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108 sermonnaires at the disposal of the Catholic priest, but it is often written out in full, though it is never read from the pulpit, as is done in Anglican congregations. Good preaching is, however, rather the exception than the rule: though the age of martyrs has passed away, a Catholic can always find a sufficient test of his faith in the shape of an indifferent preacher who insists on thinking that he needs two three-quarters of an hour sermons every Sunday. In poor parishes the sermons usually degenerate into intolerable harangues. A priest who had charge of a large poor mission told me that he always prepared his sermon the hour before it was delivered: he took a cup of tea, lit a cigar, opened the gospel of the day and thought dreamily over it, then he ascended the pulpit and preached for half an hour. Men of wide erudition and facility of utterance, like F. David, would often preach most impressive sermons at a few minutes’ notice; others, of the type of Canon Akers and F. Bede, an ascetic, earnest, contemplative type, would also preach sound and rational moral discourses without preparation. The practice of preaching the same sermon many times is, of course, widely prevalent. I remember one old friar fondly kissing a much worn manuscript after a sermon on St. Joseph: ‘God bless it,’ he said, ‘that is the sixty-third time I have preached it.’

There are many other functions in which the priest finds it difficult to sustain the becoming attitude: