01.04. Lecture IV. The Great French Preachers

Lecture IV. The Great French Preachers A complete history of Preaching in France would of course go over ground to which we have heretofore made some reference. Thus in the medieval times, Peter the Hermit was a Frenchman, and so was St. Bernard. The good work done by the Waldensian preachers in the South of France in the twelfth century, led the Catholics (as we saw) to establish the Dominican order of preachers. And Calvin, though we think of him in connection with Geneva, was in all respects a Frenchman.

It may seem strange that we have almost no accounts of eminent preachers in France before the Middle Ages. And doubtless fuller information would show us that there were many men of power and influence. For the French are a nation highly capable of appreciating and producing eloquence. The dominant Franks did not materially modify the character of the old Keltic stock, and the Belts were from oar earliest knowledge of them, and are still, an eloquent race. Cæsar describes to us popular orators among the Gauls who must have spoken with a fiery and passionate eloquence. The Gauls or Galatians) in Asia Minor received Paul’s early preaching with unequalled enthusiasm. The Scotchman who converted the pagan Irish, and whom all Ireland reveres as St. Patrick, must have been, to judge from all accounts given, a preacher of great power over the hearts of men; and so was the Irishman Columba, who two centuries later preached from house to house throughout Scotland. The Irish to the present day are noted for a peculiarly imaginative oratory, not only in politics wherever there has been any political liberty, but also in preaching, notwithstanding the unfavorable influence of Romanism; and the most eloquent preacher in the Church of England at the present time is an Irishman bred and born, the Bishop of Peterborough. The Welsh also have been famous for eloquent preachers. And everywhere, in Galatians, Gauls, Irish, Welsh, and modern Frenchmen, there is the same blazing enthusiasm and mental activity, the same impulsiveness and prompt excitability, the same lively imagination, and (so far as we know) the same quick movements and passionate vehemence in delivery. But instead of searching French history for proofs that in every age they have had preachers not unworthy of the Keltic blood, we shall find it more instructive to come at once to the Golden Age of the French Pulpit Eloquence and French Literar ture in general, the seventeenth century, the latter half of which is dear to Frenchmen as the age of Louis XIV. Let us carefully note how thoroughly this period in France fulfilled the conditions of highly eloquent preaching. And perhaps this can be best managed for our purpose by planting ourselves in the year in which Bourdaloue first preached before the king, the year 1670 (a little over two centuries ago), when the glorious age of Louis the Great was just reaching its full splendor. * The king himself, the centre of everything, is now thirty-two years old, his reign having begun when he was a child of five years. While every great nation around has been losing strength, France has rapidly gained. Germany must require many generations to recover from the exhaustion produced by the terrible Thirty year’s War, which ended only twenty-two years ago. Spain, which a century ago was the mistress of the world, has lost Holland and part of Flanders, and quite recently lost Portugal, has made a damaging peace with Louis, and under the rule of weak kings and the infamous Inquisition, has sunk into national weakness and discontent and almost into ruin. England, after the dreadful Civil Wars and the brief rule of Cromwell, has now for ten years been persecuting the Nonconformists and endeavoring to imitate the wretched vices of Charles II, who is but a pitiful vassal of France. Italy, divided into a number of warring states, and busy in the Levant with the Turks, has herself been again and again a battle-ground for the French and the Spaniards. Amid this weakness on every hand, France, long so feeble, has seen her opportunity and improved it. Condé and Turenne have gained many a splendid victory over the Germans and over the once invincible Spanish infantry, covering themselves and their nation with the military glory in which Frenchmen so greatly delight, reviving the memory of that proud time when Charlemagne the Frenchman was Emperor of all Western Europe, and rendering themselves the objects of that enthusiastic popular admiration and love which will some years hence find expression in lofty funeral sermons. At home, the two great Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin for forty years carried out with iron firmness the policy of Henry IV. and the Duke of Sully, steadily weakening the old feudal nobility and the once almost independent clergy, and concentrating all power in the crown, until fifteen years ago the young Louis, wise beyond his seventeen years, and conscious of despotic power, coolly gave his order to the Parliament, and uttered his memorable saying, “The State—I am the State.” Many of the great nobles had in the previous century adopted the then powerful and rapidly growing Reformed religion as a means of making head against the crown, being ready enough, as unscrupulous politicians always are, to patronize any religion that could apparently strengthen their own political power. The Reformed (or as we say, Protestants) unwisely accepted the support and protection of these great nobles, and thus religious interests became subordinate to political interests. The successive religious wars, ending with the bloody wars of the Fronde in the early years of Louis, have gradually weakened the nobles and made them dependent on the Crown, and shortly before the year of which we are speaking, many nominally Reformed nobles went over to the dominant church—as for example Turenne himself, who in 1668 turned Catholic, at the request of the gracious sovereign who had made him a Marshal—and many from among the masses of the Reformed, long used to seeking protection and guidance from the nobility, began rapidly to follow them into the conquering Catholic communion, the church of the splendid court and the all-powerful king. The work of the great Cardinals has been well done, and nine years ago, in 1661, Mazarin was succeeded by Colbert, the gifted minister of Finance, whose financial genius is now rapidly enriching the nation and strengthening the throne. He has introduced from the Low Countries many new forms of manufacture, in which the skilful French fingers and the exquisite French taste are already beginning to surpass their teachers, and fast preparing for the days when Fashion, the mightlest of sovereigns, will sit enthroned in splendid Paris and rule over the civilized world. Along with manufactures Colbert has built up a spreading commerce and a powerful navy. Together with trade in the East and West Indies, he is attempting to rival the Spaniards and English in colonizing America. Some years ago, Canada was organized as a colony, and not many years hence the French will go for the first time down the Mississippi, and up and down its stream will claim a new and grand territory, which after the great king they will name Louisiana. In connection with and by means of all these financial enterprises, which are rapidly increasing the wealth of the country, the acute Minister confirms the triumphs of his predecessors over the feudal system, by building up a wealthy class of burghers, who look to the government for protection of business and property, and help by their financial strength to make the king utterly supreme over the old feudal nobility. Evil enough from this centralization and this wealth may come in the future, but at present, France rejoices in her growing population and riches, is stimulated by the loftiest national pride, and looks with unutterable admiration to him who seems the embodiment of all her power and splendor and glory, the Great Monarch.

Besides this extraordinary national prosperity, and stimulating national spirit, it is an age of prodigious intellectual activity. In our year 1670, it has been forty-four years since the death of Bacon, whose ideas and methods are now widely known, and twenty-eight years since the death of Galileo, shortly after having (as it has been wittily stated) “at the age of seventy years, begged pardon for being right.” Just forty years ago died the great astronomer Kepler, and young Isaac Newton, at the age of twenty-eight, is already working over Kepler’s laws. Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, died thirteen years ago, and ten years earlier died Torricelli, who learned the weight of the atmosphere, and invented the barometer. Just about this time were also invented the air-pump, the electrical machine, the pendulum. These grand discoveries and inventions at once indicate and produce great general activity of mind throughout the cultivated circles of Europe. And this activity is seen not merely in physical science, but also in metaphysics. It is twenty years since the death of Descartes, the greatest of French philosophers, who applied the Baconian method of observation and analysis to metaphysics, and has become for France the father of idealism and of rationalism. Spinoza has already written most of his great essays in Pantheistic philosophy, which a few years hence, at his early death, he will leave behind. Malebranche, the leading disciple of Descartes, has reached the age of thirty-two; and Leibnitz, a brilliant youth of twenty-four, living on the Rhine, has since the of seventeen been issuing a succession of remarkable treatises on philosophy, law and politics—working out, among other things, a curious project for inducing Louis XIV. to leave Germany and the Low Countries alone, and turn his ambitious projects towards an invasion of Egypt. Hobbes in still living, at an advanced age; and John Locke, now thirty-eight years old, dissatisfied with the ethical and political results of Hobbes’ development of sensational philosophy, and stimulated by the writings of Descartes, is profoundly meditating on the faculties of the human mind and the sources of human knowledge, and slowly preparing for his great “Essay on the Human Understanding,” which will not appear till twenty years hence. In this year, 1670, he writes an impracticable constitution for the American colony which in honour of Charles II, is called Carolina. The inquiring and erudite minds of the age are also drawing together and beginning to act in association. The English Royal Society was chartered ten years ago on the accession of Charles II, but had in fact existed in the time of Cromwell; and Colbert, “jealous of this new glory,” has in the last few years encouraged the formation of like societies in France, the Academy of Inscriptions, the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Music, and also the Royal Library.

Besides, there are admirable Schools of the highest order. The University of Paris is perhaps no longer at the head of Europe, as it was in the later Middle Ages, but it has a great reputation, and in Theology there is no school of higher authority than the Sorbonne. Colleges have been established in numerous towns by the Jesuits, who make teaching a specialty and have reduced it to a science, and the volunteer teaching at Port Royal was a few years ago exerting a potent influence. The great preachers of the age are all men of regular and throught education.

Along with all this activity in physical and metaphysical science, and in education, there has rapidly arisen a general literature of singular richness and vigor and consummate elegance—a literature that will be the pride of France for centuries to come. Corneille, who with all his literary faults has more elevation and nobleness than any other French dramatist, is now an old man, and his works are all well known. Molière, probably the foremost writer of Comedy in all the modern world, has issued nearly all the plays that will bne known as his chefs-d’œuvre. Racine is still young, but has published several great tragedies, especially the Andromache and the Britannicus. Numerous satires of Boileau have been published, and every body is reading some Fables of la Fontaine. The Duc de la Rochefoucauld five years ago sent forth into all hands the Collection of shrewd and witty and often mournfully profound Maxims in which he essays to show that the motive of all human action is self-love. Mme. de Sévigné, very highly educated and wonderfully attractive notwithstanding her lack of personal beauty, is admired and influential in court circles, and devoutly fond of pulpit eloquence, and will begin next year the correspondence with her daughter which is to make her the most famous letter writer in the world. Above all, Pascal, the prince of French prose-writers, the marvel of precocity, of mathematical knowledge and physical discovery and philosophical thought, and the deeply humble and devout Christian, who died eight years ago, had five years before his death published his “Provincials,” a work of such literary excellence and charm, such keen and delicious satire, that all France is reading it; and even the Jesuits, though they hate, malign and affect to despise him, yet secretly read his wonderful book. In consequence of Pascal’s unpopularity as a Jansenist, it will be some years before the publication of his “Thoughts,” a collection of papers he has left behind him, consisting of mere fragments, yet rich in the profoundest Christian wisdom, and destined to be lovingly studied for long years to come. By these great writers the French language has been developed and disciplined into the very highest excellence of which it seems capable. In liquid clearness, vivacious movement and delicate grace it is unsurpassed among ancient or modern tongues, while not equal to Greek or to English in flexibility and in energy. Only a few years later than 1670 it will supersede the Latin as the language of European diplomacy. In Art as well as in Literature the age is marked by great activity and decided excellence. It is but forty years since the death of Rubens and Van Dyk, while Rembrandt is still living at the age of sixtyeight, and Murillo, in Spain, at about the same age. The great French painter, Poussin, died seven years ago, and Claude Lorraine, who will long continue to be regarded as the foremost of landscape painters, is seventy years old. The art of painting has just reached its height of power and popularity in France; of all the great French Academies the earliest was the Academy of Painting, established in 1648. In Architecture, Paris already boasts the Louvre, the Palais Royal, and many other noble structures; and there is a youth of twenty-three, named Mansard, who will add greatly to the architectural glories of Paris and of Versailles, and will hand down his name to a curious immortality in connection with a peculiar style of roof which he has invented.

We thus perceive that when Bourdaloue first preached before the king, in 1670, it was an age well suited to the attainment of excellence in anything that belongs to the realm of thought or of art. The nation was powerful, glorious, wealthy and vigorously governed. A strong sentiment of nationality fostered national literature in every department. Startling progress in physical science and novelties in metaphysics were stirring men’s minds. A popular despotism left no room for political activity or aspiration, while a grand outburst of general literature had awakened an excited interest. It was an Augustan age. And certain peculiar circumstances stimulated French Catholics at that time to the pursuit of pulpit eloquence.

One of these was the fact that the Reformed, or Protestants in France had long possessed able and eloquent preachers. The indefatigable Jesuits, organized to contend against Protestantism in every way, perceived, now that the Civil Wars were over, that it was desirable to rival the Protestants in preaching, and began to use all their immense influence in the encouragement of pulpit eloquence.

Another stimulating circumstance was the rise of the Jansenists, proclaiming much the same truths that we call the “doctrines of grace,” distinguished for learning, and educational influence, for deep piety and literary power. In the famous schools at Port Royal were taught such men as Tillemont, the Church Historian, and the poet Racine. Among the teachers was De Saci, who made the French version of the Bible which has taken fast hold on the popular heart, and Arnauld, the fruitful and powerful polemic; and there was not a Jesuit in all France who did not smart and burn under the delicate and stinging sarcasms of the Port Royalist Pascal.

Now the Jansenists did not particularly cultivate eloquence. But the Jansenists of Port Royal had great power at Court. And the shrewd Jesuits, looking around for every means of gaining the superiority over these hated rivals, perceived that much might be done through the penchant of the king for eloquent preaching. This was the most singular of all the circumstances I have referred to as stimulating the French Catholic preaching of that age, the fact that Louis XIV. so greatly delighted in pulpit eloquence. It was a curious idiosyncrasy. He not merely took pleasure in orations marked by imagination, passion and elegance, as a good many monarchs have done, but he wanted earnest and kindling appeals to the conscience, real preaching. In fact, Louis was in his own way a Very religious man. He tried hard to serve God and Mammon, and Ashtoreth to boot. His preachers saw that he listened attentively, that his feelings could be touched, his conscience could sometimes be reached. They were constantly hoping to make him a better man, and through him to exert a powerful influence for good upon the Court and the nation. Thus they had the highest possible stimulus to zealous exertions. And although they never made Louis a good man, yet his love for preaching, and for preaching that powerfully stirred the soul, brought about this remarkable result, that it became the fashion of that brilliant Court to attend church with eager interest, and to admire preachers who were not simply agreeable speakers but passionately in earnest. Not a few in the court circle were striving like the king to be at once worldly and religious, some were truly devout, but everybody recognized that it was “quite the thing” to be an admirer of pulpit eloquence. I know of but one other example in the history of preaching in which this was the height of the fashion in a splendid and wicked court. That other instance is Constantinople, at the time when Gregory Nazianzen and afterwards Chrysostom preached there; and we remember how brief and unsatisfactory was their career in the great capital. Here at Paris the experiment lasted longer. And notice that as most of the hearers really went only because it was fashionable, and must have their taste gratified, and as the French taste for literature and art was now very highly cultivated, so the great court preachers, while intensely earnest, must also be literary artists of the highest order.

Such were the general and special conditions under which the Catholic pulpit attained—under the reign of Louis XIV. and under that reign alone—such extraordinary power and splendor.

Let us now briefly note the principal preachers, both Protestant and Catholic, of that epoch. We may divide into three periods: (1) The period before Bossuet, (2) Bossuet and Bourdaloue and their contemporaries, (3) Massillon and Saurin. In the two generations preceding the career of Bossuet, we find the French Catholic pulpit at a very low stage. Recent writers have shown that the Catholic preachers of that time consisted of two classes. Some, rhetorical and full of ancient learning but destitute of devoutness, mingled paganism and Christianity, even illustrating the Passion of Christ by the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the bravery with which Mucius Scevola plunged his hand into the flames, and the mourning of the Romans over the death of Julius Cæsar. A later French writer said of them, “One needed prodigious knowledge in order to preach so badly.” Others, rude and vulgar, appealed to the tastes and passions of the ignorant, very much after the fashion of what we call hardshell preachers. Thus, as it has been said, “The court preachers ruined religion by adapting it to the taste of the beau monde, while the vulgar haranguers ruined it also by adapting it to the taste of the multitude.” There were of course some exceptions. Voltaire mentions one preacher, Lingendes, about 1630, and mentions him as he does so many things, with a malicious purpose. This Lingendes left among his manuscripts some good funeral sermons, and Voltaire says that Fléchier, in his funeral discourse for Marshal Turenne, borrowed from one of these his tent, the entire exordium, and several considerable passages besides. It has been recently shown that Bourdaloue also borrows from the same preacher some ideas and an occasional short passage, and that some of Bourdaloue’s plans in Panegyrics resemble those of P. Senault, a preacher then much in vogue for ornate erudition and rhetoric. But the Reformed or Protestant pulpit of that period was, as I have already stated, occupied by some really able men, whose sermons had such power and literary merit as to be published and widely reed. These men, long overshadowed by the celebrated Catholic and Protestant preachers of the next generations, have received tardy justice from the noble work of Vinet, “History of Preaching among the Reformed of France in the seventeenth ceutury,” a work containing just such biographical notices, representative extracts and critical estimates as one desires to have, and a model which I trust some of those present may one day follow in depicting important periods in the history of the English and American pulpit. Drawing upon Vinet, let me briefly mention three or four of these men, who show conclusively that the Protestant preachers in this first half of the century were far in advance of the Catholic preachers.

Du Moulin (Miller), 1568–1658, was a famous preacher in Paris and afterwards at Sedan. He had been educated in England, and professor of philosophy in Scotland. While pastor in Paris, an attempt was made by James I. of England to use him in a plan for uniting the French and English Protestants into one church. Banished for these political complications, he took refuge at Sedan (which did not then belong to France), and lived there as professor of theology and pastor. Du Moulin published more than seventy-five works, including ten volumes of sermons. He seems not to have been a man of the highest genius, but full of vigor and good sense, powerful in controversy, practical and pointed. He was regarded by the Catholics as their most formidable antagonist, and his works long continued to be bulwarks of Protestantism. Fenelon undertook to refute one of them, near the close of the century. The style of Du Moulin is marked by the homeliness and brusque freedom be longing to what French critics call the Gallic period of their language, before the men of Louis XIV. had reduced it to an elegant bondage. And he was purposely simple in the arrangement of discourses, and direct and downright in utterance, because he regarded that as the duty of a preacher of the gospel—a view which certainly contains important elements of truth.

Faucheur (1585–1657) was a man of culture and taste, and “essentially a preacher.” He wrote a treatise on Oratorical Delivery, which is said to be elegant in expression and full of wisdom. And yet, while a careful student of the art of preaching, his own preaching was direct and simple. Surely this is as it should be. Faucheur published eight volumes of sermons. His style is remarkable for movement. From beginning to end of the discourses he “ seems never to touch the ground.” There is never a moment of distraction or cessation, but he presses right on. Now this may be an excellence, but may be a fault; and it is a matter in regard to which Americans of today are in some danger of fault, being so restless and excitable. Good preaching must have movement, but not uniform in velocity or on the same level. If a discourse course is to be highly impassioned anywhere, it cannot be equally impassioned everywhere. Study the great musical compositions—what variety as to rapidity of movement, and as to passion. So oratory requires a basis of repose, with alternations of passion and quiet, of more rapid and less rapid movement. Yet some of our preachers and Anniversary speakers seem to think, and some hearers seem to agree with them, that one must go like the fast mail trains. We do not give a man a chance to be really eloquent, if we require him to be always rapid, if we are too restless to tolerate repose.

Faucheur was a master of language. Vinet maintains that he anticipated Pascal in using what was destined to become the modern French; in knowing how, “at that moment of crisis, to choose in the ancient tongue what the future was going to preserve, and amid the numerous new expressions those which the future was going to adopt.” Pascal has the glory of having fixed the language. “He did it, not by introducing new words or constructions, but by giving the seal of his genius to a language which existed already, and which we find in his earlier contemporary, Faucheur.” A professor of philosophy at the age of eighteen, and called when very young to a leading pulpit near Paris, was Mestrezat, 1592–1657, of whom it is said by Bayle, a sufficiently impartial critic: “There are no sermons that contain a sublimer theology than those which he preached on the Epistle to the Hebrews.”

Omitting several others, let us notice Daillé, 1594–1670, whose little work “On the right use of the Fathers” became very popular, and continues to be valued to the present day. He published twenty volumes of sermons, which show that while not a highly eloquent man, he was an able reasoner, full of good sense, and with a familiar, neat and flowing style. He was the first Frenchman whose controversial religious works ever became popular, and the first Protestant whose literary merits are known to have been recognized among the Catholics.

Balzac, a literary man of distinction (1592–1654), one of the original members of the French Academy, and who has left some excellent prose, appears to have greatly admired Daillé. He speaks in a letter of a visit received from him, in which Daullé “said such good things and said them so well that I assure you no conversation ever satisfied me more than that, nor left in my mind more agreeable images.” In another letter he speaks in the strongest terms of Daillé’s sixth sermon on the Resurrection, saying, “What an excellent production! how worthy of the primitive church! How powerful the preacher is in persuasion! and how convincing are his proofs ! …. I have never read anything more rational and more judicious!”

Now it may be observed that these able and popular Protestant preachers all flourished before Bossuet began his career, and that Daillé, the latest of those mentioned, died in the year 1670, in which Bourdaloue first preached before the king. Each of them preached for many years in Paris, and their numerous and spirited controversial writings, together with the number of Protestant nobility who attended their ministrations, must have drawn to them the constant notice of the Catholic teachers and preachers.

I think it follows not only that there were eminent Protestant preachers before the outburst of Catholic eloquence, which is manifest, * but that their ability and popularity must have stimulated the Catholics to rivalry.

We now reach the great Catholic preachers, Boasuet and Bourdaloue. Of these, every one among us has some knowledge, and I shall attempt only to present points of special interest and instruction.

Bossuet (1627–1704) was of good family, and reared in a house full of books, of which he early became passionately fond, delighting in Latin and Greek literature. One day, in the library, the boy came across a copy of the Bible, which he had never read. It was open at Isaiah, and, fascinated with the sublime poetry, he went on eagerly reading, and at length burst forth and read aloud to his father and uncle, who had been talking politics, and who now “listened, half awe-struck, to the boyish reciter.” From this time the book he most loved was the Bible. Through life he always carried a Bible with him on his journeys, and almost every day, his secretary says, made fresh notes on the margin. He knew by heart almost the entire text (for he had a prodigious memory), and yet seemed always to read with as much attention and interest as if he had never read it before. His preaching abounds in felicitous Scripture quotation and remark. And who can tell how much this passion for Scripture, beginning with Isaiah, did to foster his eloquence—to develop that chastened splendor, that sublime but subdued magnificence of imagery and diction, which makes him the very perfection, the beau ideal of French eloquence? This story of his finding the Bible might remind one of Luther; and it is to be noticed that these greatest of Catholic preachers all showed loving familiarity with the Bible. But the difference also is great and characteristic. Luther found Romans, and finally learned from it justification by faith; Bossuet found the book of Isaiah, and was fascinated by its poetry. And through life this difference was maintained. Bossuet drew from the Bible sublime sentiments; Luther drew from it the central truths, the very life-blood, of the gospel of salvation. At fifteen Bossuet was profoundly studying at a college in Paris the philosophy of Descartes, whose writings were just becoming generally known, he being thirty years older than Bossuet. At sixteen he maintained a “thesis of philosophy” with such distinguished success, that he received the foolish invitation to come suddenly, at 11 P. M., to a house in Paris which was a centre of literary fashion, and there before a brilliant audience to preach upon a text assigned. The result made him at once a celebrity. All this was very unhealthy, but it shows the kind of artificial relish for pulpit eloquence which already (1641) pervaded the court circle, and what sort of atmosphere was breathed by these great preachers. Some other young men had become popular preachers in Paris before taking orders, and Bossuet was saved from this by the advice of a bishop, who urged him to turn away from such premature popularity and become mature in culture and character before he preached much in the capital. This was doubtless the turning-point of Bossuet’s career, which decided that he was not to be the meteor of a moment but an abiding luminary. How often are brilliant young men spoiled by the applause bestowed on a few early efforts—silly admirers persuading them that their gifts lift them above all ordinary dependence on training and experience. It is precisely such men who most imperatively need thorough discipline.

Bossuet finally graduated at twenty-one, making remarkable address in the presence of the great Prince of Condé, who from that time was his friend. He spent some years of faithful labor as archdeacon of Metz, (how strangely sound these names, Metz and Sedan, after recent occurrences,) and at the age of thirty-three began to preach before the king. For the next ten years he preached regularly in Paris, and often before the court. Then Bourdaloue came; Bossuet was made bishop of Meaux, and afterwards seldom preached in Paris, except his great Funeral Orations. I cannot speak of his subsequent work as instructor to the Dauphin, for whose use he wrote the Discourse on Universal History, the first attempt at a Philosophy of History. Nor of his great work on the Variations of Protestantism, probably the most effective polemic against Protestantism that has ever been written—acute, adroit, a trifle unscrupulous, and in style most attractive.

Bossuet was capable, as he had shown when a lad, of absolutely improvising with great power; but he was very unwilling to preach without some written preparation. Most of his sermons were preached from a brief sketch, often in pencil—jotting down the “points, and the prominent lessons he wished to teach.” Some of them were written and rewritten, with the greatest care, and then recited. Yet he very earnestly condemned those who in preparing a sermon think more of “its after effects in print” than of its effect in the act of preaching.

He possessed in the highest degree the physical requisites to eloquence—having a fine, in fact a strikingly handsome and majestic person, with a voice powerful and pleasing, and perfect grace of manner. His style is the perfection of French, the glory of French literature—clear, vivid, drawing you on from beginning to end, with skilful variety in topic, imagery, and passion of repose of expression, and throughout a grace, a felicity, a charming elegance, that in all the world has scarcely been rivalled. A gifted pupil of mine once said, “I read Bossuet with admiring despair.” This is not an unhealthy feeling at the first blush of acquaintance, for it may be presently followed by admiring study, not with the hope of rivalling, but with longing to enjoy more fully, and to learn sweet lessons of refined taste, and love of the truly beautiful in literary art.

Yet I cannot concur in the opinion now almost universal among French crities, that Bossuet is the greatest of their preachers. I think that honor belongs to Bourdaloue (1632–1704), whom the French now place even lower than Massillon. Bourdaloue appeals especially to the intellect and the conscience, and while also highly imaginative and impassioned he is not in these respects equal to the others. Bossuet appeals especially to the imagination and the taste, and so the most characteristic and the most popular of his discourses are the Funeral Orations, in which the requisites are graceful narration, high-wrought imagery and delicate sentiment. These, together with his charming style, are what the average French writer of to-day most highly appreciates. It is precisely in these things, as seen in his Funeral Orations and Panegyrics, that Bourdaloue is least successful. Bossuet is also honored by the modern litterateur because of the great and lasting distinction of his other works, while Bourdaloue has left almost nothing but sermons. Massillon, on the other hand, has marvellous power in touching the feelings, in awakening tender emotions, together with great clearness, ease and beauty of style. Secular critics relish that which excites emotion, which is sweetly pathetic or awe-inspiring, much more than that which, through convictions of the intellect, makes its stern demand on the conscience. These considerations may account for the fact that such a change has occurred in the judgment of critics. Their own contemporaries regarded Bourdaloue as decidedly superior to Bossuet.

Bourdaloue’s father was a lawyer, of good family, and a gifted speaker. The son was educated at a Jesuit college, and naturally became a Jesuit not withstanding his father’s opposition. In his studies he showed a special talent for mathematics, which easily connects itself with the prominence of analysis and argument in his preaching. After graduating, he was directed, according to the wise Jesuit usage, to spend some years in teaching, which is often a particularly good preparation for the life-work of preaching. He first taught grammar, classic literature and rhetoric, afterwards philosophy, and finally theology. During this period, he wrote a brief treatise on Rhetoric. For ten years, including the later years of his teaching, he preached as a sort of home missionary. While thus preaching at Rouen, his sermons drew great crowds, and the Jesuit authorities began to understand his power and value. A Jesuit associate says: “All the mechanics left their shops, and the merchants their business, the lawyers left the palace and the doctors their patients.” And he good-humoredly adds: “For my part, when I preached there the next year, I put everything straight again; nobody left his business any more.” So at the age of thirty-seven, after this long course of study, teaching and provincial preaching, Bourdaloue is brought to Paris. In a few months we hear that the church overflows, and a caustic letter-writer adds that “these good Fathers of the Society proclaim him as an angel descended from heaven.” They see that here is a man who will do them honor, and strengthen their position in the rivalry with the Jansenists. The next year, 1670, he preached before the king, and Madame de Sévigné, who was from first to last his ardent admirer, says he acquitted himself “ divinely.” For thirty-four years from that time Bourdaloue was the leading court-preacher, only in the last five years outshone by young Massillon. He preached the Advent and Lent series by turns before the king and in the principal parishes in Paris, in the former case “making the courtiers tremble,” as we are told by Madame de Sévigné, and in the parish churches “attracting such crowds that the carriages were coming for hours in advance, and trade was interrupted in the neighboring streets.” He also frequently preached in the humble village churches, and it is said that the people were astonished at the simplicity of his language, and would say, “Is this the famous Paris preacher? Why, we understood all he said.” A like story is told of Tillotson, of Archibald Alexander, and of various others.

Bourdaloue, as already observed, is remarkable for profound thought and forcible argument. Voltaire says, “He appears to wish rather to convince than to touch the feelings; and he never dreams of pleasing.” And yet he does please, in a high degree, and does sometimes deeply move. Is not this a preacher of the highest order—occupied with noble thoughts, aiming to move through instruction and conviction, and pleasing without an effort, and without diverting attention from truth and duty?

It is especially in treating moral subjects that Bourdaloue is a model. There had been no preaching of great merit in this respect since Basil and Chrysostom, and perhaps no one in later times has treated moral subjects in so instructive and admirable a manner as Bourdaloue. He analyzes the topic with conspicuous ability, and depicts with a master hand the beauty of virtuous living, and the terrible nature and consequences of vice. It is interesting to compare his pictures of life with those of his contemporary Molière, the latter presenting always the ludicrous side, which entertains but seldom greatly profits, while the preacher, with his mind all on sin and eternity and God, will not let you think of vice as amusing, but makes you shudder at its wickedness and its awful results. There is no more remarkable example of Bourdaloue’s excellence in this respect than his sermon on Impurity. At any time it would have been difficult to treat this subject in that licentious capital and court, with that shameful example in the king himself, but there were special difficulties at the moment. There had recently been discovered, in the case of a countess, a series of the most frightful poisonings and other crimes, in connection with the most shameless and incredible debauchery. All Paris shuddered. It was then that Bourdaloue spoke, with a boldness that amazes and almost alarms us, and yet without a touch of real indelicacy, without a word to awaken prurient curiosity. There are many other instructive examples among his numerous discourses on subjects of morality. It has appeared to me that few preachers treat this class of subjects with decided skill, or so frequently as is to be desired; and I think Bourdaloue is in this regard eminently worthy of early and careful study. If I might add a slight suggestion, it would be as follows: To eulogize virtues is often more useful than to assail vices. And in attempting to depict vices, have a care of two things: (1) That you do not seem to know more of these matters than a preacher ought to know; (2) that you do not excite curiosity and amusement rather than abhorrence. The famous story that Bourdaloue one day described in his sermon an adulterer, and then looking at the king, solemnly said, “Tu es ille vir,” is pronounced by the most recent biographer an invention; but he does not present the evidence and we cannot judge. At any rate Bourdaloue was constantly saying very pointed things, which the king could not but feel were meant for him, and yet Louis had so much of good sense and conscience, and saw so clearly the preacher’s sincerity and honesty, that he took no offence. In fact, strict morality is not really an unpopular theme. People feel that the preacher ought to say these things, and that they ought to hear them. So once when some courtiers suggested that Bourdaloue spoke too boldly and pointedly, the king replied: “The preacher has done his duty; it is for us to do ours.”

Bourdaloue was a great student, but was also fond of society, and himself sprightly and even humorous in conversation. It was thus that he came to know so well the character and wants of his time. He often met Racine, Mme. de Sévigné, Boileau. Let a preacher seize every opportunity of free conversation with the most cultivated and the most ignorant, being more solicitous in both cases to hear than to speak, and then he may be able in preaching to bring home his message to the “business and bosoms” of all.

We can say but a word of Fénelon (1651–1715,) who was a younger contemporary of Bossuet and Bourdaloue. Both gifted and good in an extraordinary degree, educated with the greatest care, perhaps the foremost of all French preachers in that unction in which the French so greatly delight, with the highest charm of style, and great actual popularity as a preacher, he has left us to conjecture his pulpit power, with the help of four sermons which are believed to have been written in his early life, and which are not of remarkable excellence. This was certainly carrying to a great extreme the preference for unwritten preaching, which he has so eloquently exhibited in his beautiful Dialogues on Eloquence. Why did he not write at least some discourses after preaching them, like Chrysostom and like Robert Hall? He severely condemns Bourdaloue’s method of strict recitation, and as a matter of general theory the condemnation is undoubtedly just, but why refuse to write at all? In all practical matters he who prefers one plan need not utterly abjure others. And as to methods of preparing and delivering sermons, the highest and noblest standard is that privately stated by a living preacher, “I wish to be master of all methods, and slave of none.”

Two Protestant contemporaries of Bossuet and Bourdaloue were men of distinguished ability.

Du Bosc (1623–1692,) was of good family, and highly educated. You notice that, as already remarked, all the great preachers of this epoch, Protestant and Catholic, were thoroughly educated, and most of them reared in good society. Besides great clearness of thought, fertility of invention and richness of imagination, Du Bosc had singular physical advantages, being extremely well-made, with a voice at once agreeable and powerful, and vigorous health. In 1668 he appeared before the king, to entreat that he would not, as proposed, take away certain rights of the Protestants. After hearing him through, the king went into the queen’s chamber and said, “Madame, I have just listened to the best speaker in my kingdom.” And turning to the courtiers he repeated. “It is certain that I never heard any one speak so well.” He had then often heard Bossuet, though never Bourdaloue. The address of Du Bosc is given in full by Vinet, together with copious extracts from sermons, and is a truly noble specimen of eloquence, worthy to be generally known. Du Bosc early became pastor at Caen, in Normandy, and three several invitations to churches in Paris could never draw him away from the flock he loved. The most famous Protestant preacher of the time was Claude (1619–1687). His father was a minister of great knowledge, who carefully educated him at home, and then sent him to study philosophy and theology at Montauban. For some years he was pastor of a small church, where he could devote a great part of his time to study. A young minister who wishes to make the most of himself must give at least one-third of his time to studies which look not to next Sunday but to coming years; and this can usually be best done in a small charge. Claude became pastor in Paris at the age of forty-seven, and from that time was the soul of the Reformed party, being especially vigorous in oral and written controversy with the Catholics. A book of his in reply to a work by the Jansenists Arnauld and Nicole, was eagerly circulated by the Jesuits, who were ready for anything to damage the Jansenists. Claude’s oral controversy with Bossuet attracted great attention. The high-born Protestant lady who brought it about was already disposed to go over—as so many of the Reformed nobility were then doing—and she soon after became a Catholic. But Claude sustained himself with great ability against the most splendid polemic in France. Even Bossuet’s report shows that his arguments were acute and powerful, and the great bishop says, “I feared for those who heard him.” When the edict of Nantes was revoked, in 1685, Claude was especially named, and required to quit the kingdom in twenty-four hours. He knew it some days in advance, and his farewell to his flock is a noble and affecting monument of that time of trial. His ordinary discourses, of which but one volume was left, seldom show intense passion, and were very carefully wrought out and revised; yet with all their careful composition and purity of style, there is rapid movement—that spirited dash which belongs alike to French soldiers and to French orators, and which is so admirable in both.

Claude’s Essay on the Composition of a Sermon was for a century and a half the favorite Protestant text-book. The editions of Robert Robinson and Charles Simeon are well known. Its great fault is that it teaches the construction of sermons on too stiff and uniform a plan. Both by example and in precept Claude protests against the extreme rhetorical brilliancy in which the national taste of the time delighted, which his great Catholic contemporaries cultivated as necessary in court-preachers, and to which some of the Protestant preachers had become a little inclined. The general feeling among the Reformed was that a preacher should eschew oratory. When this fact is taken into the account, I think it becomes clear that Claude and Du Bose, though inferior in splendid eloquence and in real power, are yet worthy to be named even with Bossuet and Bourdaloue. As to the remaining period of that great age, a briefer account must suffice. There are two conspicuous names, Massillon and Saurin.

Massillon (1663–1742) had an early history quite similar to that of his great predecessors. Obscure origin, but college education, monastic retirement, then professor of Belles-lettres and of Theology, and at the age of thirty-six named court-preacher, in 1699, five years before the death of Bossuet and Bourdaloue. He greatly admired Bourdaloue, but avowedly determined to pursue a very different course. His theory, as given by the nephew who edited his works, was as follows: The preacher must not go into much detail upon points of character and life which concern only a part of his hearers, as particular callings, ages, etc., but must aim at universal interest, and this is found chiefly in the passions. Accordingly Massillon habitually assumes principles as granted, or establishes them very briefly, and then proceeds to analyze and depict the reasons why men do not conform to these principles, as found in their passions (in the broad sense), including appetites, sloth, ambition, avarice, etc., and to expose the numerous self-deceptions by which men quiet conscience. Now this certainly represents one very important department of preaching. But observe two things as to what he condemns. (1) What is addressed to one class of persons may be made very interesting and profitable to others, as for example, sermons to the young may interest the old, sermons to Christians may impress the irreligious, and vice versa. (2) It would not be well if all preachers took principles for granted. It is necessary for some minds, and interesting to many, to have principles established and confirmed by the preacher. In fact, Massillon seems to have been too much influenced by the desire to take a different tack from Bourdaloue, and thus to have made his own methods one-sided. But all the world knows what wonderful power he had in exciting emotion. Appealing to the passions is an important part of the preacher’s work, though not the highest part; and no finer example of it can be found than in Massillon, together with a style of singular ease and sweetness. But when he is lauded as one of the very greatest of preachers, then I say, compare his most famous sermon, “On the small number of the Elect,” with the somewhat similar sermon of Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God,” and you will feel that the one is super-ficial and artificial, compared with the tremendous power of the other.

Massillon’s nephew says his sermons were not composed, as one might suppose, with slow toil, but “with a facility akin to the miraculous; not one of them cost more than ten or twelve days.” His delivery was not declamatory, like that of Bourdaloue and most Frenchmen, but comparatively quiet; yet he seemed to be completely possessed and penetrated by his subject—which is often far more impressive than “tearing passion to tatters,” while in the French Court it had the charm of novelty. In 1718 he preached before Louis XV., then nine years old, ten sermons in Lent, which are commonly known as his Petit Carême, “Little Lent.” They are probably the earliest examples of sermons addressed to a child, and are admirable for their simplicity and sweetness. The great Protestant preacher Saurin (1677–1730) was a contemporary of Massillon, but connection between them was impossible, for Saurin was a child of but eight years when the revocation of the Edict drove him and his father to Geneva. His father was a lawyer, famous for his elegant style. At Geneva, then “the capital of the Protestant world,” the youth had great advantages for education. At seventeen he enlisted in a volunteer corps of refugees to help William of England against Louis XVI., and proved a gallant young soldier, at the same time often conducting religious worship and even preaching to his comrades. After three years, when peace was made, he returned and studied three years longer at Geneva, gaining great distinction as a student. His exercises in oratory “drew a crowd, for which on one occasion it was necessary to open the doors of the cathedral.” His five years as a pastor were spent in London, with a small church of French refugees. Here, like a true Protestant, he married a wife. Yet, though a real love affair, this union did not turn out very well. Unexampled as the case may be, the minister’s wife was of an unlucky disposition; and being blessed with the company of a mother-in-law,. sister-in-law, and two brothers-in-law, she made the house too hot to hold them. A bad manager she was, too, while he, for his part, was negligent and wastefully generous.

Well, well, but he was a great preacher, and when London fogs proved unhealthy, they created him a new position at the Hague, where he spent his remaining twenty-five years in extraordinary popularity and usefulness. Places in his church were engaged a fortnight in advance by the most distinguished persons, and people climbed up on ladders to look in at the windows. The famous scholar Le Clerc (Clericus) long refused to hear him, on the ground that a Christian preacher should have nothing oratorical, and he “distrusted effects produced rather by a vain eloquence than by force of argument.” One day he consented to go, on condition that he should sit behind the pulpit, so as not to see the oratorical action. At the end of the sermon he found himself in front of the pulpit, with tears in his eyes. For Saurin was a true orator. While not devoting himself, like the great Catholic preachers, to the art of eloquence, he possessed an energetic nature, a powerful imagination, a good person and voice, and his delivery, though commonly quiet, often swelled into passionate earnestness. And he was also a great thinker, beyond even Bourdaloue, probably beyond any other French preacher except Calvin. The doctrinal views we call Calvinism compel men to think deeply, if they are capable of thinking at all. It is then not strange that the published sermons of Saurin at once gained a great reputation throughout the Protestant world, and exerted a most wholesome influence. In Germany, where preaching was then at a low ebb, it is believed that Mosheim and his school derived much inspiration from Saurin, and at a later period Reinhard frankly acknowledged great indebtedness to this noble French model. There were numerous English translations, but that of Robert Robinson has, I believe, superseded all the others. Among all these great French preachers, I should say, read mainly in Bourdaloue and Saurin. His last years were saddened by the harsh assaults of some ministers who were envious and jealous. Alas ! that old and bitter, that too often repeated story of ministerial jealousy. But why did French pulpit eloquence so suddenly fail, after rising so high? Why is it that after Massillon and Saurin you do not know the name of any French preacher for almost a century? * We can easily see, as we saw before in the time of Chrysostom and Augustine, the cause of this decline. Protestantism was crushed in France, its best elements banished, and the few who remained and continued faithful, were destitute of the means of culture, for ministers and for people, while the refugees in foreign countries would generally continue to worship in French for only one or two generations. The Catholics, for their part, not only lost the stimulating rivalry of Protestant preaching, but also the artificial stimulus of Louis XVI.’s love for pulpit eloquence. Massillon, after preaching the aged king’s funeral, and trying to make some impression on the child that succeeded him, retired to his diocese, and for many years preached faithfully there, out never revisited the court. And now that Jansenism and Protestantism were gone, infidelity and corruption struck deep and spread widely and rapidly through the nation. There can be no true eloquence where there is not hope of carrying your point, and preachers could have little hope of doing good in the days when Voltaire and his associates led the national thought, and when the king could say, “After me, the deluge.” About 1775 a Jesuit preacher at Notre-Dame did give several sermons that manifestly had something in them. A biographical sketch at a later period mentioned that this preacher’s discourses had a rather peculiar character, and that “people thought they saw errors in them.” It has since come to light that the worthy Jesuit preached a whole volume of extracts from Saurin, word for word.

These things being considered, we have little occasion to concur in Voltaire’s explanation of the decay of pulpit eloquence, viz., that the subject had been exhausted, and nothing was now possible but commonplace. And how is it that of late we have eloquent French preaching again? Napoleon gave the Protestants toleration and support, which the subsequent governments have not disturbed. About the same time there was in Switzerland a reaction to evangelical sentiments, producing Vinet, D’Aubigné, and Cæsar Malan. As soon as there was time for educational opportunities to show their effect among the French Protestants, we hear of Adolphe Monod, a man of rare eloquence. James W. Alexander, hearing him on two different European journeys, each time declared him the most eloquent preacher living; and it seems to me doubtful whether, with the exception of Robert Hall, the century has produced his equal. About the same time came the elder Coquerel, a man of great power in the pulpit. It is difficult to gain information upon the question, but my impression is that in this century as in the seventeenth, effective preaching in France began with the Protestants. I know not whether this Protestant movement had produced any conscious effect on the erratic Lacordaire, who thirty years ago began to revive at Notre-Dame the traditions of the old Dominicans as a preaching order; or on the Jesuit Father Félix, who followed him in that celebrated pulpit, to be succeeded himself a few years ago by the well known Father Hyacinthe. Of Protestants the most famous at the present time are the younger Coquerel, and Bersier, whom I heard repeatedly in Paris some years ago, who has published severa1 volumes of sermons, and whom not many living preachers equal in true eloquence. In conclusion, let us briefly notice certain faults in the French preachers, especially in the greet Catholic preachers of the seventeeritli centnry.

They never suggest much beyond what they say. This is a general defect of French style, arising from the passion for clearness. “Whatever is not clear is not French,” they repeat with a just pride. But by consequence, they avoid saying anything that cannot be said with entire clearness. And so we find little of that rich suggestiveness, which is common in the best English speaking and writing, and even more in the German.

There is a monotonous uniformity of elegance. They are never familiar, never for a moment homely. There is nothing of anecdote, scarcely anything of narrative illustration. Like the court of Louis XIV., they never appear save in full dress. And so many elegant discourses finally weary us with their glitter, like the pictures in the galleries of the Louvre. In fine, these sermons, with all their merit, are too plainly a work of art. The art is very perfect, such as in a drama or a romance we might regard with unalloyed satisfaction. But for preaching it is too prominent. We sigh for something unmistakably natural, real, genuine. As artists, then, the great French preachers may be to us most instructive and inspiring masters. But when it comes to actual preaching, then the highest art—nay, the old maxim is itself superficial and misleading, for our aim should be not simply to have art and conceal it, but to rise above art—or, if we must state it in Latin, summa are artem superare.

Note. Since the lecture was delivered, a letter has been received from M. Bersier (see above, page 183), in reply to some inquiries, and I take the liberty of extracting as follows:

“The Catholic pulpit is singularly sterile at our epoch in France. We may say that since Lacordaire, Ravignan, and Father Hyacinthe no orator has appeared of real excellence. Father Félix, of the order of the Jesuits, has preached with a certain success for several Lent seasons at Notre Dame, and just now they are trying to bring into vogue the name of Father Monsabré. But neither of them rises to the height of his task. Their fundamental characteristic is the ultramontane logic, developing inflexibly the principles of the Syllabus, hurling them as a defiance against contemporary society, and saying to it: Submit to Rome, or thou art lost. No profound study of the Scriptures, no psychology, nothing truly interior, or persuasive. It is the method of outward authority brought into the pulpit, with the arid procedures of the scholastic demonstration—a thing at once empty and pretentious.

“In the Protestant Church of France, one may name M. Coulin, of Geneva, who has made at Paris remarkable sermons on the Son of Man; M. Dhombres of Paris, a highly practical orator and full of unction; and in the Liberal party Messrs. Fontanès and Viguier, who, since the death of Athanase Coquerel the younger, are its most distinguished preachers.”

M. Bersier has abstained from mentioning his own associate among the Independent Reformed Churches, M. de Pressensé.

End Notes

^* I follow usually the dates of the Oxford Tables, from which some of the facts are derived, and some also from Voltaire.

^* Compare the dates:

^* Except Bridaine, who flourished 1750, and is eulogized by Maury (Principles of Eloq.)