: The Clergy and the Pulpit in Their Relations to the People. by Mullois Isidore Badger George Percy Translator - Preaching

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"'Ireland! oh, how that name alone sticks in the Saxon throat. My friends, my heart and my mind are known to you, and I wish you to understand this, that I have power enough to prevent either Peel or Wellington from treading on the liberties of Ireland. I have only to say this to them: We will entrench ourselves behind the law and the constitution; but do not attempt to put our patience to the test beyond bounds, for if there is danger in exasperating cowards, there is a thousand times more danger in exasperating those who are not.' 'I told you at the outset that I did not feel disposed to speak: this is not a speech, it is history which I am making at this moment. The people have placed unlimited confidence in me. I might, perhaps, say with affected modesty that I do not deserve it. I will be more frank. I believe that I do deserve it.' 'Mine is a strange fortune. I believe I am the only man, living or dead, who has enjoyed uninterrupted confidence and popularity for forty years.

"'Were they to put a gag in my mouth or handcuffs on my wrists, I would still point out the safest and wisest course for you to follow. I trust there will be no conflict: let us close our ranks, shoulder to shoulder, let us rally round the constitution, that Ireland may not be delivered over to her enemies by the folly, the passions, or the treachery of her children.' "

He knows how to excite the laughter of his audience, and to enliven them with racy comparisons, which are sometimes, however, of a kind unsuited to Christian discourses.

"There was formerly a fool in Kerry--a rare thing there. This fool having discovered a hen's nest, waited till the hen had quitted it, and then took the eggs and sucked them. After sucking the first, the chicken which had been in the shell began to cry out while descending the fool's throat. 'Ah, my boy, said he, 'you speak too late.' My friends, I am not a fool; I know how to suck eggs. Should England now be disposed to tell me that she is ready to do us justice, I would say to England as the Kerry fool said to the chicken: My darling, you speak too late. "

He then continued, in the most sublime and rapturous accents:--

"In the presence of my God, and with the most profound feeling of the responsibility attached to the solemn and arduous duties which you Irishmen have twice imposed on me, I accept them, relying not on my own strength, but on yours. The people of Clare know that the only basis of liberty is religion. They have triumphed because the voice raised in behalf of the country was first uttered in prayer to God. Songs of liberty are now heard throughout our green isle, their notes traverse the hills, they fill the valleys, they murmur with the waves of our rivers and streams, and respond in tones of thunder to the echoes of the mountains. Ireland is free!"

One may readily conceive the magic of this speech. I borrow once more from the pen of M. de Cormenin.

"Eloquence does not exercise all its power, its strong, sympathetic, moving power, except upon the people. Look at O'Connell, the grandest, perhaps the only orator of modern times. How his thundering voice towers over and rules the waves of the multitude! I am not an Irishman, I have never seen O'Connell; I believe I should not understand him. Why, then, am I moved by his discourses even when translated into a strange tongue, discolored, stunted, and deprived of the charm of voice and action more than with all I have ever heard in my own country? It is because they are utterly unlike our jumbled, wordy rhetoric; because it is true passion that inspires him: passion which can and does say all that it has to say. It is, that he draws me from the shore, that he whirls with me, and drags me with him into his current. It is that he shudders, and I shudder; that he utters cries from the depths of his soul which ravish my soul; that he raises me on his wings and sustains me in the sacred transports of liberty. Under the influence of his sublime eloquence, I abhor, I detest with furious hatred, the tyrants of that unfortunate country, just as if I were O'Connell's fellow-citizen; and I seem to love green Ireland as much as my own native land."

Here we have an orator who should be constantly studied by all those who wish to benefit the people.

There is a wide difference between such powerful speeches and those dreary metaphysical sermons, those finely-spun phrases, that quintessence of reasoning, so common amongst us. For, what do we often take for an orator or preacher? ... One who wraps himself in his own conceptions, and soars into sublime regions, while the poor audience is left on the plain below to gaze at him or not, to grow weary, to sleep or to chat, when they cannot decently go away. And yet it is so easy to be popular in France. The native mind is prompt and readily roused to the noblest sentiments. Moreover, we are bound to do the higher classes this justice, that they always tolerate and even admire the preacher who addresses the people. They mingle with the crowd to join in their applause, and, what is better, to profit by what they hear. Yes, strange to say, under the influence of such eloquence, scholars and wits throw aside their arguments and their prejudices, and become one with the people--think, feel, and commend as they do. ... There are two powerful ways of leading men: to take up with the higher classes or to go to the masses. The latter appears the more powerful nowadays, for opinion and strength always prevail with those whose wills are feeble.

We must retrace our steps, then, and resume a popular style of address, which, to use a homely comparison, consists simply in entering in by the door of the people, and making them go out by ours; for to be truly popular is: to love the people ardently, to throw our souls into theirs, to identify ourselves with them; to think, feel, will, love, as they do; to rouse their instincts of justice, generosity, and pity; to fill their souls with the noblest thoughts; to exalt with the breath of the Gospel their holiest aspirations, and to send these back to them in burning words, in outbursts and sallies of the heart; and then, as with a back-stroke of the hand, to crush their errors and destroy their vices, and to lead them onward after you, while they shall believe that they are still leading the way; to abase them to the lowest depths, and then to raise them to heaven. In all this, making them to play so prominent a part that, after hearing you, they may almost be led to say with secret satisfaction:--"What an excellent sermon we have delivered!" Then will your words be invested with the two greatest powers in the world: they will be the voice of the people and the voice of God.

The Sermon Should Be Plain.

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