A piety so profound, and at the same time so modest and so large, expressed with an eloquence which combined an impassioned earnestness of language with an impassioned earnestness of conviction, could not fail to exercise great influence. As a preacher, M. Adolphe Monod was powerful. He had acquired, not by careful and cold observation, but by an assiduous and conscientious study of the Gospels and of himself, a remarkable knowledge of human nature, of its strength and of its weakness, of its deficiencies and of its aspirations. He laid siege, so to speak, to the souls of men, and he pressed the siege ardently and with skill; he assailed all their gates, and pursued them to their innermost defenses, keeping constantly displayed the banner of Christ, and inspiring them with the perfect confidence that he was urging them to take their stand, too, beneath it, not from any human motive, or any desire of glory to himself, but from a serious desire for their souls' welfare, and from it alone. Thus did he gain over to his Divine Master the hearts disposed to receive him, strongly shake the purpose of those not confirmed in their rebellion, and leave astonished and intimidated those whom he did not bring over. As pastor also his influence was extraordinary; his life was the reflection and the commentary upon his preaching. He applied first to his own case the precepts of his faith, and the conclusions therefrom logically deducible. As he said nothing that he did not think, so he thought nothing that he did not practice; and without being readily impressionable, like that of M. Vinet, his zeal was expansive, and his piety gave him no rest from the task of diffusing by example and precept the faith and the practice of Christianity. Attacked by a painful and incurable illness, which at last condemned him to immobility, he did not suffer it to render him inactive and useless. Every Sunday during the last six months of his life, his family, some pastors his colleagues, and as many attached friends as his chamber could receive, gathered around his bed, and his zeal surmounted his pain. He addressed to them, to use his very words, "sometimes the regret of a dying man, sometimes the results of his own experiences of faith and of life." The devout assemblage was again convoked, at his expressed wish, for the 6th April, 1856. But that day, before the hour fixed for the assembly had arrived, God took to him his servant, granting the wish expressed in his own often repeated prayer, "Let my life only terminate with my ministry, and my ministry only with my life." [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: These are the words inserted in a publication bearing the title "Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod à sa famille et a l'église," in which the last exhortations and conversations of this dying Christian have been piously collected. P. viii. Paris, 1856.]
Eighteen months before the decease of M. Adolphe Monod, an eminent pastor of the Lutheran Church of Paris, his friend and fellow-laborer in the work of Christianity, M. Edouard Verny, died suddenly in the Evangelical Chair at Strasbourg, while preaching upon the words addressed by the Apostles to the Christians of Antioch, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things," words not less liberal than pious, and faithfully expressing the sentiments of the Christian orator, who died while commenting upon them. The mind of M. Verny was naturally liberal and independent; his intellectual career had commenced with philosophical studies, and he had retained a strong bias in favor of the progress of thought. This did not, however, prevent him from promptly and calmly appreciating the opinions which he did not share. Without possessing either the impassioned style or the power of M. Adolphe Monod, he was not less devoted to the cause of Christianity; and he convinced those by the charms of his manner, into whose minds M. Monod entered by force and as a conqueror. [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: Although M. Verny had long preached, and had often written in religious reviews and journals, and particularly in the "Semeur," very few monuments remain of his ideas and of his talents. The principal are:
1. A sermon "Upon the Unity of the Church," preached in the church of Bolbec in 1854.
2. Two sermons, one "Upon the Prayer of the Canaanite Woman;" the other "Upon Repentance;" preached at Paris in 1843 and 1846.
3. The sermon "Sur l'Ouverture solennelle de la session du Consistoire supérieur de l'Église de la Confession d'Augsbourg," preached at Strasbourg on the 19th of October, 1854: while preaching which M. Verny died in the pulpit.
4. An "Essai sur les droits de la science," inserted in the "Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Chrétienne," published at Strasbourg by M. Colani. Vol. ix, pp. 208-248. 1854. This essay was to have been followed by an "Essai sur les devoirs de la foi," of which the sudden death of M. Verny prevented the completion.]
Although the Protestant Church of France thereby sustained an immense loss, it had a striking and salutary spectacle also presented to it by the end of these two servants of Christ, the one dying suddenly, in the plenitude of his strength, at the very moment when from his pulpit he was maintaining with distinguished ability the doctrines of his Master; the other, from his bed, gathering with pain what of breath remained to him in this world, to pour once more a flood of faith into the souls of his auditors.
Such lives, such deaths, could not remain sterile of result; under their influence the Christian faith was relumed; it again spread itself among the Protestants of France. Nor was this that arid cold faith which men accept to acquit their consciences, and to rid themselves of a trouble and a scruple; nor that vague and dreamy faith which feasts rather upon its own emotions, than nourishes itself with the truths which are the voice of God. A Christian's faith is neither an act of prudent submission nor a paroxysm of mystic fervor. Conviction and sentiment, the firm adhesion of the mind, and the filial love of the heart, meet in that faith in essential and intimate union. It is the light coming from on high, and bringing down with it the genial principles of vital warmth and fecundity; out of which, like salubrious waters from a pure source, flow freely and in abundance the works of human charity. I have lying before me a list of the different charities to which Christianity has in our own days since the reaction given birth in the Protestant Church of France. [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 33: Exposé des oeuvres de la charité protestante en France, par H. de Triqueti, membre du conseil presbytéral et du diaconat de l'Église réformée de Paris. 18mo. 1863.]