"'Pon my word, Father Dan," said Father Letheby, "if I did not know you so well, I would think you were talking nonsense."
"Hear a little more nonsense!" I said. "I say now that our people like fine, sonorous language from the altar; and they comprehend it! Try them next Sunday with a passage from Lacordaire, and you'll see what I mean. Try that noble passage, 'Il y a un homme, dont l'amour garde la tombe,'—'There is a man whose tomb is guarded by love,'—and see if they'll understand you. Why, my dear fellow, fifty years ago, when the people were a classical people, taught only their Homers and Virgils by the side of the ditch, they could roll out passage after passage from their favorite preachers, and enjoy them and appreciate them. It was only a few days since, I was speaking on the subject to a dear old friend, who, after the lapse of fifty years, quoted a passage on Hell that he had heard almost as a child: 'If we allowed our imagination, my dear brethren, to dwell persistently on this terrific truth, Reason itself would totter on its throne.' But the people of to-day cannot quote, because they cannot get the opportunity. The race of preachers is dead."
I shut him up, and gave myself time to breathe.
"Would you say then, sir," he said meekly, "that I should continue my habit of writing out verbatim my sermons, and then commit them to memory?"
"Certainly not," I replied, "unless you find it necessary to maintain the high level on which all our utterances should be placed. And if now, after the practice of seven years, you cannot command your language, you never will. But here is my advice to you, and, as you are a friend, I shall charge nothing for it, but I make it copyright throughout the universe:—
I. Study.
II. Preach not Yourself, but God.
III. Live up to your Preaching.
That's all."
He appeared thoughtful and dissatisfied. I had to explain.
"A well-filled mind never wants words. Read, and read, and read; but read, above all, the Holy Scriptures. Never put down your Breviary, but to take up your Bible. Saturate yourself with its words and its spirit. All the best things that are to be found in modern literature are simple paraphrases of Holy Writ. And interweave all your sentences with the Sacred Text. All the temporal prosperity of England comes from the use of the Bible, all its spiritual raggedness and nakedness from its misuse. They made it a fetish. And their commentators are proving, or rather trying to prove, that it is only a little wax and pasteboard—only the literature of an obscure and subjugated race. But, even as literature, it has had a tremendous influence in forming the masculinity of the British character. They are now giving up the Bible and the Sabbath. And the débâcle is at hand. But I often thought we would have a more robust piety, a tenderer devotion, a deeper reverence, if we used the Sacred Scriptures more freely. And our people love the Sacred Writing. A text will hang around them, like a perfume, when all the rest of our preaching is forgotten. Why, look at myself. Forty years ago I attended a certain Retreat. I forget the very name of the Jesuit who conducted it; but I remember his texts, and they were well chosen:—
'I have seen a terrible thing upon the earth: a slave upon horseback, and kings walking in the mire.'