One strikes us, on the first notice of the subjects he has chosen to discourse on. He had observed, he once said, that there was too much dwelling on external manners and a general and vague morality. If we examine, we find that his subject-matter is always something definite and personal, something that comes home to "the business and bosom of every one of his auditory. This is too evident in every one of his discourses to need any citations.

Then it is conspicuous how little space he gives to establishing accepted truths and general propositions universally adopted. assumes these, or at most confirms them in a paragraph or two. Then he sets himself to search out in the bottom of the hearts of his hearers in their criminal attachments, in their earthly intereststhe reasons why each one in particular, without contesting the existence of the law or the necessity of obeying it, pretends that he can give himself a dispensation from submitting himself to it. This too, as we shall see, appears in every sermon.

Another characteristic which pervades his whole method, and is found in every discourse, and in which Buffon in his treatise on 'Eloquence' gives it as his judgment that Massillon surpasses all the orators ancient and modern, is called in the schools Amplification. It consists in the difficult but effective art of developing a principal thought in one long composite sentence, which occupies an entire paragraph, and is made up of an expanding series of intensifying clauses, flowing in one indivisible stream of multiplying minor thoughts, which roll the fundamental sentiment along, exhibiting continually new relations, new colors, new charms, with ever increasing force. As he thus revolved his thought through every application. and under every light, not only did the gathering force bear on all before it, but each individual for himself, sooner or later, found his own moral picture flashed into his soul; and these individual convictions, melting into one mighty sentiment, set the whole auditory in commotion as if it were but a single soul. For an example of the pathetic thus amplified, take the famous

TH

PICTURE OF THE DEATH-BED OF A SINNER

HEN the dying sinner, finding no longer in the remembrance of the past, anything but regrets which overwhelm him; in all which is passing from his sight, but images which afflict him; in the thought of the future, but horrors which affright him;-knowing no longer to whom he should have recourse: neither to the creatures, which are escaping from him, nor to the world, which is vanishing; nor to men, who do not know how

to deliver him from death; nor to the just God, whom he regards as his declared enemy, whose indulgence he must no longer expect; - he revolves his horrors in his soul; he torments himself, he tosses himself hither and thither, to flee from death which is seizing him, or at least to flee from himself; from his dying eyes issues a gloomy wildness which bespeaks the furiousness of his soul; from the depths of his dejection he throws out words broken by sobs, which one but half understands, and knows not whether it is despair or repentance which has given them form; he casts on the crucifix affrighted looks, and such as leave us to doubt whether it is fear or hope, hatred or love, which they mean; he goes into convulsions in which one is ignorant whether it is the body dissolving, or the soul perceiving the approach of her judge; he sighs deeply, and one cannot tell whether it is the memory of his crimes which is tearing these sighs from him, or his despair at relinquishing life. Finally, in the midst of his mournful struggles, his eyes become fixed, his features change, his countenance is distorted, his livid mouth falls open; his whole body trembles, and with this last struggle his wretched soul is sorrowfully torn. from this body of clay, falls into the hands of God, and finds itself at the foot of the awful tribunal.

New translation by J. F. B.

In his painting of manners to be reproved, while always abiding in the perfection of elegance, he sometimes descended with a frank and bold simplicity to startling details. An example of this stripping luxury naked for chastisement appears in the following exposure of the ways by which it seeks to elude the rigor of the precept, from the opening sermon of the 'Grand Carême,' on—

FASTING

TEXT: "Cum jejunatis, nolite fieri sicut hypocritæ, tristes."-VULGATE. [When thou fastest, be not like the hypocrites, sad.-FRENCH TRANSLATION.]

Mỹ

Y BRETHREN, there is more than one kind of sadness. There is a sadness of penitence which works salvation, and the joy of the Holy Spirit is always its sweetest fruit; a sadness of hypocrisy, which observes the letter of the law, wearing an affected exterior, pale and disfigured, in order not to lose before men the merit of its penitence, and this is rare; finally, there is a sadness of corruption, which opposes to this holy law.

a depth of corruption and of sensuality: and one may safely say that this is the most universal impression which is made on us by the precept of the fast and of abstinence.

I ask you whether, if it mortified the body and the passions of the flesh, this ought to be by the length of the abstinence, or by the simplicity of the food one makes use of, or in the frugality which one observes in his repasts. Pardon me this detail: it is here indispensable, and I will make no abuse of it.

Is it the length of the abstinence? But if, for gathering the fruit and merit of the fast, the body must languish and faint in the restriction of its nourishment, in order that the soul, while expiating her profane voluptuousness, may learn in this natural desire what ought to be her hunger and her thirst for the everlasting righteousness, and for that blessed estate in which, established again in the truth, we shall be delivered from all these humiliating necessities, -oh, what of the useless and unfruitful fasts in the Church!

Alas! the first believers, who did not break it till after the sun was set; they whom a thousand holy and laborious exercises had prepared for the hour of the repast: they who during the night which preceded their fasting, had often watched in our temples, and chanted hymns and canticles on the tombs of the martyrs,— these pious believers might safely have referred the whole merit of their fasting to the length of their abstinence, and yet only then could their flesh and their criminal passions be enfeebled. But for us, my brethren, it is no longer there that the merit of our fastings must be sought; for besides that the Church, by consenting that the hour of the repast should be advanced, has spared this rigor to the faithful, what unworthy easements have not been added to her indulgence? It seems that all one's attention is limited to doing in a way that will bring one to the hour of the repast, without one's really perceiving the length and the rigor of the fasting.

And beyond this (since you oblige us to say it here, and to put these indecent details in the place of the great verities of religion), one prolongs the hours of his sleep in order to shorten those of his abstinence; one dreads to feel for a single instant the rigor of the precept, one stifles in the softness of repose the prick of hunger, from which even the fasting of Jesus was not exempt; in the sloth of a bed one nurses a flesh which the Church had purposed to emaciate and afflict by punishment; and

far from taking nourishment as a necessary relief accorded at last to the length of one's abstinence, one brings to it a body still all full of the fumes of the night, and does not find in it even the relish which pleasure alone would have desired for its own satisfaction.

Translation of J. F. B.

A similar heart-searching severity pervades the following chastisement, from the magnificent sermon on Alms-giving:

HYPOCRITICAL HUMILITY IN CHARITY

IN TRUTH, there are few of those coarse and open hypocrisies which publish on the house-tops the merit of their holy deeds; the pride is more adroit, and never immediately unmasks: but what in the world, nevertheless, has less of the true zealot of charity, who seeks, like Jesus Christ, solitary and desert places to conceal his charitable prodigality! One hardly sees any of these ostentatious zealots who do not keep their eye out merely for miseries of renown, and piously wish to put the public into their confidence concerning their largesses; a good many means are sometimes taken to cover them, but nobody is sorry that an indiscretion has drawn them out; one will not seek the public eye, but one will be enraptured when the public eye overtakes us; and the liberalities which are unknown are almost regarded as lost.

Alas! with their gifts on every side, were not our temples and our altars the names and the marks of their benefactors, that is to say, the public monuments of the vanity of our fathers and of our own? If one wished only the invisible eye of the heavenly Father for witness, to what good this vain ostentation? Do you fear that the Lord forgets your offerings? Is it necessary that he should not be able to glance from the depth of the sanctuary, where we adore him, without finding again the remembrance of them? If you propose only to please him, why expose your bounties to other eyes than his? Why shall his ministers themselves, in the most awful functions of the priesthood, appear at the altar-where they ought to bring only the sins of the peopleloaded and clothed with marks of your vanity? Why these titles and inscriptions which immortalize on sacred walls your gifts and your pride? Was it not enough that these gifts should be written by the hand of the Lord in the Book of Life? Why

engrave, on marble which will perish, the merit of an action which the charity of it was sufficient to render immortal?

Ah! Solomon, after having reared the most stately and magnificent temple that ever was, had engraved on it only the awful name of the Lord, and took care not to mix the marks of the grandeur of his race with those of the eternal majesty of the King of Kings. A pious name is given to this custom; people believe that these public monuments allure the liberality of the faithful. But has the Lord charged your vanity with the care of attracting bounties to his altars? and has he permitted you to be a modest means that your brethren should become more charitable? Alas! the most powerful among the first believers brought simply, like the most obscure, their patrimonies to the feet of the apostles; they saw, with a holy joy, their names and their goods confounded with those of their brethren who had offered less than they; people were not distinguished then in the assemblies of the faithful in proportion to their benefactions; the honors and the precedences there were not yet the price of gifts and offerings; and one did not care to change the eternal recompense which was awaited from the Lord, into this frivolous glory which might be received from men: and to-day the Church. has not privileges enough to satisfy the vanity of her benefactors; their places with us are marked in the sanctuary; their tombs with us appear even under the altar, where only the ashes of the martyrs should repose; honors even are rendered to them which ought to be reserved to the glory of the priesthood; and if they do not bring their hand to the censer, they at least wish to share with the Lord the incense which burns on his altars. Custom authorizes this abuse, it is true; but that which it authorizes, custom never justifies.

Charity, my brethren, is that sweet odor of Jesus Christ which evaporates and is lost the moment it is uncovered. It does not cause to abstain from the public duties of benevolence; we owe to our brethren edification and example; it is a good thing for them to see our works, but we should not see them ourselves; and our left hand ought not to know the gifts our right distributes; the achievements even which duty renders the most brilliant, ought always to be secret in the preparations of the heart; we ought to entertain a kind of jealousy for them against others' gaze; and not think their innocence sure, but when they are under the eyes of God alone. Yes, my brethren,