or the sweet melody of his periods, negligencies which may be called happy, since they perfectly efface not only the stamp, but even the suspicion, of labour. It was by this inattention to self that Massillon made as many friends as auditors : he knew that the more an orator seems occupied in catching admiration, the less his hearers are disposed to grant it; and that this ambition is the rock fatal to so many preachers, who, intrusted, if I may so express myself, with the interests of God himself, choose to mix with it the little interests of their vanity. Massillon, on the contrary, thought it a very empty pleasure "to have to do," as Montaigne expresses it, "with people who always admire and make way for us ; " especially at those seasons when it is so delightful to forget one's self, in order to be solely occupied with those unfortunate beings whom duty enjoins to console and instruct. He compared the studied eloquence of profane preachers to those flowers which stifle the products of