Part 29

(9.) An orator paints some sins in such alluring colours, and describes with such delicacy when they were committed, represents the sinner as having so much wit, elegance, and refinement that, for my part, if I feel no inclination to resemble his pictures, I have at least occasion to betake myself to some teacher who, in a more Christian style, may make me dislike those vices of which the other has given such a seductive description.

(10.) A fine sermon is an oratorical speech, which, in all its rules and freed from all its faults, is exactly governed by the same principles as any other piece of human eloquence, and decked out with all sorts of rhetorical ornaments. Not a passage nor a thought are lost to connoisseurs; they easily follow the orator in all the digressions in which he chooses to wander, as well as in his towering flights; he is a riddle to none but to the common people.

(11.) What a judicious and admirable sermon I have just heard! How beautifully brought forward were the most essential points of religion as well as the strongest motives for conversion! What a grand impression it must have produced on the minds and souls of the audience! They are convinced; they are moved and so deeply touched that they confess from their very souls the sermon they have just heard Theodorus preach excels even the one they heard before.[843]

(11.) An indulgent and relax morality produces no more effect than the clergyman who preaches it;[844] for a man of the world is neither excited nor roused by it, and is not so averse to a rigid doctrine as some people think, but, on the contrary, likes to hear it from the person whose duty it is to preach it. There seems to be, therefore, in the church two classes of men wholly distinct from one another; the one declaring the truth in all its amplitude, without respect of persons, without disguise; the other listening to this truth with pleasure, satisfaction, admiration, and applause, but acting neither the better nor the worse for it.

(13.) It may be said, and justly so, that the heroic virtues of some great men have been the cause of the corruption of eloquence, or have, at least, enervated the style of most preachers. Instead of joining with the people in rendering thanks to Heaven for the extraordinary gifts it has bestowed on those great men, these very preachers have enrolled themselves among authors and poets, and become panegyrists; they have even uttered more extravagant praises than are found in dedications, verses, or prologues; they have turned the Word of God into a whole warp of praises, which, though well deserved, are out of place, bestowed from selfish motives, not required, and ill-suited to their calling. It is fortunate indeed, if, while they are celebrating their heroes in the sanctuary, they even mention the name of that God or of that religion they ought to preach. Some have wished to preach the Gospel, which is for all men, only to one person, and have been so disconcerted when by accident that person was kept away, that they were unable to pronounce a Christian discourse before an assembly of Christian men, because it was not prepared for them, so that other orators have been obliged to take their places, who had only sufficient leisure to praise God in an extemporary exhortation.[845]

(14.) Theodulus has been less successful than some of his hearers thought he would be; his discourse has gratified them, and so has he; but he would have pleased them much more, if instead of delighting their ears and their minds, he had flattered their feelings of jealousy.

(15.) Preachers and soldiers are alike in this; their vocation presents more risk than any other, but preferment is also more rapid.

(16.) If you are of a certain rank, and have no other talent but preaching dull sermons, preach away, however dull you may be, for you will obtain no preferment if you are utterly unknown. Theodotus has been well paid for his wretched phraseology and his tiresome monotony.

(17.) Some men have been preferred to bishopricks for their preaching, whose talents now would not have procured them a mere prebend.

(18.) There is a certain panegyrist whose name seems always weighed down by a heap of titles and qualities, of which a large number is always mentioned on the ample bills distributed from house to house, or printed in letters of enormous size on the bills stuck up in the streets, no more to be ignored than the open market-place is. After such a fine display if you hear that man preach, and listen for a while to what he says, you will find that in enumerating all his qualities, only one has been omitted, namely, that of being a wretched preacher.

(19.) The idleness of women, and the habit men have of frequenting the places they resort to, give a certain reputation to some dull orators, and for a while support the sinking credit of others.

(20.) Are greatness and power the only qualities which entitle a man to be praised at his funeral before the holy altar and from the pulpit, the seat of truth? Is there no other greatness but that derived from an official position or from birth? Why should it not be the custom publicly to bestow praise on a man who during his lifetime was pre-eminent for his kindness of heart, his love of justice, his gentleness, his fidelity, and his piety? What is called “a funeral sermon” is now-a-days but coldly received by the greater part of the audience, unless very different from a Christian discourse, or rather, unless very nearly resembling a secular panegyric.

(21.) An orator preaches to get a bishopric, an apostle to save souls; the latter deserves what the other aims at.

(22.) We see some of our clergymen[846] return from the country where they did not stay long, as proud of having made converts, who had already been made for them, as of those persons whom they could not convert, compare themselves to Saint Vincent de Paul and Saint Francis Xavier,[847] and fancy themselves apostles. For such onerous labours and such a fortunate result of their mission they would think themselves scarcely repaid by having an abbey given to them.

(23.) A man starts up on a sudden, and without any previous thoughts, takes pen, ink, and paper, and resolves within himself to write a book, but without any other talent for writing but the need he has of fifty _pistoles_.[848] In vain I say to him: “Dioscorus, take a saw, or else go to the lathe, make a spoke of a wheel, and you will be sure to earn your living.”[849] “But I never served an apprenticeship to these trades.” “Why then, copy, transcribe, become a reader for the press, but do not write.” Yet Dioscorus will write and get it printed too. And because he must not send paper to the press with nothing written on it, he sets himself to scribble whatever he pleases, and likes to write such stuff as this: “That the Seine runs through the city of Paris; that a week has seven days; or that it threatens to rain,”[850] and as there is nothing in such phrases against religion or the government, and as they will only harm the public by vitiating their taste, and accustoming them to dull and insipid things, he obtains permission to get his book printed;[851] and to the shame of the age, and as a mortification to good authors, a second edition of it appears. Just so, another wiseacre resolves within himself that he will preach, and he preaches; he is without any talent, or has not the least vocation for it, but he wants a good living.

(24.) A worldly and profane clergyman does but declaim when he preaches.

On the contrary, there are some holy men whose character carries persuasion with it; they make their appearance in the pulpit, and every one who comes to listen to them is already moved, and, as it were, carried away by their mere presence; the sermon afterwards completes their conversion.

(25.) The bishop of Meaux (Bossuet) and Father Bourdaloue recall to my mind Demosthenes and Cicero. As both of them are absolute masters of pulpit eloquence, they have had the fate of other great models; one of them has made many wretched cavillers, and the other many wretched imitators.

(26.) The eloquence of the pulpit, with respect to what is merely human and depending on the genius of the orator, is not easily perceptible, is known but to few, and attained with difficulty. It must be very difficult to please and to persuade at the same time; for a man is obliged to keep to beaten paths, to say what has been said, and what is foreseen he would say. The subjects he has to treat of are grand, but worn and trite; the principles are invariable, but every one of his audience perceives the inferences at the first glance. Some of the subjects are sublime; but who can treat of the sublime? There are mysteries to be explained, but they are better explained in a lecture at college than in a harangue. The morals, too, of the pulpit, though they comprehend matter as vast and diversified as the manners and morals of men, turn all upon the same pivot, exhibit the same imagery, and are restrained to much narrower limits than satire is; after the usual invective against honour, riches, and pleasures, there remains nothing more for the orator to do but to finish his discourse and dismiss his audience. There may sometimes be tears, and people may be moved; but let the calling and talent of the preacher be considered, and perhaps it will be found that the subject lends itself to a sermon, or that it is chiefly a feeling of self-interest which produces this agitation; and that it is not so much true eloquence as the strong lungs of the missionary which shake us and produce within us these emotions. In short, the preacher is not provided, as the lawyer is, with always fresh matters of fact, with various transactions and unheard-of adventures; his business is not to start doubtful questions, and improve probable conjectures—all subjects which elevate talent, give it force and breadth, and instead of putting a restraint on eloquence, only fix and direct it. The preacher, on the contrary, has to draw his discourse from a source known to all and used by everybody; if he deviates from these commonplaces, he ceases to be popular, becomes abstruse and a declaimer, and no longer preaches the Gospel. All he needs is a noble simplicity, which is difficult to attain, rarely found, and above the reach of ordinary men; their talent, imagination, learning, and memory, so far from assisting them, often prevent their acquiring it.

A barristerʼs profession is laborious, toilsome, and requires a vast amount of knowledge as well as great readiness of invention. A barrister is not, like a preacher, provided with a certain number of speeches, composed at leisure, learned by heart, uttered with authority, without any fear of contradiction, and which, with a few alterations, may serve more than once; his pleadings are grave, and delivered before judges who may silence him, and against adversaries who interrupt him; his replies have to be sharp and to the point; and in one and the same day he has to plead in several courts causes quite dissimilar. His house neither affords him shelter nor rest, nor protects him against his clients; it is open to all comers, who crowd upon him with their difficult or doubtful cases; he is not put to bed, nor is the perspiration wiped from his face, nor are refreshments offered to him; people of all qualities and sexes do not crowd his rooms to congratulate him upon the beauty and elegance of his style, or to remind him of a certain passage where he ran the risk of stopping short, or of some scruples he felt for having spoken with less warmth than usual; all the repose a barrister has after a long speech is immediately to set to work upon writings still longer; he only varies his labours and fatigues; I may venture to say he is in his profession what the first apostles were in theirs.

Having thus distinguished the eloquence of the bar from the profession of a barrister, and the eloquence of the pulpit from the calling of a preacher, it will appear, I believe, that it is easier to preach than to plead, but more difficult to preach well than to plead well.

(27.) What a vast advantage has a speech over a written composition. Men are imposed upon by voice and gesture, and by all that is conducive to enhance the performance. Any little prepossession in favour of the speaker raises their admiration, and then they do their best to comprehend him; they commend his performance before he has begun, but they soon fall off asleep, doze all the time he is preaching, and only wake to applaud him. An author has no such passionate admirers; his works are read at leisure in the country or in the solitude of the study; no public meetings are held to applaud him, nor do people intrigue to sacrifice all his rivals to him and to have him raised to the prelacy. However excellent his book may be, it is read with the intention of finding it but middling; it is perused, discussed, and compared to other works; a book is not composed of transient sounds lost in the air and forgotten; what is printed remains; sometimes it is expected a month or two before it is published, and people are impatient to damn it, whilst the greatest pleasure many will find in it will be their own criticisms; it vexes them to meet on each page passages which ought to please; often they are even afraid of being amused by it, and they throw the book away merely because it is good. Everybody does not pretend to be a preacher; the elocution, the figures of speech, the gift of memory, the gown or the calling of a preacher, are things people do not always venture on, or like to take on themselves, whilst every one imagines he thinks well and writes still better than he thinks, which renders him less indulgent to the person who thinks and writes as well as himself; in a word, the preacher of sermons will sooner obtain a bishopric than the most judicious writer a small living, and whilst new favours are still heaped on the first, the more deserving author may consider himself very fortunate if he gets some of the leavings of the preacher.

(28.) If it happens that the wicked hate and persecute you, good men advise you to humble yourself before God, and to beware of the pride you may feel in having displeased people of a similar character; so when certain men who admire everything middling, blame a work you have written, or a speech you have made in public, whether at the bar, in the pulpit, or elsewhere, humble yourself, for of all the temptations of pride there cannot be a greater and more enticing one.

(29.) A preacher, methinks, should select for every one of his sermons some capital truth, whether to terrify or to instruct, handle it thoroughly and analyse it, whilst omitting all fine-spun decisions so worn, trite, and different from one another; I would not have him suppose a thing which is notoriously false, namely, that great or fashionable people understand the religion they profess as well as its duties; so that he will be afraid of remonstrating with persons of their culture and subtle understandings. Let him employ the time others waste in composing a set, formal discourse, in making himself so completely master of his subject that his style and expressions may be original and natural; let him, after some necessary preparations, abandon himself to his own genius and to the emotions with which a great subject will inspire him; and then, he may be able to do without those excessive efforts of memory, which destroy all graceful gestures, and look more as if he had learned something by heart for a wager, than as if he were treating a matter of great importance; let him, on the contrary, kindled by a noble enthusiasm, persuade all minds, alarm all souls, and fill the heart of his hearers with another fear than that of seeing him stop short in the middle of his sermon.

(30.) A man who has not yet arrived to such perfection as to forget himself in the dispensation of Holy Writ, should not be discouraged by the austere rules which are prescribed, which may deprive him of the means of showing his intelligence and of attaining the honours to which he aspires. What more useful, more exalted talent can there be than preaching like an apostle; and who would better deserve a bishopric? Was Fénelon unworthy of that dignity, and could he have escaped his princeʼs choice but for another choice?[852]

XVI.

OF FREETHINKERS.[853]

(1.) Do freethinkers know that it is only ironically they are called strong-minded?[854] What greater proof of their weakness of mind can they give than their uncertainty about the very principles of their existence, life, senses, knowledge, and what will be their end? What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the vilest creatures? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made; of a Being absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is spiritual and immortal?

(2.) The docile and the weak are susceptible of receiving impressions; the first receive good ones, for they are convinced and faithful, whilst the second receive bad ones, as they are stubborn and corrupted. A docile mind admits thus true religion, and a feeble mind either admits none or a false one. Now a freethinker either has no religion at all, or creates one for himself; therefore a strong-minded freethinker is in reality feeble-minded.[855]

(3.) I call those men worldly, earthly, or coarse, whose hearts and minds are wholly fixed on this earth, that small part of the universe they are placed in; who value and love nothing beyond it; whose minds are as cramped as that narrow spot of ground they call their estate, of which the extent is measured, the acres are numbered, and the limits well known. I am not astonished that men who lean, as it were, on an atom, should stumble at the smallest efforts they make for discovering the truth; that, being so short-sighted, they do not reach beyond the heavens and the stars, to contemplate God Himself; that, not being able to perceive the excellency of what is spiritual, or the dignity of the soul, they should be still less sensible of the difficulty of satisfying it; how very inferior the entire world is in comparison to it; how necessary is to it an all-perfect Being, which is God; and how absolutely it needs a religion to find out that God, and to be assured of His reality. I can easily understand that incredulity or indifference are but natural to such men, that they make use of God and religion only as a piece of policy, as far as they may be conducive to the order and decorum of this world, the only thing in their opinion worth thinking of.

(4.) Some men give the finishing-stroke to the spoiling of their judgment by their long travels, and thus lose the little religion which remained to them.[856] They meet daily new forms of worship, different manners and morals, and various ceremonies; they are not unlike those people who wander from shop to shop, and have not quite made up their mind what they are going to buy; the variety puzzles them, and as each thing pleases their fancy more or less, they are unable to come to a decision, and leave without buying anything.

(5.) There are some men who delay becoming religious and pious till the time everybody openly avows himself irreligious and a freethinker,[857] for, as this has then become vulgar, they will be distinguished from the crowd. In so serious and important a matter singularity pleases them; only in trifling things, of no consequence, they follow the fashion and do what others do; for all I know, they may consider it somewhat courageous and daring to run the risk of what may happen to them in the next world. Moreover, when men are of a certain rank, possess a certain freedom of thought, and have certain views, they should not dream of believing what learned men and the common people believe.

(6.) A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse;[858] but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.

(7.) People should examine themselves thoroughly before openly declaring themselves freethinkers, so that, according to their own principles, they at least may die as they have lived; or if they find they are not strong-minded enough to proceed so far, to resolve to live as they would wish to die.

(8.) Jesting in a dying man is out of place; and if it is on certain subjects, it is dreadful. To please our survivors with a jest at the expense of our own eternal happiness, is a very miserable business.

Whatever a man may think about a future state, dying is a very serious affair, and firmness is then more becoming than jesting.

(9.) In all ages there have been people with a certain amount of cleverness, and well read, who, servilely following men of high rank, embraced their loose principles, and all their lifetime groaned under their yoke, against their own knowledge and conscience. Some men only live for other men, and seem to consider themselves created for this purpose; they are ashamed to be seen bestowing a thought on their own salvation, and to appear outwardly such as they are perhaps in their hearts, and thus they ruin themselves out of deference or complacency. Are there then on this earth men of such high rank and so very powerful as to deserve that we should shape our beliefs and our lives according to their taste and fancy; nay, that we should carry our submission so far as at our death to leave this world not in the safest way for ourselves, but in the way most pleasing to them?

(10.) Men who run counter to all the world, and act against principles universally received, should know more than other men, be clear in their reasons and convincing in their arguments.

(11.) A sober-minded, cool-headed, chaste, and honourable man, who affirms there is no God, at least is dispassionate, but such a man is not to be found.

(12.) I admit I should very much like to see a man really persuaded there was no God; for then I should at least hear on what unanswerable arguments his unbelief is founded.

(13.) The impossibility I find myself under of proving there is no God, is to me a convincing argument for His existence.

(14.) God condemns and punishes those who offend Him, and He is the only judge in His own cause, which would shock all our ideas if He Himself were not Justice and Truth—that is, if He were not God.

(15.) I feel there is a God, and I do not feel there is none; this is sufficient for me, and all other arguments seem to me superfluous; I therefore conclude that He exists, and this conclusion is inherent to my nature. I acquired these principles readily in my childhood, and have kept them since too naturally in my riper years ever to suspect them of falsehood.—But there are some men who get rid of these principles.—I question whether there are any, but if there be, it only proves that monsters exist in this world.

(16.) There is no such thing as an atheist; the great men who are more or less suspected of being inclined that way, are too lazy to fatigue their minds with discussions whether there is a God or no; their indolence renders them careless and indifferent about such an important matter as well as about the nature of their own souls and the consequences of true religion; they neither deny nor grant any of these things; they never think of them.