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.
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.
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.
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, to which we here do what we can to restore the tone:
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, these 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.”...
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, these 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 withmyself, 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 that the wide prospect lies open on all sides, and encompasses 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.”
... 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 withmyself, 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 that the wide prospect lies open on all sides, and encompasses 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 withouta 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 BaptisteMassillonbecame 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 fortheeto haveher”; 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 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 containedin that volume of his which goes by the name of “Le Petit Carême”—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, awaitingexpression, 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 marvelous 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 incomparabledialectic, could have accomplished. But there immediately follows a culmination in power, such as was distinctly beyond the height of Bourdaloue. Genius must be super-added to talent if you would have the supreme, either in poetry or in eloquence. There was an extreme point in Massillon’s discourses 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 whatclasses 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 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?”
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 whatclasses 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 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?”
What is there wanting in such eloquence as the foregoing? Wherein lies its deficiency of power to penetrate and subdue? Voltaire avowed that he found the sermons of Massillon to be among “the most agreeable books we have in our language. I love,” he went on, “to have them read to me at table.” There are things in Massillon that Voltaire should not have delighted to read, or to hear read—things that should have made him wince and revolt, if they did not make him yield and be converted. Was there fault in the preacher? Did he preach with professional, rather than with personal, zeal? Did his hearers feel themselves secretly acquitted by the man, at the self-same moment at which they were openly condemned by the preacher? It is impossible to say. But Massillon’s virtue was not lofty and regal; however it may have been free from just reproach. He was somewhat too capable of compliance. He was made bishop of Clermont, and his promotion cost him the anguish of having to helpconsecrate a scandalously unfit candidate as archbishop of Cambray. Massillon’s, however, is a fair, if not an absolutely spotless, fame. Hierarch as he was, and orthodox Catholic, this most elegant of eloquent orators had a liberal strain in his blood which allied him politically with the “philosophers” of the time succeeding. He, with Fénelon, and perhaps with Racine, makes seem less abrupt the transition in France from the age of absolutism to the age of revolt and final revolution. There is distinct advance in Massillon, and advance more than is accounted for by his somewhat later time, toward the easier modern spirit in Church and in State, from the high, unbending austerity of that antique pontiff and minister, Bossuet.
In dealing withSaurinwe are irresistibly reminded of the train of historic misfortunes that age after age have visited France. It bears eloquent, if tragic testimony to the enduring noble qualities of the French people, that they have survived so splendidly so much national suicide. What other great nation is there that has continued great and spilled so often her own best blood? The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, with its sequel of frightful hemorrhage in the loss to France of her Huguenots, the guillotine of the Revolution, the decimations of Napoleon, the madness of the Franco-German war, the Commune!
To such reflections we are forced; for Jacques Saurin preached his great sermons in French as a compulsory exile from France. He had a year or two’s experience as French preacher in London; but from his twenty-eighth year till he died at fifty-two he was pastor of the French church at The Hague in Holland.
Saurin’s living renown was great; and his renown has never been less, though it has been less resounding, since he died. This is as it could not but be; for the reputation of Saurin as preacher rested from the first on solid foundations that were not to be shaken. If he had been a loyal Roman Catholic, he would have been twinned with Bossuet, whomhe somewhat resembles, in the acclamations of general fame. It is far more in name than in merit that Bossuet surpasses him. Bossuet’s quasi-pontifical relation to the Gallican Church indeed engaged him in various activities which seemed to display a talent in him correspondingly more various than that of Saurin, who remained almost exclusively a preacher. But the difference is probably a difference of fortune rather than a difference of original gift. The intellect that expresses itself in Saurin’s sermons is certainly a spacious intellect. Saurin is in mere intellect as distinctly “great” as is Bossuet. In imagination, however, that attribute of genius as distinguished from talent, to Bossuet we suppose must be accorded superiority over Saurin.
Clearness, French clearness; order, French order; solidity of matter; sobriety of thought; soundness of doctrine; breadth of comprehension; sagacity and instructedness of interpretation; solemnity of inculcation; progress and cumulation of effect; strength and elevation, rather than grace and winningness, of style; address to the understanding, rather than appeal to the emotions; certitude of logic, rather than play of imagination; a theological, more than a practical, tendency of interest—such are the distinguishing characteristics of Saurin as preacher.
Sermons are literary products in which change from fashion to fashion of thought and of form makes itself felt more than in almost any other kind of literature. The sermons of one age are generally doomed to be obsolete in the age next following. But to this general rule Saurin’s sermons come near constituting an exception. They might, many of them, perhaps most of them, still be preached. This, certain pulpit plagiarists of a generation or two ago, are said to have learned.
The following extract will give our readers an idea how Saurin, toward the close of a discourse—having now done, for the occasion, with dispassionate argument—would follow up and press his hearer with deliberately vehement, unescapable oratoric harangue and appeal. His text is: “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Analyzing this,he states thus his second head of discourse: “Motives to virtue are superior to motives to vice.”
What [under the first head] I affirmed of all known truth, that its force is irresistible, I affirm, on the same principle, of all motives to virtue: the most hardened sinners cannot resist them if they attend to them; there is no other way of becoming insensible to them than to turn the eyes away from them....And where is the man so blinded as to digest the falsehoods which the motives to vice imply? Where is the wretch desperate enough to reason in this manner:“I love to be esteemed; I will, therefore, devote myself exclusively to acquiring the esteem of those men who, like me, will in a few days be devoured by worms, and whose ashes will in a few days, like my own, be mixed with the dust of the earth; but I will not take the least pains to obtain the approbation of those noble intelligences, of those sublime spirits, of those angels, of those seraphims, who are without ceasing around the throne of God; I will not take the least pains to have a share in those praises with which the great God will one day, in the sight of heaven and of earth, crown those who have been faithful to him.“I love glory; I will therefore apply myself exclusively to make the world say of me: That man has a taste quite exceptional in dress, his table is delicately served, there has never been either base blood or plebeian marriage in his family, nobody offends him with impunity, he permits none but a respectful approach; but I will never take the least pains to make envy itself say of me: That man fears God, he prefers his duty above all other things, he thinks there is more magnanimity in forgiving an affront than in revenging it, in being holy than in being noble in the world’s esteem, and so on.“I am very fond of pleasure; I will therefore give myself wholly up to gratify my senses, to lead a voluptuous life, to have the spectacle follow the feast, debauchery the spectacle, and so on; but I will never take the least pains to secure thatfullness of joywhich is atGod’s right hand, thatriver of pleasurewhereof he gives to drink to thosewho put their trust under the shadow of his wings.“I hate constraint and trouble; I will apply myself therefore exclusively to escape the idea of emotions of penitence, above all, the idea of prison cells, of exile, of the rack, of the stake; but I will brave the chains of darkness with their weight, the demons with their fury, hell with its torments, eternity with its horrors. I have made my decision; I consent to curse eternally the day of my birth, to look eternally upon annihilation as a blessing beyond price, to seek eternally for death without being able to find it, to vomit eternally blasphemies against my Creator, to hear eternally the howlings of the damned, to howl eternally with them, and tobe eternally, like them, the object of that sentence, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Once more, Where is the wretch desperate enough to digest these propositions? Yet these are the motives to vice.
What [under the first head] I affirmed of all known truth, that its force is irresistible, I affirm, on the same principle, of all motives to virtue: the most hardened sinners cannot resist them if they attend to them; there is no other way of becoming insensible to them than to turn the eyes away from them....
And where is the man so blinded as to digest the falsehoods which the motives to vice imply? Where is the wretch desperate enough to reason in this manner:
“I love to be esteemed; I will, therefore, devote myself exclusively to acquiring the esteem of those men who, like me, will in a few days be devoured by worms, and whose ashes will in a few days, like my own, be mixed with the dust of the earth; but I will not take the least pains to obtain the approbation of those noble intelligences, of those sublime spirits, of those angels, of those seraphims, who are without ceasing around the throne of God; I will not take the least pains to have a share in those praises with which the great God will one day, in the sight of heaven and of earth, crown those who have been faithful to him.
“I love glory; I will therefore apply myself exclusively to make the world say of me: That man has a taste quite exceptional in dress, his table is delicately served, there has never been either base blood or plebeian marriage in his family, nobody offends him with impunity, he permits none but a respectful approach; but I will never take the least pains to make envy itself say of me: That man fears God, he prefers his duty above all other things, he thinks there is more magnanimity in forgiving an affront than in revenging it, in being holy than in being noble in the world’s esteem, and so on.
“I am very fond of pleasure; I will therefore give myself wholly up to gratify my senses, to lead a voluptuous life, to have the spectacle follow the feast, debauchery the spectacle, and so on; but I will never take the least pains to secure thatfullness of joywhich is atGod’s right hand, thatriver of pleasurewhereof he gives to drink to thosewho put their trust under the shadow of his wings.
“I hate constraint and trouble; I will apply myself therefore exclusively to escape the idea of emotions of penitence, above all, the idea of prison cells, of exile, of the rack, of the stake; but I will brave the chains of darkness with their weight, the demons with their fury, hell with its torments, eternity with its horrors. I have made my decision; I consent to curse eternally the day of my birth, to look eternally upon annihilation as a blessing beyond price, to seek eternally for death without being able to find it, to vomit eternally blasphemies against my Creator, to hear eternally the howlings of the damned, to howl eternally with them, and tobe eternally, like them, the object of that sentence, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Once more, Where is the wretch desperate enough to digest these propositions? Yet these are the motives to vice.
To illustrate the point-blank directness, the almost excessive fidelity, amounting to something very like truculence, with which Saurin would train his guns and fire his broadsides into the faces and eyes of his hearers, let the following, our final citation, serve; we quote from the conclusion to a powerful sermon on infidelity:
Let us here put a period to this discourse. We turn to you, my brethren.... You congratulate yourselves for the most part,... on detesting infidelity, and on respecting religion. But shall we tell you, my brethren, how odious soever the men are whom we have just been describing, we know of others more odious still. There is a restriction in the judgment which the prophet pronounces on the first, when he calls them, in the words of my text, the most foolish and the most brutish among the people; and there are men who surpass them in brutality and in extravagance.Do not think we exceed the truth of the matter, or that we are endeavoring to obtain your attention by paradoxes. In all good faith, I speak as I think, I find more refinement, and even, if I may venture to say so, a less fund of corruption in men who, having resolved to abandon themselves to the torrent of their passions, strive to persuade themselves, either that there is no God in heaven, or that he pays no attention to what men do on earth; than in those who, believing in a God who sees them and heeds them, live as if they believed nothing of the sort. Infidels were not able to support, in their excesses, the idea of a benefactor outraged, of a Supreme Judge provoked to anger, of an eternal salvation neglected, of a hell braved,a lake burning with fire and brimstone, andsmoke ascending up for ever and ever. It was necessary, in order to give free course to their passions it was necessary for them to put far away from their eyes these terrifying objects, and to efface from their minds these overwhelming truths.But you, you who believe that there is a God in heaven, you who believe yourselves under his eye, and who insult him without remorse and without repentance, you who believe that this God holds the thunderbolt in his hand to crush sinners, and who live in sin, you who believe that there are devouring flames and chains of darkness, and who brave their horrors, you who believe the soul immortal, and who concern yourselves only with time; what forehead, what forehead of brass, is the one you wear!
Let us here put a period to this discourse. We turn to you, my brethren.... You congratulate yourselves for the most part,... on detesting infidelity, and on respecting religion. But shall we tell you, my brethren, how odious soever the men are whom we have just been describing, we know of others more odious still. There is a restriction in the judgment which the prophet pronounces on the first, when he calls them, in the words of my text, the most foolish and the most brutish among the people; and there are men who surpass them in brutality and in extravagance.
Do not think we exceed the truth of the matter, or that we are endeavoring to obtain your attention by paradoxes. In all good faith, I speak as I think, I find more refinement, and even, if I may venture to say so, a less fund of corruption in men who, having resolved to abandon themselves to the torrent of their passions, strive to persuade themselves, either that there is no God in heaven, or that he pays no attention to what men do on earth; than in those who, believing in a God who sees them and heeds them, live as if they believed nothing of the sort. Infidels were not able to support, in their excesses, the idea of a benefactor outraged, of a Supreme Judge provoked to anger, of an eternal salvation neglected, of a hell braved,a lake burning with fire and brimstone, andsmoke ascending up for ever and ever. It was necessary, in order to give free course to their passions it was necessary for them to put far away from their eyes these terrifying objects, and to efface from their minds these overwhelming truths.
But you, you who believe that there is a God in heaven, you who believe yourselves under his eye, and who insult him without remorse and without repentance, you who believe that this God holds the thunderbolt in his hand to crush sinners, and who live in sin, you who believe that there are devouring flames and chains of darkness, and who brave their horrors, you who believe the soul immortal, and who concern yourselves only with time; what forehead, what forehead of brass, is the one you wear!
One thing in just qualification of the praise due to Saurin for his pulpit eloquence requires to be added. When he attempts the figure of apostrophe, as he frequently does, personifying inanimate objects and addressing them in the way of oratoric appeal, he is very apt to produce a frigid effect, the absolute opposite of genuine eloquence. Nothing but imagination white-hot with passion justifies, in the use of the orator, the expedient of such apostrophe as this which Saurin affects. With Saurin, both the necessary imagination and the necessary passion seem somehow to fail; and he possessed neither the perfect judgment nor the perfect taste, nor yet the fine feeling, that might have chastised the audacities to which his ambition incited him. His rhetorically bold things he did in a certain cold-blooded way; so that, with him, what should have been the climax of oratoric effectiveness, or else not been at all, produces sometimes instead a reaction and recoil of disappointment. We thus indicate a shortcoming in Saurin which deposes this great preacher, one is compelled to admit, despite his remarkable merits, from the first into the second rank of orators.
Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant lines of French pulpit eloquence are continued down to our own day. Lacordaire, Père Félix, Père Hyacinthe, of the Catholics, Frédéric Monod, Adolph Monod, Coquerel, of the Protestants, are names worthy to be here set down; and it may be added that Eugène Bersier, deceased in 1889, challenges on the whole not unequal comparison with the men treated in this chapter for pulpit power. He may be described as a kind of nineteenth-century Bossuet, tempered to Massillon, among French Protestant preachers.
But there is no Louis XIV. now to cast over any great preachers, even of the Roman Catholics, the illusive, factitious, reflected glory of the person and court, the sentence and seal, of the “most illustrious sovereign of the world.”
The seventeenth-century sacred eloquence of France, the sacred eloquence, that is to say, of the “great” French age, will always remain a unique tradition in the history of the pulpit.
XIII.
FÉNELON.
1651-1715.
IfBossuet is to Frenchmen a synonym for sublimity, no less to them is Fénelon a synonym for saintliness. From the French point of view, one might say, “the sublime Bossuet,” “the saintly Fénelon,” somewhat as one says, “the learned Selden,” “the judicious Hooker.” It is as much a French delight to idealize Fénelon an archangel Raphael, affable and mild, as it is to glorify Bossuet a Michael in majesty and power.
But saintliness of character was in Fénelon commended to the world by equal charm of person and of genius. The words of Milton describing Eve might be applied, with no change but that of gender, to Fénelon, both the exterior and the interior man:
Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye,In every gesture dignity and love.
Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
The consent is general among those who saw Fénelon, and have left behind them their testimony, that alike in person, in character, and in genius, he was such as we thus describe him.
Twice, in his youth, he was smitten to the heart with a feeling of vocation to be a missionary. Both times he was thwarted by the intervention of friends. The second time, he wrote disclosing his half-romantic aspiration in a glowing letter of confidence and friendship to Bossuet, his senior by many years, but not yet become famous. Young Fénelon’s friend Bossuet was destined later to prove a bitter antagonist, almost a personal foe.
Until he was forty-two years old, François Fénelon livedin comparative retirement, nourishing his genius with study, with contemplation, with choice society. He experimented in writing verse. Not succeeding to his mind, he turned to prose composition, and, leading the way, in a new species of literature, for Rousseau, for Chateaubriand, for Lamartine, and for many others, to follow, went on writing what, in ceasing to be verse, did not cease to be poetry.
The great world will presently involve Fénelon in the currents of history. Louis XIV., grown old, and become as selfishly greedy now of personal salvation as all his life he had been selfishly greedy of personal glory, seeks that object of his soul by serving the Church in the wholesale conversion of Protestants. He revokes the Edict of Nantes, which had secured religious toleration for the realm, and proceeds to dragoon the Huguenots into conformity with the Roman Catholic Church. The reaction in public sentiment against such rigors grew a cry that had to be silenced. Fénelon was selected to visit the heretic provinces, and win them to willing submission. He stipulated that every form of coercion should cease, and went to conquer all with love. His success was remarkable. But not even Fénelon quite escaped the infection of violent zeal for the Church. It seems not to be given to any man to rise wholly superior to the spirit of the world in which he lives.
The luster of Fénelon’s name, luminous from the triumphs of his mission among the Protestants, was sufficient to justify the choice of this man, a man both by nature and by culture so ideally formed for the office as was he, to be tutor to the heir prospective of the French monarchy. The Duke of Burgundy, grandson to Louis XIV., was accordingly put under the charge of Fénelon to be trained for future kingship. Never, probably, in the history of mankind, has there occurred a case in which the victory of a teacher could be more illustrious than actually was the victory of Fénelon as teacher to this scion of the house of Bourbon. We shall be giving our readers a relishable taste of St. Simon, the celebrated memoir-writer of the age of Louis XIV., if out ofthe portrait in words, drawn by him from life, of Fénelon’s princely pupil, we transfer here a few strong lines to our pages. St. Simon says:
In the first place, it must be said that Monseigneur the Duke of Burgundy had by nature a most formidable disposition. He was passionate to the extent of wishing to dash to pieces his clocks when they struck the hour which called him to what he did not like, and of flying into the utmost rage against the rain if it interfered with what he wanted to do. Resistance threw him into paroxysms of fury. I speak of what I have often witnessed in his early youth. Moreover, an ungovernable impulse drove him into whatever indulgence, bodily or mental, was forbidden him. His sarcasm was so much the more cruel, as it was witty and piquant, and as it seized with precision upon every point open to ridicule. All this was sharpened by a vivacity of body and of mind that proceeded to the degree of impetuosity, and that during his early days never permitted him to learn any thing except by doing two things at once. Every form of pleasure he loved with a violent avidity, and all this with a pride and a haughtiness impossible to describe; dangerously wise, moreover, to judge of men and things, and to detect the weak point in a train of reasoning, and to reason himself more cogently and more profoundly than his teachers. But at the same time, as soon as his passion was spent, reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage was rekindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening itself against obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. The prodigy is, that in a very short time piety and grace made of him a different being, and transformed faults so numerous and so formidable into virtues exactly opposite.
In the first place, it must be said that Monseigneur the Duke of Burgundy had by nature a most formidable disposition. He was passionate to the extent of wishing to dash to pieces his clocks when they struck the hour which called him to what he did not like, and of flying into the utmost rage against the rain if it interfered with what he wanted to do. Resistance threw him into paroxysms of fury. I speak of what I have often witnessed in his early youth. Moreover, an ungovernable impulse drove him into whatever indulgence, bodily or mental, was forbidden him. His sarcasm was so much the more cruel, as it was witty and piquant, and as it seized with precision upon every point open to ridicule. All this was sharpened by a vivacity of body and of mind that proceeded to the degree of impetuosity, and that during his early days never permitted him to learn any thing except by doing two things at once. Every form of pleasure he loved with a violent avidity, and all this with a pride and a haughtiness impossible to describe; dangerously wise, moreover, to judge of men and things, and to detect the weak point in a train of reasoning, and to reason himself more cogently and more profoundly than his teachers. But at the same time, as soon as his passion was spent, reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage was rekindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening itself against obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. The prodigy is, that in a very short time piety and grace made of him a different being, and transformed faults so numerous and so formidable into virtues exactly opposite.
St. Simon attributes to Fénelon “every virtue under heaven”; but his way was to give to God rather than to man the praise of the remarkable change which, during Fénelon’s charge of the Duke of Burgundy, came over the character of the prince.
The grandfather survived the grandson; and it was never put to the stern proof of historical experiment whether Fénelon had indeed turned out one Bourbon entirely different from all the other members, earlier or later, of that royal line.
Before, however, the Duke of Burgundy was thus snatched away from the perilous prospect of a throne, his beloved teacher was parted from him, not indeed by death, but bywhat, to the archbishop’s susceptible and suffering spirit, was worse than death, by “disgrace.” The disgrace was such as has ever since engaged for its subject the interest, the sympathy, and the admiration of mankind. Fénelon lost the royal favor. That was all—for the present; but that was much. He was banished from court, and he ceased to be preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. The king, in signal severity, used his own hand to strike Fénelon’s name from the list of the household of his grandson and heir. The archbishop—for Fénelon had previously been made archbishop of Cambray—returned into his diocese as into an exile. But his cup of humiliation was by no means full. Bossuet will stain his own glory by following his exiled former pupil and friend, with hostile pontifical rage, to crush him in his retreat.
The occasion was a woman, a woman with the charm of genius and of exalted character, a Christian, a saint, but a mystic—it was Madame Guyon. Madame Guyon taught that it was possible to love God for himself alone, purely and disinterestedly. Fénelon received the doctrine, and Madame Guyon was patronized by Madame de Maintenon. Bossuet scented heresy. He was too much a “natural man” to understand Madame Guyon. The king was like the prelate, his minister, in spirit, and in consequent incapacity. It was resolved that Fénelon must condemn Madame Guyon. But Fénelon would not. He was very gentle, very conciliatory, but in fine he would not. Controversy ensued, haughty, magisterial, domineering, on the part of Bossuet; on the part of Fénelon, meek, docile, suasive. The world wondered, and watched the duel. Fénelon finally did what king James’s translators misleadingly make Job wish that his adversary had done—he wrote a book, “The Maxims of the Saints.” In this book, he sought to show that the accepted and even canonized teachers of the Church had taught the doctrine for which, in his own case and in the case of Madame Guyon, condemnation was now invoked. Bossuet was pope at Paris: and he, in full presence, denounced to the monarchthe heresy of Fénelon. At this moment of crisis for Fénelon, it happened that news was brought him of the burning of his mansion at Cambray with all his books and manuscripts. It will always be remembered that Fénelon only said: “It is better so than if it had been the cottage of a poor laboring-man.”
Madame de Maintenon, till now his friend, with perfect frigid facility separated herself from the side of the accused. The controversy was carried to Rome, where at length Fénelon’s book was condemned—condemned mildly, but condemned. The pope is said to have made the remark that Fénelon erred by loving God too much, and Fénelon’s antagonists by loving their fellow-man too little. Fénelon bowed to the authority of the Church, and meekly in his own cathedral confessed his error. It was a logical thing for him, as loyal Catholic, to do; and he did it with a beautiful grace of humility. The Protestant spirit, however, rebels on his behalf, and finds it difficult even to admire the manner in which was done by him a thing that seems so unfit to have been done by him at all. Bossuet did not long survive his inglorious triumph over so much sanctity of personal character, over so much difficult and beautiful height of doctrinal and practical instruction to virtue. Fénelon seems to have been reported as preaching a funeral sermon on the dead prelate. “I have wept and prayed,” he wrote to a friend, “for this old instructor of my youth; but it is not true that I celebrated his obsequies in my cathedral, and preached his funeral sermon. Such affectation, you know, is foreign to my nature.” The iron must have gone deep, to wring from that gentle bosom even so much cry as this of wounded feeling.
It is hard to tell what might now have befallen Fénelon, in the way of good fortune—he might even have been recalled to court, and re-installed in his office of tutor to the prince—had not a sinister incident, not to have been looked for, at an inopportune moment occurred. The “Telemachus” appeared in print, and kindled a sudden flame of popular feeling, which instantly spread in universal conflagration over the face ofEurope. This composition of Fénelon’s the author had written to convey, under a form of quasi-poetical fiction, lessons of wisdom in government to the mind of his royal pupil. The existence of the manuscript book would seem to have been intended to be a secret from the king—indeed, from almost every one, except the pupil himself for whose use it was made. But a copyist proved false to his trust, and furnished a copy of “Telemachus” to a printer in Holland, who lost no time in publishing a book so likely to sell. But the sale of the book surpassed all expectation. Holland not only, but Belgium, Germany, France, and England multiplied copies as fast as they could; still Europe could not get copies as fast as she wanted them.
The secret of such popularity did not lie simply in the literary merits of “Telemachus.” It lay more in a certain interpretation that the book was supposed to bear. “Telemachus” was understood to be a covert criticism of Louis XIV., and of the principle of absolute monarchy embodied in him. This imputed intention of the book could not fail to become known at Versailles. The result, of course, was fatal, and finally fatal, to the prospects, whatever these may have been, of Fénelon’s restoration to favor at court. The archbishop thenceforward was left to do in comparative obscurity the duties of his episcopal office in his diocese of Cambray. He devoted himself, with exemplary and touching fidelity, to the interests of his flock, loving them and loved by them, until he died. It was an entirely worthy and adequate employment of his powers. The only abatement needful from the praise to be bestowed upon his behavior in this pastoral relation is that he suffered himself sometimes to think of his position as one of “disgrace.” His reputation meantime for holy character and conduct was European. His palace at Cambray, hospitably open ever to the resort of suffering need, indeed almost his whole diocese, lying on the frontier of France, was by mutual consent of contending armies, treated in war as a kind of mutual inviolable ground, invested with privilege of sanctuary. It was an instructiveexample of the serene and beautiful ascendency sometimes divinely accorded to illustrious personal goodness.
There had been a moment, even subsequently to the affair of the “Telemachus” publication, when it looked as if, after long delay, a complete worldly triumph for Fénelon was assured, and was near. The father of the Duke of Burgundy died, and nothing then seemed to stand between Fénelon’s late pupil and the throne, nothing but the precarious life of an aged monarch, visibly approaching the end. The Duke of Burgundy, through all changes, had remained unchangingly fast in his affectionate loyalty to Fénelon. Sternly forbidden, by the jealous and watchful king, his grandfather, to communicate with his old teacher, he yet had found means to send to Fénelon, from time to time, reassuring signals of his trust and love. Fénelon was now, in all eyes, the predestined prime minister of a new reign about to commence. Through devoted friends of his own, near to the person of the prince at court, Fénelon sent minutes of advice to his pupil, which outlined a whole beneficent policy of liberal monarchical rule. A new day seemed dawning for France. The horrible reaction of the Regency and of Louis XV. might, perhaps, have been averted, and, with that spared to France, the revolution itself might have been accomplished without the Revolution. But it was not to be. The Duke of Burgundy first buried his wife, and then, within a few days, followed her himself to the grave. He died sincerely rejoicing that God had taken him away from the dread responsibility of reigning.
“All my ties are broken,” mourned Fénelon; “there is no longer any thing to bind me to the earth.” In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but two or three years. When he died, his sovereign, gloomy with well-grounded apprehension for the future of his realm, said, with tardy revival of recognition for the virtue that had perished in Fénelon: “Here was a man who could have served us well under the disasters by which my kingdom is about to be assailed.”
Fénelon’s literary productions are various; but they allhave the common character of being works written for the sake of life, rather than for the sake of literature. They were inspired each by a practical purpose, and adapted each to a particular occasion. His treatise on the “Education of Girls” was written for the use of a mother who desired instruction on the topic from Fénelon. His argument on the “Being of a God” was prepared as a duty of his preceptorship to the prince. But the one book of Fénelon, which was an historical event when it appeared, and which stands an indestructible classic in literature, is the “Telemachus.” It remains for us briefly to give some idea of this book.
The first thing to be said is, that those are mistaken who suppose themselves to have obtained a true idea of “Telemachus” from having partly read it at school, as an exercise in French. The essence of the work lies beyond those few opening pages to which the exploration of school-boys and school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece of Fénelon is much more than a charming piece of romantic and sentimental poetry in prose. It is a kind of epic, indeed, like the “Odyssey,” only written in rhythmical prose instead of rhythmical verse; but, unlike the “Odyssey,” it is an idyllic epic written with an ulterior purpose of moral and political didactics. It was designed as a manual of instruction—instruction made delightful to a prince—to inculcate the duties incumbent on a sovereign.
Telemachus, our readers will remember, was the son of Ulysses. Fénelon’s story relates the adventures encountered by Telemachus in search for his father, so long delayed on his return from Troy to Ithaca. Telemachus is imagined by Fénelon to be attended by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, masked from his recognition, as well as from the recognition of others, under the form of an old man. Minerva, of course, constantly imparts the wisest counsel to young Telemachus, who has his weaknesses, as had the young Duke of Burgundy, but who is essentially well-disposed, as Fénelon hoped his royal pupil would finally turn out to be. Nothing can exceed the urbanity and grace with which the delicatebusiness is conducted by Fénelon, of teaching a bad prince, with a very bad example set him by his grandfather, to be a good king. The style in which the story is told, and in which the advice is insinuated, is exquisite, is beyond praise. The “soft delicious” stream of sound runs on, as from a fountain, and like “linked sweetness long drawn out.” Never had prose a flow of melody more luscious. It is perpetual ravishment to the ear. The invention, too, of incident is fruitful, while the landscape and coloring are magical for beauty. We give a few extracts, to be read with that application in mind to Louis XIV., and to the state of France, which, when the book was first printed, gave it such an exciting interest in the eyes of Europe. Telemachus, after the manner of Æneas to Queen Dido, is relating to the goddess Calypso, into whose island he has come, the adventures that have previously befallen him. He says that he, with Mentor (Minerva in disguise), found himself in Crete. Mentor had been there before, and was ready to tell Telemachus all about the country. Telemachus was naturally interested to learn respecting the Cretan monarchy. Mentor, he says, informed him as follows: