Un chapelet fet en a
de rose flurie;
Pur Deu trahez vus en là,
vus hi ne amez mie;”
which was a dancing-song. Maillard also did the same thing when he preached in Thoulouse, singing at the top of his voice as a text the ballad “Bergeronnette Savoisienne.”
Peter of Celles took a stanza from a hymn, and his example has been followed by others. Hartung preached from the words, “It fell, it fell, it fell,” occurring in the parable of the sower.
Texts have sometimes been selected with remarkable felicity. I have room for two instances only.
In the reign of King James I., a clergyman was to preach before the Vice Chancellor at Cambridge, who was a very drowsy person. He took his text from the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew, “What, can ye not watch one hour?” and in the course of his sermon very often repeated these words, which as often roused the vice-chancellor from his nap, and so irritated him, that he complained to the bishop. The bishop sent for the young man, that he might hear what he had to say for himself in extenuation of the offence; and so well pleased was he with the preacher’s defence, that he recommended him to be one of the select preachers before the King. On the occasion of his occupying the pulpit before James (First of England and Sixth of Scotland), he took for his text James i. 6, “Waver not,” from the translation then in use. This somewhat startled the King, for it touched him on a weak point; but he loved a joke, and was so well pleased with the preacher’s wit, that he appointed him one of his own chaplains. After this the bishop ordered the young man to preach again before his university, and make his peace with the vice-chancellor. He did so, and took for his text, “Whereas I said before, ‘What, can ye not watch one hour?’ and it gave offence; I say now unto you, ‘Sleep on, and take your rest.’” And so left the university. The other story is less known. A Capuchin having to preach one day in a church at—I believe—Lyons, slipped on the steps into the pulpit, and fell on his head. The Franciscan garb is scanty, and the congregation were startled by the apparition of a couple of bare and brawny legs protruded through the banisters. The unlucky preacher however picked himself up with great rapidity, and stationing himself in the pulpit, before the general titter had subsided, gave out his text, selected with great readiness from the gospel for the day—“Tell the vision to no man.”
Next to the text in a sermon comes the exordium.
If a royal personage were present, some compliment was expected to be paid by the preacher to his august hearer, at the opening of the sermon. Some of the greatest preachers have injured their reputation by indulging in unmerited flatteries. Chaussemer, a Jacobite, preaching after the famous passage of the Rhine, before Louis XIV. in Holy Week, when according to custom, the king washed the feet of some poor folk, used these words, “The haughty waves of the Rhine, which you, Sire, have passed as rapidly as they themselves are rapid, shall one day be dried up; but these drops of water, which your royal hands have sprinkled over the feet of the poor, shall ever be treasured before the throne of God.” Noble was the commencement of a sermon of Father Seraphim, when preaching before the same monarch. “Sire!” he began, “I am not ignorant of the fact that custom requires me to address to you a compliment; I pray your Majesty to excuse me; I have searched my Bible for a compliment,—I have found none.” I cannot omit here the really magnificent exordium of a preacher, who, in his matter and style, belonged to the seventeenth century, but who flourished in the eighteenth—I allude to Jacques Brydaine, born in 1701. He had been a mission-preacher in the country, when he was suddenly called to preach at St. Sulpice, before the aristocracy of Paris. The humble country parson, on mounting the pulpit, saw that the church was filled with courtiers, nobles, bishops, and persons of the highest rank. He had been instructed in the necessity of acknowledging their presence by a compliment. But listen to the man of God.