Chapter VII: Epilogue: 288 (6)

This discomposing experience of the poet's, joined with conscientious misgivings on his part as to the propriety of his course in writing for the stage, led him now, at the early age of thirty-eight, to renounce tragedy altogether. His son Louis, from whose life of Racine we have chiefly drawn our material for the present sketch, conceives this change in his father as a profound and genuine religious conversion. Writers whose spirit inclines them not to relish a condemnation such as seems thus to be reflected on the theatre, take a less charitable view of the change. They account for it as a reaction of mortified pride. Some of them go so far as groundlessly to impute sheer hypocrisy to Racine.

A long interval of silence, on Racine's part, had elapsed, when Madame de Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV., asked the unemployed poet to prepare a sacred play for the use of the high-born girls educated under her care at St. Cyr. Racine consented, and produced his "Esther." This achieved a prodigious success; for the court took it up, and an exercise written for a girls' school became the admiration of a kingdom. A second similar play followed, the "Athaliah,"--the last, and, by general agreement, the most perfect, work of its author. We thus reach that tragedy of Racine's which both its fame and its character dictate to us as the one by eminence to be used here in exhibition of the quality of this Virgil among tragedists.

Our readers may, if they please, refresh their recollection of the history on which the drama is founded by perusing Second Kings, chapter eleven, and Second Chronicles, chapters twenty-two and twenty-three. Athaliah, whose name gives its title to the tragedy, was daughter to the wicked king, Ahab. She reigns as queen at Jerusalem over the kingdom of Judah. To secure her usurped position, she had sought to kill all the descendants of King David, even her own grandchildren. She had succeeded,--but not quite. Young Joash escaped, to be secretly reared in the temple by the high priest. The final disclosure of this hidden prince, and his coronation as king in place of usurping Athaliah, destined to be fearfully overthrown, and put to death in his name, afford the action of the play. Action, however, there is almost none in classic French tragedy. The tragic drama is, with the French, as it was with the Greeks, after whom it was framed, merely a succession of scenes in which speeches are made by the actors. Lofty declamation is always the character of the play. In the "Athaliah," as in the "Esther," Racine introduced the feature of the chorus, a restoration which had all the effect of an innovation. The chorus in "Athaliah" consisted of Hebrew virgins, who, at intervals marking the transitions between the acts, chanted the spirit of the piece in its successive stages of progress toward the final catastrophe. The "Athaliah" is almost proof against technical criticism. It is acknowledged to be, after its kind, a nearly ideal product of art.

There is a curious story about the fortune of this piece with the public, that will interest our readers. The first success of "Athaliah" was not great. In fact, it was almost a flat failure. But a company of wits, playing at forfeits somewhere in the country, severely sentenced one of their number to go by himself, and read the first act of "Athaliah." The victim went, and did not return. Sought at length, he was found just commencing a second perusal of the play entire. He reported of it so enthusiastically, that he was asked to read it before the company, which he did, to their delight. This started a reaction in favor of the condemned play, which soon came to be counted the masterpiece of its author.

First, in specimen of the choral feature of the drama, we content ourselves with giving a single chorus from the "Athaliah." This we turn into rhyme, clinging pretty closely all the way to the form of the original. Attentive readers may, in one place of our rendering, observe an instance of identical rhyme. This, in a piece of verse originally written in English, would, of course, be a fault. In a translation from French, it may pass for a merit; since, to judge from the practice of the national poets, the French ear seems to be even better pleased with such strict identities of sound, at the close of corresponding lines, than it is with those definite mere resemblances to which, in English versification, rhymes are rigidly limited. Suspense between hope and dread, dread preponderating, is the state of feeling represented in the present chorus. Salomith is the leading singer:--

SALOMITH.

The Lord hath deigned to speak,
But what he to his prophet now hath shown--
Who unto us will make it clearly known?
Arms he himself to save us, poor and weak?
Arms he himself to have us overthrown?

THE WHOLE CHORUS.

O promises! O threats! O mystery profound!
What woe, what weal, are each in turn foretold?
How can so much of wrath be found
So much of love to enfold?

A VOICE.

Zion shall be no more; a cruel flame
Will all her ornaments devour.

A SECOND VOICE.

God shelters Zion; she has shield and tower
In His eternal name.

FIRST VOICE.

I see her splendor all from vision disappear.

SECOND VOICE.

I see on every side her glory shine more clear.

FIRST VOICE.

Into a deep abyss is Zion sunk from sight.

SECOND VOICE.

Zion lifts up her brow amid celestial light.

FIRST VOICE.

What dire despair!

SECOND VOICE.

What praise from every tongue!

FIRST VOICE.

What cries of grief!

SECOND VOICE.

What songs of triumph sung!

A THIRD VOICE.

Cease we to vex ourselves; our God, one day,
Will this great mystery make clear.

ALL THREE VOICES.

Let us his wrath revere,
While on his love, no less, our hopes we stay.

The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of little Joash as king, and in the destruction of usurping and wicked Athaliah. Little Joash, by the way, with his rather precocious wisdom of reply, derived to himself, for the moment, a certain factitious interest, from the resemblance, meant by the poet to be divined by spectators, between him and the little Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV.'s grandson, then of about the same age with the Hebrew boy, and of high reputation for mental vivacity.

The scene in which the high priest, Jehoiada, for the first time discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the latter's royal descent from David, and his true heirship to the throne of Judah, will serve sufficiently to exhibit what maturity of modest and pious wisdom the dramatist attributes to this Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age Racine makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture, interpreted without violence, would make him. The lad has had his sage curiosity excited by seeing preparations in progress for some important ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own coronation, but he does not guess the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly asked his foster-mother, observed by him to be in tears:--

What pity touches you? Is it that in a holocaust to be this day
offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, must pacify by
my death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that does
not belong to his father!

The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, Jehoiada, now approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of the high priest, exclaiming, "My father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest replies. "What preparations, then, are these?" asks Joash. The high priest bids him prepare himself to listen and learn, the time being now come for him to pay his debt to God:--

JOASH. I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my
life.

JEHOIADA. You have often heard read the history of our kings. Do
you remember, my son, what strict laws a king worthy of the crown
ought to impose upon himself?

JOASH. A wise and good king, so hath God himself declared, puts not
his reliance upon riches and gold; he fears the Lord his God, has
ever before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments severe, and
does not with unjust burdens overwhelm his brethren.

Fenelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy when this tragedy was written. It is impossible not to feel that Racine must have had that prince in mind when he put into the mouth of young Joash sentiments so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his royal pupil, the great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fenelon. How could the selfish old monarch of France contrive to avoid recognizing his own portrait, suggested by contrast in that description of the good king from the lips of little Joash? Racine was here treading on treacherous ground. He will presently find his footing quite give way under him, to let him down into the "horrible pit" of disgrace with his king. This not, however, in the present play.

The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen Athaliah a certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in the final catastrophe, almost redeems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There is nothing in the play more nearly sublime in declamation than the final speech in which Athaliah greets her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for young King Joash, a future of apostasy from God. With this admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy from Satan in "Paradise Lost," so far as French poetry may be allowed to resemble English, we conclude our representation of Racine. Athaliah has now just heard the announcement of things that assure her of the overthrow of her usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the poet to recall the celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate, uttered at a moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes,--"O Galilean, thou hast conquered!" as follows:--

God of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail!
Ay, it is Joash; all without avail
Seek I to cheat myself with other thought:
I know the wound my weapon on him wrought;
I see his father Ahaziah's face;
Naught but brings back to me that hated race.
David doth triumph, Ahab only fall,--
Unpitying God, thou only hast done all!
'Tis thou that flattering me to hope in vain
For easy vengeance, o'er and o'er again
Hast with myself myself embroiled anew,
Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few,
Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare,
Which I to burn or pillage did not dare.
Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil,
And, so to signalize his new-got spoil,
Let him into my bosom plunge the knife,
And take with filial hand his mother's life.
Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes--
Wish? nay, what hope, assured hope, bequeaths,--
That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he,
Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me,
To his grandfather, to his father, like,
Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike
Thy worship and thy fane, avenger fell
Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel!

With words thus rendered into such English verse as we could command for the purpose, Athaliah disappears from the stage. Her execution follows immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced with brief, solemn comment from Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends.

The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, is by no means equal to its fame. One reproaches one's self, but one yawns in conscientiously perusing it. Still, one feels the work of the author to be irreproachably, nay, consummately, good. But fashions in taste change; and we cannot hold ourselves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate, for enjoying, according to the judgment of other races and of former generations. It is--so, with grave concurrence, we say--It is a great classic, worthy of the praise that it receives. We are glad that we have read it; and, let us be candid, equally glad that we have not to read it again.

As has already been intimated, Racine, after "Athaliah," wrote tragedy no more. He ceased to interest himself in the fortune of his plays. His son Louis, in his Life of his father, testifies that he never heard his father speak in the family of the dramas that he had written. His theatrical triumphs seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of them rather than gloried in them.

While one need not doubt that this regret of Racine's for the devotion of his powers to the production of tragedy, was a sincere regret of his conscience, one may properly wish that the regret had been more heroic. The fact is, Racine was somewhat feminine in character as well as in genius. He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed against an adverse wind. And the wind blew adverse at length to Racine, from the principal quarter, the court of Versailles. From being a chief favorite with his sovereign, Racine fell into the position of an exile from the royal presence. The immediate occasion was one honorable rather than otherwise to the poet.

In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, Racine had expressed views on the state of France and on the duties of a king to his subjects, which so impressed her mind that she desired him to reduce his observations to writing, and confide them to her, she promising to keep them profoundly secret from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the manuscript in her hand. Taking it from her, he read in it, and demanded to know the author. Madame de Maintenon could not finally refuse to tell. "Does M. Racine, because he is a great poet, think that he knows every thing?" the despot angrily asked. Louis never spoke to Racine again. The distressed and infatuated poet still made some paltry request of the king, to experience the humiliation that he invoked. His request was not granted. Racine wilted, like a tender plant, under the sultry frown of his monarch. He could not rally. He soon after died, literally killed by the mere displeasure of one man. Such was the measureless power wielded by Louis XIV.; such was the want of virile stuff in Racine. A spirit partly kindred to the tragedist, Archbishop Fenelon, will presently be shown to have had at about the same time a partly similar experience.

XII.

BOSSUET: 1627-1704; BOURDALOUE: 1632-1704; MASSILLON: 1663-1742.

We group three names in one title, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, to represent the pulpit orators of France. There are other great names,--as Flechier, with Claude and Saurin, the last two, Protestants both,--but the names we choose are the greatest.

Bossuet's individual distinction is, that he was a great man as well as a great orator; Bourdaloue's, that he was priest-and-preacher simply; Massillon's, that his sermons, regarded quite independently of their subject, their matter, their occasion, regarded merely as masterpieces of pure and classic style, became at once, and permanently became, a part of French literature.

The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the French national creed. No Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it. Protestant agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least in this. Bossuet, twinned here with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as Milton is to the Englishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence, somehow, seems a thing too near the common human level to answer fully the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. Bossuet is not eloquent, he is sublime. That in French it is in equal part oratory, while in English it is poetry almost alone, that supplies in literature its satisfaction to the sentiment of the sublime, very well represents the difference in genius between the two races. The French idea of poetry is eloquence; and it is eloquence carried to its height, whether in verse or in prose, that constitutes for the Frenchman sublimity. The difference is a difference of blood. English blood is Teutonic in base, and the imagination of the Teuton is poetic. French blood, in base, is Celtic; and the imagination of the Celt is oratoric.

Jacques Benigne Bossuet was of good _bourgeois_, or middle-class, stock. He passed a well-ordered and virtuous youth, as if in prophetic consistency with what was to be his subsequent career. He was brought forward while a young man in the Hotel de Rambouillet, where, on a certain occasion, he preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices of his admiring patron. In due time he attracted wide public attention, not merely as an eloquent orator, but as a profound student and as a powerful controversialist. His character and influence became in their maturity such, that La Bruyere aptly called him a "Father of the Church." "The Corneille of the pulpit," was Henri Martin's characterization and praise. A third phrase, "the eagle of Meaux," has passed into almost an alternative name for Bossuet. He soared like an eagle in his eloquence, and he was bishop of Meaux.

Bossuet and Louis XIV. were exactly suited to each other, in the mutual relation of subject and sovereign. Bossuet preached sincerely--as everybody knows Louis sincerely practised--the doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule absolutely. But the proud prelate compromised neither his own dignity nor the dignity of the Church in the presence of the absolute monarch.

Bossuet threw himself with great zeal, and to prodigious effect, into the controversy against Protestantism. His "History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches," in two good volumes, was one of the mightiest pamphlets ever written. As tutor to the Dauphin (the king's eldest son), he produced, with other works, his celebrated "Discourse on Universal History."

In proceeding now to give, from the three great preachers named in our title, a few specimen passages of the most famous pulpit oratory in the world, we need to prepare our readers against a natural disappointment. That which they are about to see has nothing in it of what will at first strike them as brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan age of France was distinctly "classic," and not at all "romantic," in style. Its character is not ornate, but severe. There is little rhetorical figure in it, little of that "illustration" which our own different national taste is accustomed to demand from the pulpit. There is plenty of white light, "dry light" and white, for the reason; but there is almost no bright color for the fancy, and, it must be added, not a great deal of melting warmth for the heart.

The funeral orations of Bossuet are generally esteemed the masterpieces of this orator's eloquence. He had great occasions, and he was great to match them. Still, readers might easily be disappointed in perusing a funeral oration of Bossuet's. The discourse will generally be found to deal in commonplaces of description, of reflection, and of sentiment. Those commonplaces, however, are often made very impressive by the lofty, the magisterial, the imperial, manner of the preacher in treating them. We exhibit a specimen, a single specimen only, and a brief one, in the majestic exordium to the funeral oration on the Princess Henrietta of England.

This princess was the last one left of the children of King Charles I. of England. Her mother's death--her mother was of the French house of Bourbon--had occurred but a short time before, and Bossuet had on that occasion pronounced the eulogy. The daughter, scarcely returned to France from a secret mission of state to England, the success of which made her an object of distinguished regard at Versailles, suddenly fell ill and died. Bossuet was summoned to preach at her funeral. (We have not been able to find an English translation of Bossuet, and we accordingly make the present transfer from French ourselves. We do the same, for the same reason, in the case of Massillon. In the case of Bourdaloue, we succeeded in obtaining a printed translation which we could modify to suit our purpose.) Bossuet:--

It was then reserved for my lot to pay this funereal tribute to the
high and potent princess, Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans.
She whom I had seen so attentive while I was discharging a like
office for the queen her mother, was so soon after to be the
subject of a similar discourse, and my sad voice was predestined to
this melancholy service. O vanity! O nothingness! O mortals!
ignorant of their destiny! Ten months ago, would she have believed
it? And you, my hearers, would you have thought, while she was
shedding so many tears in this place, that she was so soon to
assemble you here to deplore her own loss? O princess! the worthy
object of the admiration of two great kingdoms, was it not enough
that England should deplore your absence, without being yet further
compelled to deplore your death? France, who with so much joy
beheld you again, surrounded with a new brilliancy, had she not in
reserve other pomps and other triumphs for you, returned from that
famous voyage whence you had brought hither so much glory, and
hopes so fair? "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Nothing is left
for me to say but that; that is the only sentiment which, in
presence of so strange a casualty, grief so well-grounded and so
poignant, permits me to indulge. Nor have I explored the Holy
Scriptures in order to find therein some text which I might apply
to this princess; I have taken, without premeditation and without
choice, the first expression presented to me by the Preacher, with
whom vanity, although it has been so often named, is yet, to my
mind, not named often enough to suit the purpose that I have in
view. I wish, in a single misfortune, to lament all the calamities
of the human race, and in a single death to exhibit the death and
the nothingness of all human greatness. This text, which suits all
the circumstances and all the occurrences of our life, becomes, by
a special adaptedness, appropriate to my mournful theme; since
never were the vanities of the earth either so clearly disclosed or
so openly confounded. No, after what we have just seen, health is
but a name, life is but a dream, glory is but a shadow, charms and
pleasures are but a dangerous diversion. Every thing is vain within
us, except the sincere acknowledgment made before God of our
vanity, and the fixed judgment of the mind, leading us to despise
all that we are.

But did I speak the truth? Man, whom God made in his own image, is
he but a shadow? That which Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth
to seek, that which he deemed that he could, without degrading
himself, ransom with his own blood, is that a mere nothing? Let us
acknowledge our mistake; surely this sad spectacle of the vanity of
things human was leading us astray, and public hope, baffled
suddenly by the death of this princess, was urging us too far. It
must not be permitted to man to despise himself entirely, lest he,
supposing, in common with the wicked, that our life is but a game
in which chance reigns, take his way without rule and without
self-control, at the pleasure of his own blind wishes. It is for
this reason that the Preacher, after having commenced his inspired
production by the expressions which I have cited, after having
filled all its pages with contempt for things human, is pleased at
last to show man something more substantial, by saying to him,
"Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of
man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every
secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Thus
every thing is vain in man, if we regard what he gives to the
world; but, on the contrary, every thing is important, if we
consider what he owes to God. Once again, every thing is vain in
man, if we regard the course of his mortal life; but every thing is
of value, every thing is important, if we contemplate the goal
where it ends, and the account of it which he must render. Let us,
therefore, meditate to-day, in presence of this altar and of this
tomb, the first and the last utterance of the Preacher; of which
the one shows the nothingness of man, the other establishes his
greatness. Let this tomb convince us of our nothingness, provided
that this altar, where is daily offered for us a Victim of price so
great, teach us at the same time our dignity. The princess whom we
weep shall be a faithful witness, both of the one and of the other.
Let us survey that which a sudden death has taken away from her;
let us survey that which a holy death has bestowed upon her. Thus
shall we learn to despise that which she quitted without regret, in
order to attach all our regard to that which she embraced with so
much ardor,--when her soul, purified from all earthly sentiments,
full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw the light
completely revealed. Such are the truths which I have to treat, and
which I have deemed worthy to be proposed to so great a prince, and
to the most illustrious assembly in the world.

It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an effort, on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the far-fetched and unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet was not always--as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always was--superior to the temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. Bossuet was a great man, but he was not quite great enough to be wholly free from pride of self-consciousness in matching himself as orator against "the most illustrious assembly in the world."

The ordinary sermons of Bossuet are less read, and they less deserve perhaps to be read, than those of Bourdaloue and Massillon.

* * *

BOURDALOUE was a voice. He was the voice of one crying, not in the wilderness, but amid the homes and haunts of men, and, by eminence, in the court of the most powerful and most splendid of earthly monarchs. He was a Jesuit, one of the most devoted and most accomplished of an order filled with devoted and accomplished men. It belonged to his Jesuit character and Jesuit training, that Bourdaloue should hold the place that he did as ever-successful courtier at Versailles, all the while that, as preacher, he was using the "holy freedom of the pulpit" to launch those blank fulminations of his at sin in high places, at sin even in the highest, and all the briefer while that, as confessor to Madame de Maintenon, he was influencing the policy of Louis XIV.

No scandal of any sort attaches to the reputation of Louis Bourdaloue. He was a man of spotless fame,--unless it be a spot on his fame that he could please the most selfish of sinful monarchs well enough to be that monarch's chosen preacher during a longer time than any other pulpit orator whatever was tolerated at Versailles. He is described by all who knew him as a man of gracious spirit. If he did not reprobate and denounce the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, that was rather of the age than of Bourdaloue.

Sainte-Beuve, in a remarkably sympathetic appreciation of Bourdaloue,--free, contrary to the critic's wont, from hostile insinuation even,--regards it as part of the merit of this preacher that there is, and that there can be, no biography of him. His public life is summed up in simply saying that he was a preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful years he preached the doctrines of the Church; and this is the sole account to be given of him, except, indeed, that in the confessional he was, all that time, learning those secrets of the human heart which he used to such effect in composing his sermons. He had very suave and winning ways as confessor, though he enjoined great strictness as preacher. This led a witty woman of his time to say of him: "Father Bourdaloue charges high in the pulpit, but he sells cheap in the confessional." How much laxity he allowed as confessor, it is, of course, impossible to say. But his sermons remain to show that, though indeed he was severe and high in requirement as preacher, he did not fail to soften asperity by insisting on the goodness, while he insisted on the awfulness, of God. Still, it cannot be denied, that somehow the elaborate compliments which, as an established convention of his pulpit, he not infrequently delivered to Louis XIV., tended powerfully to make it appear that his stern denunciation of sin, which at first blush might seem directly levelled at the king, had in reality no application at all, or but the very gentlest application, to the particular case of his Most Christian Majesty.

We begin our citations from Bourdaloue with an extract from a sermon of his on "A Perverted Conscience." The whole discourse is one well worth the study of any reader. It is a piece of searching psychological analysis, and pungent application to conscience. Bourdaloue, in his sermons, has always the air of a man seriously intent on producing practical results. There are no false motions. Every swaying of the preacher's weapon is a blow, and every blow is a hit. There is hardly another example in homiletic literature of such compactness, such solidity, such logical consecutiveness, such cogency, such freedom from surplusage. Tare and tret are excluded. Every thing counts. You meet with two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally assume, that, after the usual manner of homilists, Bourdaloue has thrown these in without rigorously definite purpose, simply to heighten a general effect. Not at all. There follows a development of the preacher's thought, constituting virtually a distinct justification of each adjective employed. You soon learn that there is no random, no waste, in this man's words. But here is the promised extract from the sermon on "A Perverted Conscience." In it Bourdaloue depresses his gun, and discharges it point-blank at the audience before him. You can almost imagine you see the ranks of "the great" laid low. Alas! one fears that, instead of biting the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst of them to set the example, only cried bravo in their hearts at the skill of the gunner:--

I have said more particularly that in the world in which you
live,--I mean the court,--the disease of a perverted conscience is
far more common, and far more difficult to be avoided; and I am
sure that in this you will agree with me. For it is at the court
that the passions bear sway, that desires are more ardent, that
self-interest is keener, and that, by infallible consequence,
self-blinding is more easy, and consciences, even the most
enlightened and the most upright, become gradually perverted. It is
at the court that the goddess of the world, I mean fortune,
exercises over the minds of men, and in consequence over their
consciences, a more absolute dominion. It is at the court that the
aim to maintain one's self, the impatience to raise one's self, the
frenzy to push one's self, the fear of displeasing, the desire of
making one's self agreeable, produce consciences, which anywhere
else would pass for monstrous, but which, finding themselves there
authorized by custom, seem to have acquired a right of possession
and of prescription. People, from living at court, and from no
other cause than having lived there, are filled with these errors.
Whatever uprightness of conscience they may have brought thither,
by breathing its air and by hearing its language, they are
habituated to iniquity, they come to have less horror of vice, and,
after having long blamed it, a thousand times condemned it, they at
last behold it with a more favorable eye, tolerate it, excuse it;
that is to say, without observing what is happening, they make over
their consciences, and, by insensible steps, from Christian, which
they were, by little and little become quite worldly, and not far
from pagan.

What could surpass the adaptedness of such preaching as that to the need of the moment for which it was prepared? And how did the libertine French monarch contrive to escape the force of truth like the following, with which the preacher immediately proceeds?--

You would say, and it really seems, that for the court, there are
other principles of religion than for the rest of the world, and
that the courtier has a right to make for himself a conscience
different in kind and in quality from that of other men; for such
is the prevailing idea of the matter,--an idea well sustained, or
rather unfortunately justified, by experience.... Nevertheless, my
dear hearers, St. Paul assures us, that there is but one God and
one faith; and woe to the man who dividing Him, this one God, shall
represent Him as at court less an enemy to human transgressions
than He is outside of the court; or, severing this one faith, shall
suppose it in the case of one class more indulgent than in the case
of another.

Bourdaloue, as Jesuit, could not but feel the power of Pascal in his "Provincial Letters," constantly undermining the authority of his order. His preaching, as Sainte-Beuve well says, may be considered to have been, in the preacher's intention, one prolonged confutation of Pascal's immortal indictment. We borrow of Sainte-Beuve a short extract from Bourdaloue's sermon on slander, which may serve as an instance to show with what adroitness the Jesuit retorted anonymously upon the Jansenist:--

Behold one of the abuses of our time. Means have been found to
consecrate slander, to change it into a virtue, and even into one
of the holiest virtues--that means is, zeal for the glory of
God.... We must humble those people, is the cry; and it is for the
good of the Church to tarnish their reputation and to diminish
their credit. That idea becomes, as it were, a principle; the
conscience is fashioned accordingly, and there is nothing that is
not permissible to a motive so noble. You fabricate, you
exaggerate, you give things a poisonous taint, you tell but half
the truth; you make your prejudices stand for indisputable facts;
you spread abroad a hundred falsehoods; you confound what is
individual with what is general; what one man has said that is bad,
you pretend that all have said; and what many have said that is
good, you pretend that nobody has said; and all that, once again,
for the glory of God. For such direction of the intention justifies
all that. Such direction of the intention will not suffice to
justify a prevarication, but it is more than sufficient to justify
calumny, provided only you are convinced that you are serving God
thereby.

In conclusion, we give a passage or two of Bourdaloue's sermon on "An Eternity of Woe." Stanch orthodoxy the reader will find here. President Edwards's discourse, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is not more unflinching. But what a relief of contrasted sweetness does Bourdaloue interpose in the first part of the ensuing extract, to set off the grim and grisly horror of that which is to follow! We draw, for this case, from a translation, issued in Dublin under Roman-Catholic auspices, of select sermons by Bourdaloue. The translator, throughout his volume, has been highly loyal in spirit toward the great French preacher; but this has not prevented much enfeebling by him of the style of his original:--

There are some just, fervent, perfect souls, who, like children in
the house of the Heavenly Father, strive to please and possess him,
in order only to possess and to love him; and who, incessantly
animated by this unselfish motive, inviolably adhere to his divine
precepts, and lay it down as a rigorous and unalterable rule, to
obey the least intimation of his will. They serve him with an
affection entirely filial. But there are also dastards, worldlings,
sinners, terrestrial and sensual men, who are scarcely susceptible
of any other impressions than those of the judgments and vengeance
of God. Talk to them of his greatness, of his perfections, of his
benefits, or even of his rewards, and they will hardly listen to
you; and, if they are prevailed upon to pay some attention and
respect to your words, they will sound in their ears, but not reach
their hearts.... Therefore, to move them, to stir them up, to
awaken them from the lethargic sleep with which they are
overwhelmed, the thunder of divine wrath and the decree that
condemns them to eternal flames must be dinned into their ears:
"Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire" (Matt. XXV.).
Make them consider attentively, and represent to them with all the
force of grace, the consequences and horror of this word
"eternal."...

It is not imagination, it is pure reason and intelligence, that now in Bourdaloue goes about the business of impressing the thought of the dreadfulness of an eternity of woe. The effect produced is not that of the lightning-flash suddenly revealing the jaws agape of an unfathomable abyss directly before you. It is rather that of steady, intolerable pressure gradually applied to crush, to annihilate, the soul:--

...Struck with horror at so doleful a destiny, I apply to this
eternity all the powers of my mind; I examine and scrutinize it in
all its parts; and I survey, as it were, its whole dimensions.
Moreover, to express it in more lively colors, and to represent it
in my mind more conformably to the senses and the human
understanding, I borrow comparisons from the Fathers of the Church,
and I make, if I may so speak, the same computations. I figure to
myself all the stars of the firmament; to this innumerable
multitude I add all the drops of water in the bosom of the ocean;
and if this be not enough, I reckon, or at least endeavor to
reckon, all the grains of sand on its shore. Then I interrogate
myself, I reason with myself, and I put to myself the question--If
I had for as many ages, and a thousand times as many, undergone
torments in that glowing fire which is kindled by the breath of the
Lord in his anger to take eternal vengeance, would eternity be at
an end? No; and why? Because it is eternity, and eternity is
endless. To number up the stars that shine in the heavens, to count
the drops of water that compose the sea, to tell the grains of sand
that lie upon the shore, is not absolutely impossible; but to
measure in eternity the number of days, of years, of ages, is what
cannot be compassed, because the days, the years, and the ages are
without number; or, to speak more properly, because in eternity
there are neither days, nor years, nor ages, but a single, endless,
infinite duration.

To this thought I devote my mind. I imagine I see and rove through
this same eternity, and discover no end, but find it to be always a
boundless tract. I imagine the wide prospect lies open on all
sides, and encompasseth me around; that if I rise up, or if I sink
down, or what way soever I turn my eyes, this eternity meets them;
and that after a thousand efforts to get forward, I have made no
progress, but find it still eternity. I imagine that after long
revolutions of time, I behold in the midst of this eternity a
damned soul, in the same state, in the same affliction, in the same
misery still; and putting myself mentally in the place of this
soul, I imagine that in this eternal punishment I feel myself
continually devoured by that fire which nothing extinguishes; that
I continually shed those floods of tears which nothing can dry up;
that I am continually gnawed by the worm of conscience, which
never dies; that I continually express my despair and anguish by
that gnashing of teeth, and those lamentable cries, which never can
move the compassion of God. This idea of myself, this
representation, amazes and terrifies me. My whole body shudders, I
tremble with fear, I am filled with horror, I have the same
feelings as the royal prophet, when he cried, "Pierce thou my flesh
with thy fear, for I am afraid of thy judgments."

That was a touching tribute from the elder to the younger--tribute touching, whether wrung, perforce, from a proudly humble, or freely offered by a simply magnanimous, heart--when, like John the Baptist speaking of Jesus, Bourdaloue, growing old, said of Massillon, enjoying his swiftly crescent renown: "He must increase, and I must decrease." It was a true presentiment of the comparative fortune of fame that impended for these two men. It was not, however, in the same path, but in a different, that Massillon outran Bourdaloue. In his own sphere, that of unimpassioned appeal to reason and to conscience, Bourdaloue is still without a rival. No one else, certainly, ever earned, so well as he, the double title which his epigrammatic countrymen were once fond of bestowing upon him,--"The king of preachers, and the preacher of kings."

* * *

JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON became priest by his own internal sense of vocation to the office, against the preference of his family that he should become, like his father, a notary. He seems to have been by nature sincerely modest in spirit. He had to be forced into the publicity of a preaching career at Paris. His ecclesiastical superior peremptorily required at his hands the sacrifice of his wish to be obscure. He at once filled Paris with his fame. The inevitable consequence followed. He was summoned to preach before the king at Versailles. Here he received, as probably he deserved, that celebrated compliment in epigram, from Louis XIV.: "In hearing some preachers, I feel pleased with them; in hearing you, I feel displeased with myself."

It must not, however, be supposed that Massillon preached like a prophet Nathan saying to King David, "Thou art the man;" or like a John the Baptist saying to King Herod, "It is not lawful for _thee_ to have _her_;" or like a John Knox denouncing Queen Mary. Massillon, if he was stern, was suavely stern. He complimented the king. The sword with which he wounded was wreathed deep with flowers. It is difficult not to feel that some unspoken understanding subsisted between the preacher and the king, which permitted the king to separate the preacher from the man when Massillon used that great plainness of speech to his sovereign. The king did not, however, often invite this master of eloquence to make the royal conscience displacent with itself. Bourdaloue was ostensibly as outspoken as Massillon; but somehow that Jesuit preacher contented the king to be his hearer during as many as ten annual seasons, against the one or two only that Massillon preached at court before Louis.

The work of Massillon generally judged, though according to Sainte-Beuve not wisely judged, to be his choicest, is contained in that volume of his which goes by the name of "Le Petit Careme,"--literally, "The Little Lent,"--a collection of sermons preached during a Lent before the king's great-grandson and successor, youthful Louis XV. These sermons especially have given to their author a fame that is his by a title perhaps absolutely unique in literature. We know no other instance of a writer, limited in his production strictly to sermons, who holds his place in the first rank of authorship simply by virtue of supreme mastership in literary style.

Still, from the text of his printed discourses,--admirable, exquisite, ideal compositions in point of form as these are,--it will be found impossible to conceive adequately the living eloquence of Massillon. There are interesting traditions of the effects produced by particular passages of particular sermons of his. When Louis XIV. died, Massillon preached his funeral sermon. He began with that celebrated single sentence of exordium which, it is said, brought his whole audience, by instantaneous, simultaneous impulse, in a body to their feet. The modern reader will experience some difficulty in comprehending at once why that perfectly commonplace-seeming expression of the preacher should have produced an effect so powerful. The element of the opportune, the apposite, the fit, is always great part of the secret of eloquence. Nothing more absolutely appropriate can be conceived than was the sentiment, the exclamation, with which Massillon opened that funeral sermon. The image and symbol of earthly greatness, in the person of Louis XIV., had been shattered under the touch of iconoclast death. "God only is great!" said the preacher; and all was said. Those four short words had uttered completely, and with a simplicity incapable of being surpassed, the thought that usurped every breast. It is not the surprise of some striking new thought that is the most eloquent thing. The most eloquent thing is the surprise of that one word, suddenly spoken, which completely expresses some thought, present already and uppermost, but silent till now, awaiting expression, in a multitude of minds. This most eloquent thing it was which, from Massillon's lips that day, moved his susceptible audience to rise, like one man, and bow in mute act of submission to the truth of his words. The inventive and curious reader may exercise his ingenuity at leisure. He will strive in vain to conceive any other exordium than Massillon's that would have matched the occasion presented.

There is an admirable anecdote of the pulpit, which--though since often otherwise applied--had, perhaps, its first application to Massillon. Some one congratulating the orator, as he came down from his pulpit, on the eloquence of the sermon just preached, that wise self-knower fenced by replying, "Ah, the devil has already apprised me of that!" The recluse celibate preacher was one day asked whence he derived that marvellous knowledge which he displayed of the passions, the weaknesses, the follies, the sins, of human nature. "From my own heart," was his reply. Source sufficient, perhaps; but from the confessional, too, one may confidently add.

There is probably no better brief, quotable passage to represent Massillon at his imaginative highest in eloquence, than that most celebrated one of all, occurring toward the close of his memorable sermon on the "Fewness of the Elect." The effect attending the delivery of this passage, on both of the two recorded occasions on which the sermon was preached, is reported to have been remarkable. The manner of the orator--downcast, as with the inward oppression of the same solemnity that he, in speaking, cast like a spell on the audience--indefinitely heightened the magical power of the awful conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with that preternatural skill of his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering consciences of his hearers. The terrors of the Lord, the shadows of the world to come, were thus already on all hearts. So much as this. Bourdaloue, too, with his incomparable dialectic, could have accomplished. But there immediately follows a culmination in power, such as was distinctly beyond the height of Bourdaloue. Genius must be superadded to talent if you would have the supreme, either in poetry or in eloquence. There was an extreme point in Massillon's discourse at which mere reason, having done, and done terribly, its utmost, was fain to confess that it could not go a single step farther. At that extreme point, suddenly, inexhaustible imagination took up the part of exhausted reason. Reason had made men afraid; imagination now appalled them. Massillon said:--

I confine myself to you, my brethren, who are gathered here. I
speak no longer of the rest of mankind. I look at you as if you
were the only ones on the earth; and here is the thought that
seizes me, and that terrifies me. I make the supposition that this
is your last hour, and the end of the world; that the heavens are
about to open above your heads, that Jesus Christ is to appear in
his glory in the midst of this sanctuary, and that you are gathered
here only to wait for him, and as trembling criminals on whom is to
be pronounced either a sentence of grace or a decree of eternal
death. For, vainly do you flatter yourselves; you will die such in
character as you are to-day. All those impulses toward change with
which you amuse yourselves, you will amuse yourselves with them
down to the bed of death. Such is the experience of all
generations. The only thing new you will then find in yourselves
will be, perhaps, a reckoning a trifle larger than that which you
would to-day have to render; and according to what you would be if
you were this moment to be judged, you may almost determine what
will befall you at the termination of your life.

Now I ask you, and I ask it smitten with terror, not separating in
this matter my lot from yours, and putting myself into the same
frame of mind into which I desire you to come,--I ask you, then, If
Jesus Christ were to appear in this sanctuary, in the midst of this
assembly, the most illustrious in the world, to pass judgment on
us, to draw the dread line of distinction between the goats and the
sheep, do you believe that the majority of all of us who are here
would be set on his right hand? Do you believe that things would
even be equal? Nay, do you believe there would be found so many as
the ten righteous men whom anciently the Lord could not find in
five whole cities? I put the question to you, but you know not; I
know not myself. Thou only, O my God, knowest those that belong to
thee! But if we know not those who belong to him, at least we know
that sinners do not belong to him. Now, of what classes of persons
do the professing Christians in this assembly consist? Titles and
dignities must be counted for naught; of these you shall be
stripped before Jesus Christ. Who make up this assembly? Sinners,
in great number, who do not wish to be converted; in still greater
number, sinners who would like it, but who put off their
conversion; many others who would be converted, only to relapse
into sin; finally, a multitude who think they have no need of
conversion. You have thus made up the company of the reprobate. Cut
off these four classes of sinners from this sacred assembly, for
they will be cut off from it at the great day! Stand forth now, ye
righteous! where are you? Remnant of Israel, pass to the right
hand! True wheat of Jesus Christ, disengage yourselves from this
chaff, doomed to the fire! O God! where are thine elect? and what
remains there for thy portion?

Brethren, our perdition is well-nigh assured, and we do not give it
a thought. Even if in that dread separation which one day shall be
made, there were to be but a single sinner out of this assembly
found on the side of the reprobate, and if a voice from heaven
should come to give us assurance of the fact in this sanctuary,
without pointing out the person intended, who among us would not
fear that he might himself be the wretch? Who among us would not at
once recoil upon his conscience, to inquire whether his sins had
not deserved that penalty? Who among us would not, seized with
dismay, ask of Jesus Christ, as did once the apostles, "Lord, is it
I?"