(1.)A SERMON at present has become a mere show, in which there is not the least appearance of that evangelical gravity which is the very soul of it; a good appearance, a well-modulated voice, careful gestures, choice expressions, and prolonged enumerations supply its place. To listen attentively whilst Holy Writ is dispensed is no longer customary; going to church is an amusement, among numberless others, and is a diversion in which there exists rivalry and many persons bet on various competitors.
(2.) Profane eloquence is transferred from the bar, where Le Maître, Pucelle, and Fourcroy[832] formerly practised it, and where it has become obsolete,[833] to the Pulpit, where it is out of place.
Clergymen contest even the prize of eloquence at the altar and before the holy mysteries; every person in the congregation thinks himself a judge of the preacher, censures or applauds him, and is no more converted by the sermon he approves of than by the one he condemns. The orator pleases some and not others; but agrees with all in this: that as he does not endeavour to render them better, they never trouble their heads about becoming so.
An apprentice ought to be obedient and do what his master tells him; he profits by his instructions, and in time becomes himself a master; but man is more untoward, for he criticises the preacherʼs discourses as well as the philosopherʼs works, and thus becomes neither a Christian nor a philosopher.
(3.) Orators and declaimers will attract large congregations until that man returns who in a style, based on the Holy Scriptures, shall explain to the people the Word of God in a simple and familiar manner.[834]
(4.) Quotations from profane authors, dull allusions, bathos, antithesis, and hyperboles are no longer in vogue, and portraits[835] will also cease to be in fashion, and give way to a plain exposition of the gospel, accompanied by other means that produce conversion.
(5.) At length a man has made his appearance for whom I so impatiently longed, but whom I dared not expect to behold in this age. The courtiers, from delicacy of taste and a feeling of decorum, have applauded him; and what is almost incredible, have left the kingʼs chapel to mingle among the crowd, and hear the Word of God preached by a truly apostolic man.[836] The town was not of the same opinion as the court, and in whatever city-church he spoke not one of the parishioners came, and the very churchwardens left their pew; the clergymen indeed stuck to him, but the flock was scattered and went to swell the congregations of neighbouring orators. This is what I should have foreseen; and therefore, I ought not to have advanced that such a man, whenever he appeared, would be universally followed, and would only have to open his mouth to be listened to, for I know how difficult it is to eradicate force of habit in mankind in all things. During the past thirty years, rhetoricians, declaimers, and enumerators have been listened to; and people run after preachers who depict in a grand style or in miniature. Not long since sermons were full of points and clever transitions, sometimes even so smart and pungent that they might have served for epigrams: now, I confess, these are somewhat softened, and may pass for madrigals. Three things, these preachers argue, are always absolutely indispensable, mathematically necessary, and worthy of your entire attention; one thing they prove in the first part of their discourse, another in the second, and another in the third; so that you are to be convinced of one truth, which is their first point of doctrine; of another truth, which is their second point; and of a third truth, which is their third point. In this manner the first reflection will instruct you in one of the fundamental principles of religion; the second in another principle which is not less fundamental; and the last reflection in a third and last principle, the most important of all, but which, for want of leisure, is reserved for another opportunity. In a word, to recapitulate and abridge this division, and to form a scheme of.... “Hold,” you exclaim, “do these preachers require more preparation for a speech of not quite an hourʼs length which they have to deliver? The more these gentlemen strive to explain and make things clear to me, the more they bemuddle my brains.”—I can well believe you, and it is the most natural result of such a mass and confusion of ideas which come all to one and the same thing, but with which they unmercifully burden the memory of their audience. To see them obstinately persist in this custom, people would almost think that the grace of being converted was inseparable of such long-winded divisions and sub-divisions. But how is it possible to be converted by apostles, whom we can hardly hear, follow, and keep in sight? I should like to ask them to condescend and rest several times, in the midst of their headlong career, and give their audience and themselves a short breathing time. But I may spare myself the trouble of addressing them and of wasting words on them. Homilies are out of date, and the Basils and Chrysostoms[837] could not restore them, for if they came back, people would take refuge in other dioceses, so as not to hear them nor their familiar and instructive discourses. Men in general like fine phrases and periods, admire what they do not understand,[838] fancy themselves well informed, and are satisfied with deciding between a first and second point of doctrine, or between the last sermon and the last but one.
(6.) Not a hundred years ago a French book consisted of a certain number of pages written in Latin, with here and there a line or two of French scattered on each page. But such passages, anecdotes, and quotations from Latin authors[839] did not only fill books; Ovid and Catullus, at the bar, decided finally in cases of marriages and wills, and were of as much use to widows and orphans as the Pandects were.[840] Sacred and profane authors were inseparable, and seemed to have slipped together in the pulpit; Saint Cyril and Horace, Saint Cyprian and Lucretius, spoke by turns; the poets were of the same opinion as Saint Augustin[841] and the rest of the Fathers. Latin was the language spoken before women and churchwardens, for any length of time, and even sometimes Greek; there was no preaching so wretchedly without a prodigious amount of learning. But the times are changed, and customs alter; the text still continues in Latin, but the sermons are preached in French, and in the purest French, whilst the Gospel is not so much as quoted. Little learning is requisite now-a-days to preach very well.
(7.) Scholastic divinity is at last driven out of the pulpits of all the great towns in the kingdom, and confined only to hamlets and villages for the instruction and edification of ploughmen and vine-dressers.
(8.) A preacher must have some intelligence to charm the people by his florid style,[842] by his exhilarating system of morality, by the repetition of his figures of speech, his brilliant remarks and vivid descriptions; but, after all, he has not too much of it, for if he possessed some of the right quality he would neglect these extraneous ornaments, unworthy of the Gospel, and preach naturally, forcibly, and like a Christian.