Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/18

 harvest; and, though very agreeable to the sight, are equally hurtful to the crop.

It seemed wonderful that a man, devoted by station to retirement, should know the world so well as to draw such exact pictures of the passions, especially of self-love. " I have learned to draw them," he candidly said, "by studying myself." He proved it in a manner equally energetic and ingenuous, by his confession to one of his brethren, who congratulated him on the success of his sermons: "The devil," he replied, "has already told it me more eloquently than you."

Massillon derived another advantage from that eloquence of the soul which he so well understood: as in speaking to the heart of man, he spoke the language of all conditions. All went to hear his sermons; even unbelievers attended upon him, and often met with instruction where they only sought amusement. The reason was, that Massillon knew how to descend on their account to the only language they would hear, that of a philosophy, purely human in appearance, but which, finding every access to their hearts open, prepared the way for the Christian orator to approach them without effort and unresisted, and to obtain a conquest even without a combat.

His action was perfectly suited to his species of eloquence. On entering the pulpit, he appeared thoroughly penetrated with the great truths he was about to utter: with eyes declined, a modest and collected air, without violent motions, and almost without gestures, but animating the whole with a voice of sensibility, he diffused over his audience the religious emotion which his own exterior proclaimed, and caused himself to be listened to with that profound silence by which eloquence is better praised than by the loudest applauses. The reputation of his manner alone induced the celebrated Baron to attend on one of his discourses: on leaving the church, he said to a friend who accompanied him, "This man is an orator, and we are only players."

The court soon wished to hear him, or rather to judge him. Without pride, as without fear, he appeared on this great and formidable theatre. He opened with distinguished lustre; and the exordium of his first discourse is one of the master-strokes of modern eloquence. Louis XIV. was then at the summit of power and glory, admired by all Europe, adored by his subjects, intoxicated with adulation, and satiated with homage. Massillon took for his text a passage of Scripture apparently least applicable to such a prince, "Blessed are they that mourn;" and from this, he had the art to draw a eulogy the more noble and flattering, as it seemed dictated by the Gospel itself, and such as an apostle might have made: " Sire," said he, "if the world were here speaking to your majesty, it would not address you with ' Blessed are they that mourn;' ' Blessed,' would it say, f the prince who never fought but to conquer; who has filled the universe with his name; who, in the course of a long and flourishing reign, has enjoyed with splendour all that men admire, the greatness of his conquests,