No More Learning

Do we, when its treasure
has fallen from our arms, say of the term of human years, “It
has been enough ” ? — that the possibilities are spent; that the
cycle of the soul is complete; and that with larger time and
renovated opportunity, it could learn and love and serve
more? Ah no! to deep and reverent affection there is an aspect
under which death must ever appear unnatural; and its cloud,
after lingering awhile till the perishable elements are hid, grows
transparent as we gaze, and half shows, half veils, a glorious
image in the depth beyond. Tell me not that affection is blind,
and magnifies its object in the dark. Affection blind! I say there
is nothing else that can see; that can find its way through the
windings of the soul it loves, and know how its graces lie. The
cynic thinks that all the fair look of our humanity is on the out-
side, inasmuch as each mind will put on its best dress for com-
pany; and if there he detects some littleness and weakness, which
perhaps his own cold eye brings to the surface, there can be
only what is worse within. Dupe that he is of his own wit! he
has not found out that all the evil spirits of human nature flock
to him; that his presence brings them to the surface from their
recesses in every heart, and drives the blessed angels to hide
themselves away: for who would own a reverence, who tell a
tender grief, before that hard ungenial gaze? Wherever he moves,
he empties the space around him of its purest elements: with his
low thought he roofs it from the heavenly light and the sweet
air; and then complains of the world as a close-breathed and


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9766
JAMES MARTINEAU
stifling place. It is not the critic, but the lover, who can know
the real contents and scale of a human life; and that interior
estimate, as it is the truer, is always the higher: the closest look
becomes the gentlest too; and domestic faith, struck by bereave-
ment, easily transfigures the daily familiar into an image con-
genial with a brighter world.
Our faculties and affections are graduated then to objects
greater, better, fairer, and more enduring, than the order of
nature gives us here. They demand a scale and depth of being
which outwardly they do not meet, yet inwardly they are the
organ for apprehending. Hence a certain glorious sorrow must
ever mingle with our life: all our actual is transcended by our
possible; our visionary faculty is an overmatch for our experi-
ence; like the caged bird, we break ourselves against the bars
of the finite, with a wing that quivers for the infinite. To stifle
this struggle, to give up the higher aspiration, and be content
with making our small lodgings snug, is to cut off the summit
of our nature, and live upon the flat of a mutilated humanity.
To let the struggle be, however it may sadden us, to trust the
pressure of the soul towards diviner objects and more holy life,
and measure by it the invisible ends to which we tend,- this
is true faith; the unfading crown of an ideal and progressive
nature. It is indeed, and ever must be, notwithstanding the
light that circles it, a crown of thorns; and the brow that wears
it can
never wholly cease to bleed. A nature which reaches
forth to the perfect from a station in the imperfect must always
have a pathetic tinge in its experience. Think not to escape it
by any change of scene, though from the noisy streets to the
eternal City of God. There is but One for whom there is no
interval between what he thinks and what he is; in whom there.
fore is “light, and no darkness at all. ” For us, vain is the
dream of a shadowless world, with no interruption of brilliancy,
no remission of joy. Were our heaven never overcast, yet we
meet the brightest morning only in escape from recent night;
and the atmosphere of our souls, never passing from ebb and
flow of love into a motionless constancy, must always break the
white eternal beams into a colored and a tearful glory. Whence
is that tincture of sanctity which Christ has given to sorrow, and
which makes his form at once the divinest and most pathetic in
the world ? It is that he has wakened by his touch the illimit-
able aspirations of our bounded nature, and flung at once into


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JAMES MARTINEAU
9767
our thought and affection a holy beauty, a divine Sonship, into
which we can only slowly grow. And this is a condition which
can never cease to be. Among the true children of the Highest,
who would wish to be free from it? Let the glorious burden
lie! How can we be angry at a sorrow which is the birth-pang
of a diviner life?
From this strife, of infinite capacity with finite conditions,
spring all the ideal elements which mingle with the matter of
our being. Nor is it our conscience only that betrays the secret
of this double life. Our very memory too, though it seems but
to photograph the actual, proves to have the artist's true select-
ing power, and knows how to let the transient fall away, and
leave the imperishable undimmed and clear. As time removes
us from each immediate experience, some freshening dew, some
wave of regeneration, brightens all the colors and washes off the
dust; so that often we discover the essence only when the acci-
dents are gone, and the present must die from us ere it can
truly live. The work of yesterday, with its place and hour, has
but a dull look when we recall it. But the scene of our childish
years,—the homestead, it may be, with its quaint garden and
its orchard grass; the bridge across the brook from which we
dropped the pebbles and watched the circling waves; the school-
house in the field, whose bell broke up the game and quickened
every lingerer's feet; the yew-tree path where we crossed the
church-yard, with arm round the neck of a companion now be-
neath the sod, - how soft the light, how tender the shadows, in
which that picture lies! how musical across the silence are the
tones it Aings! The glare, the heat, the noise, the care, are
gone; and the sunshine sleeps, and the waters ripple, and the
lawns are green, as if it were in Paradise. But in these minor
religions of life, it is the personal images of companions loved
and lost that chiefly keep their watch with us, and sweeten and
solemnize the hours. The very child that misses the mother's
appreciating love is introduced, by his first tears, to that thirst
of the heart which is the early movement of piety, ere yet it has
got its wings. And I have known the youth who through long
years of harsh temptation, and then short years of wasting decline,
has, from like memory, never lost the sense as of a guardian angel
near, and lived in the enthusiasm, and died into the embrace,
of the everlasting holiness. In the heat and struggle of mid-life,
it is a severe but often a purifying retreat to be lifted into the


## p. 9768 (#176) ###########################################

9768
JAMES MARTINEAU
lonely observatory of memory, above the fretful illusions of the
moment, and in presence once more of the beauty and the sanc-
tity of life. The voiceless counsels that look through the vision-
ary eyes of our departed steal into us behind our will, and sweep
the clouds away, and direct us on a wiser path than we should
know to choose. If age ever gains any higher wisdom, it is
chiefly that it sits in a longer gallery of the dead, and sees
the noble and saintly faces in further perspective and more vari-
ous throng. The dim abstracted look that often settles on the
features of the old, - what means it ? Is it a
mere fading of
the life ? an absence, begun already, from the drama of humanity ?
a deafness to the cry of its woes and the music of its affections ?
Not always so: the seeming forgetfulness may be but brightened
memory; and if the mists lie on the outward present, and make
it as a gathering night, the more brilliant is the lamp within
that illuminates the figures of the past, and shows again, by their
flitting shadows, the plot in which they moved and fell.
It is through such natural experiences — the treasured sanctities
of every true life — that God “discovereth to us deep things out
of darkness, and turneth into light the shadow of death. ” They
constitute the lesser religions of the soul; and say what you will,
they come and go with the greater, and put forth leaf and blos-
som from the same root. We are so constituted throughout-in
memory, in affection, in conscience, in intellect — that we cannot
rest in the literal aspect of things as they materially come to
No sooner are they in our possession, than we turn them
into some crucible of thought, which saves their essence and pre-
cipitates their dross; and their pure idea emerges as our lasting
treasure, to be remembered, loved, willed, and believed. What
we thus gain, then,- is it a falsification ? or a revelation? What
we discard,- is it the sole constant, which alone we ought to
keep? or the truly perishable, which we deservedly let slip? If
the vision which remains with us is fictitious, then is there a
fatal misadjustment between the actual universe and the powers
given us for interpreting it; so that precisely what we recognize
as highest in us — the human distinctions of art, of love, of duty,
of faith — must be treated as palming off upon us a system of
intellectual frauds. But if the idealizing analysis be true, it is
only that our faculties have not merely passive receptivity, but
discriminative insight, are related to the permanent as well as to
the transient, and are at once prophetic and retrospective; and
us.


## p. 9769 (#177) ###########################################

JAMES MARTINEAU
9769
thus are qualified to report to us, not only what is, but what
ought to be and is to be. Did we apply the transforming imagi-
nation only to the present, so as to discern in it a better possi-
bility beyond, it might be regarded as simply a provision for the
progressive improvement of this world, - an explanation still carry-
ing in itself the thought of a beneficent Provider. But we glorify
no less what has been than what now is; and see it in a light in
which it never appeared beneath the sun: and this is either an
illusion or a prevision.
The problem whether the transfiguring powers of the mind
serve upon us an imposture or open to us a divine vision, carries
in its answer the whole future of society, the whole peace and
nobleness of individual character. High art, high morals, high
faith, are impossible among those who do not believe their own
inspirations, but only court and copy them for pleasure or profit.
And for great lives, and stainless purity, and holy sorrow, and
surrendering trust, the souls of men must pass through all vain
semblances, and touch the reality of an eternal Righteousness
and a never-wearied Love.


## p. 9770 (#178) ###########################################

9770
ANDREW MARVELL
(1621-1678)
»
ONDREW MARVELL has been described as of medium height,
sturdy and thick-set, with bright dark eyes, and pleasing,
rather reserved expression.
He was born in 1621, at Winestead, near Hull, in Yorkshire. His
father was master of the grammar school, and there Andrew was pre-
pared for Trinity College, Cambridge. But a boyish escapade led to
his expulsion before the completion of his university course, and for
several years he lived abroad; visiting France, Holland, Spain, and
Italy, and improving his mind (to very
good purpose, as his friend John Milton
said admiringly. He returned to become
tutor to Lord Fairfax's young daughter, and
lived at Nun Appleton near Hull. He was
an ardent lover of nature, finding rest and
refreshment in its color and beauty, noting
the lilt of a bird or the texture of a blos-
som with a happy zest which recalls the
songs of the Elizabethans. Much of his
pastoral verse was written at this period.
But his energetic nature
tired of
country calm. His connection with Lord
ANDREW MARVELL Fairfax had made him known in Round-
head circles, and he left Nun Appleton,
appointed by Cromwell tutor to his young ward Mr. Dutton, and
afterwards engaged in politics. His native Hull elected him to Par-
liament three times; and he is said to have been the last member to
receive wages — two shillings a day — for his services. So well did
he satisfy his constituents that they continued him a pension until
his death in 1678. His public career was distinguished for fearless
integrity; and an often quoted instance of this describes Lord Treas-
urer Danby sent by Charles II. to seek out the poet in his poverty-
stricken lodgings off the Strand, with enticing offers to join the court
party. These Marvell stoutly declined; although the story adds that
as soon as his flattering visitor had gone he was forced to send out
for the loan of a guinea.
Marvell's satiric prose was too bitter and too personal not to
arouse great animosity, and he was often forced to circulate it in
D

soon
-


## p. 9771 (#179) ###########################################

ANDREW MARVELL
9771
verse.
manuscript or have it secretly printed. The vigorous style suggests
Swift; and mingled with coarse invective and frequent brutalities
there is sledge-hammer force of wit, — much of which, however, is
lost to the modern reader from the fact that the issues involved are
now forgotten.
The great objects of Marvell's veneration were Cromwell and Mil-
ton. He knew them personally, was the associate of Milton at the
latter's request, and these master minds inspired some of his finest
He has been called “the poet of the Protectorate”; and per-
haps no one has spoken more eloquently upon Cromwell than he in
his Horatian Ode) and Death of Cromwell. It is interesting to
note that Milton and Cromwell admired and respected Marvell's
talents, and that the former suggested in all sincerity that he himself
might find matter for envy in the achievement of the lesser poet.
Marvell was eminently afflicted with the gift of wit or ingenuity
much prized in his time,” says Goldwin Smith. His fanciful artificial-
ities, reflecting the contemporary spirit of Waller and Cowley, are
sometimes tedious to modern taste. But in sincerer moods he could
write poems whose genuine feeling, descriptive charm, and artistic
skill are still as effective as ever.
THE GARDEN
HⓇ
ow vainly men themselves amaze,
To win the palm, the oak, or bays:
And their incessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb, or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close,
To weave the garlands of repose.
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear ?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow;
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.


## p. 9772 (#180) ###########################################

9772
ANDREW MARVELL
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress's name.
Little, alas! they know or heed,
How far these beauties her exceed!
Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness —
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find:
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings;
And till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was the happy garden state,
While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet ?


## p. 9773 (#181) ###########################################

ANDREW MARVELL
9773
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises are in one,
To live in paradise alone.
How well the skillful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new!
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ?
THE EMIGRANTS IN BERMUDAS
HERE the remote Bermudas ride
In th' ocean's bosom, unespied -
From a small boat that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song :-
WI
What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own ?
Where he the huge sea monsters wracks
That lift the deep upon their backs,
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms and prelate's rage.
He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows;
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples, — plants of such a price
No tree could ever bear them twice,-
With cedars, chosen by his hand
From Lebanon, he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.


## p. 9774 (#182) ###########################################

9774
ANDREW MARVELL
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
Oh, let our voice his praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault;
Which then, perhaps, rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay.
Thus they sang, in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.
THE MOWER TO THE GLOW-WORMS
Y"
E LIVING lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate!
Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no other end
Than to presage the grass's fall!
Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray!
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come;
For she my mind hath so displaced,
That I shall never find my home.
THE MOWER'S SONG
M
Y MIND was once the true survey
Of all these meadows fresh and gay:
And in the greenness of the grass
Did see its hopes as in a glass :
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.


## p. 9775 (#183) ###########################################

ANDREW MARVELL
9775
But these, while I with sorrow pine,
Grew more luxuriant still and fine;
That not one blade of grass you spied
But had a flower on either side:
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
Unthankful meadows, could you so
A fellowship so true forego,
And in your gaudy May-games meet,
While I lay trodden under feet?
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
But what you in compassion ought,
Shall now by my revenge be wrought;
And flowers, and grass, and I, and all,
Will in one common ruin fall:
For Juliana comes, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
And thus ye meadows, which have been
Companions of my thoughts more green,
Shall now the heraldry become
With which I shall adorn my tomb:
For Juliana comes, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
THE PICTURE OF T. C.
IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS
SP
EE with what simplicity
This nymph begins her golden days!
In the green grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair aspect tames
The wilder flowers, and gives them names;
But only with the roses plays,
And them does tell
What color best becomes them, and what smell.
Who can foretell for what high cause
This darling of the gods was born ?


## p. 9776 (#184) ###########################################

9776
ANDREW MARVELL
See! this is she whose chaster laws
The wanton Love shall one day fear,
And under her command severe,
See his bow broke and ensigns torn.
Happy who can
Appease this virtuous enemy of inan!
Oh, then let me in time compound
And parley with those conquering eyes,
Ere they have tried their force to wound,-
Ere with their glancing wheels they drive
In triumph over hearts that strive,
And them that yield but more despise:
Let me be laid
Where I may see the glory from some shade.
Meanwhile, whilst every verdant thing
Itself does at thy beauty charm,
Reform the errors of the spring:
Make that the tulips may have share
Of sweetness, seeing they are fair;
And roses of their thorns disarm;
But most procure
That violets may a longer age endure.
But oh, young beauty of the woods,
Whom Nature courts with fruit and flowers,
Gather the flowers, but spare the buds,
Lest Flora, angry at thy crime
To kill her infants in their prime,
Should quickly make the example yours;
And ere we see,
Nip in the blossom all our hopes in thee.


## p. 9777 (#185) ###########################################

9777
MASQUES
BY ERNEST RHYS
ome of the prettiest things in all literature lie hidden and
half forgotten in the “masques” and “triumphs” to be found
in the old quartos and dusty folios of the early seventeenth
century. Lord Bacon unbent to praise them; Milton and Ben Jonson
wrote them; Campion used both his music and his poetry upon them;
Inigo Jones lent them his art. These are famous names, and in a
brief account one must keep to the great craftsmen who worked in
that way; but it is fair to remember too the number of less known
writers who left things of the kind, imperfect as whole performances,
but full of such effects and pleasant passages as well reward the
students and lovers of old poetry.
Among the poets who have not come popularly into the first or
second rank, Samuel Daniel — «the well-languaged Daniel,” as he has
been called — has written exquisitely parts and passages in this kind.
Daniel, it may be recalled, besides writing plays on a classical Senecan
model, very remarkable and exceptional in the literature of the time,
wrote a very convincing retort in his Defence of Rhyme) to Cam-
pion's attack on its use in English poetry. The prose Defence had
its verse counterpart in Musophilus); in whose terse lines may be
found some that may grow proverbial, as e. g. :-
«While timorous knowledge stands considering,
Audacious ignorance hath done the deed. ”
Something of the same idiomatic force of expression may be found
in his masques and in his plays. In his masque of 'Tethys's Festival,
or the Queen's Wake,' which was celebrated at Whitehall in 1610, and
which like so many of Ben Jonson's masques owed a moiety at least
of their effect to the genius of Inigo Jones, -as becomes a play
devoted to Tethys, Queen of Ocean, and her nymphs, we find that
« The Scene it selfe was a Port or Haven, with Bulworkes at the entrance,
and the figure of a Castle commaunding a fortified towne: within this Port were
many Ships, small and great, seeming to lie at anchor, some neerer, and some
further off, according to perspective: beyond all appeared the Horizon or ter-
mination of the Sea, which seemed to moove with a gentle gale, and many
Sayles lying, some to come into the Port, and others passing out. From this
Scene issued Zephyrus, with eight Naydes, Nymphs of fountaines, and two
Tritons sent from Tethys. ”
XVII-612


## p. 9778 (#186) ###########################################

9778
MASQUES
Then followed songs and dances, and a change of scene accom-
plished during a wonderful circular dance of mirrors and lights,
devised by Inigo Jones.
“After this, Tethys rises, and with her Nymphes performes her second
daunce, and then reposes her againe upon the Mount, entertained with another
song:-
“Are they shadowes that we see ?
And can shadowes pleasure give?
Pleasures onely shadowes bee
Cast by bodies we conceive;
And are made the things we deeme,
In those figures which they seeme.
“But these pleasures vanish fast,
Which by shadowes are exprest:
Pleasures are not, if they last;
In their passing is their best.
Glory is most bright and gay
In a flash, and so away. ”
Another poet and playwright of a distinctly lower rank than Dan-
iel, and yet a better writer perhaps than we now usually deem him,
- Sir William Davenant, - also wrote masques in conjunction with
Inigo Jones. Whether it was that Inigo had a good and inspiring
influence on the Oxford vintner's son, whom old report has associated
now and again with Shakespeare himself, certainly Davenant is found
quite at his most interesting pitch in such masques as “The Temple
of Love,' written some twenty-four years after Daniel's "Tethys's
Festival,' and presented by the “Queenes Majesty and her Ladies at
Whitehall, on Shrove Tuesday 1634. " The Queen was Henrietta
Maria, wife of Charles I. There is a certain quaintness in the concep-
tion of this masque, in which «Divine Poesie,” who is called “the
Secretary of Nature in the Argument, plays a prominent part. She
appears in the masque itself as “a beautiful woman, her garment
sky-color, set all with stars of gold, her head crowned with laurel, a
spangled veil hanging down behind,” a swan at her side, attended by
the Greek poets. For high-priest she has Orpheus, who is seen most
picturesquely in the following scene:-
>>>
«Out of a Creeke came waving forth a Barque of a gracious Antique de-
signe, adorned with Sculpture finishing in Scrowles, that on the poope had for
Ornament a great Masque head of a Sea-god; and all the rest enriched with
embost worke touched with silver and gold. In the midst of this Barque sate
Orpheus with his Harpe; he wore a white robe girt, on his shoulders was a
mantle of carnation, and his head crowned with a laurell garland; with him,
other persons in habits of Sea-men as pilots and guiders of the Barque; he
playing one straine was answered with the voyces and instruments.


## p. 9779 (#187) ###########################################

MASQUES
9779
THE SONG
HEARKE! Orpheus is a Sea-man growne;
No winds of late have rudely blowne,
Nor waves their troubled heads advance!
His Harpe hath made the winds so mild,
They whisper now as reconciled;
The waves are soothed into a dance. )
Obviously much of the picturesqueness of such scenes was due to
the fine art of Inigo Jones. But we have to remember that music too
was an essential part; and this brings us to the conclusion that in
the masque, the arts all meet and combine in close accord. Paint-
ing and poetry, music and dancing, — nay, even architecture and
sculpture, have their allotted uses in it. For, to take sculpture, not
only does the devising and posing of the masquers and their draper-
ies seem as much a sculptor's as a painter's prerogative, but in the
old masques the device of living statues was a common one. Take
for example the Masque of the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn,' by Fran-
cis Beaumont:-
.
«The statues were attired in cases of gold and silver close to their bodies,
faces, hands, and feet, - nothing seen but gold and silver, as if they had been
solid images of metal; tresses of hair,
girdles and small aprons of
oaken leaves, as if they had been carved or molded out of the metal. At
their coming, the music changed from violins to hautboys, cornets, etc. ; and
the air of the music was utterly turned into a soft time, with drawing notes,
excellently expressing their natures, . and the statues placed in such
several postures · as was very graceful, besides the novelty. ”
This is enough to give an idea of the charm, in daintily mingled
effects of color and music, which exists in this realm of masques and
pageants; which is wide enough to include such pure poetry as Mil-
ton's Comus,' and such splendid scenes of State as the field of the
Cloth of Gold. A pleasant realm to wander in, which leaves one
haunted indeed by such sights and sounds as those of the Dance of
the Stars, so frequently introduced, and the song that attended its
progress :-
«Shake off your heavy trance,
And leap into a dance,
Such as no mortals use to tread;
Fit only for Apollo
To play to, for the moon to lead,
And all the stars to follow. )
Ernen Rhus
thus


## p. 9780 (#188) ###########################################

9780
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
(1663–1742)
BY J. F. BINGHAM
HE subject of this sketch, the celebrated Bishop of Clermont,
was the last of the three greatest preachers of the great
age of pulpit eloquence in France — the age, as Voltaire
has observed, probably the greatest in pulpit oratory of all time.
Massillon, by the consensus of the world, has been adjudged the
greatest of the great three, in the region of the pathetic, or persua-
sion by the resource of emotion, or in still
other words, as a preacher; that is, in the
power of stirring the hearts and moving
the passions of multitudes of men towards
that which all men know to be the noblest
and best, whatever the practice of their
lives may be.
Bossuet, the monarch of the pulpit,
moved on with a magnificent and thunder-
ing tread, trampling down all opposition;
in a dignified and elegant fury, subduing
all things to his imperial will. Bourdaloue,
the Jesuit and incomparable logician, a com-
J. B. MASSILLON batant by far more skillful than even Bos-
suet, with no flourish of trumpets, brought
up the irresistible battalions of arguments, marshaled with matchless
skill, swiftly succeeding one another with an unerring aim, all in
fighting undress, without waving plumes or the clank of glittering
trappings or the frippery of gilded lace and pompous orders, but with
victory written on every banner; and when the hour of conflict was
over, stood on a field strewed with the wrecks of every adversary.
Massillon, coming immediately after these giants of a world-wide
renown, while yet the air was ringing of their hitherto unequaled
achievements, - with the great advantage, indeed, of being offered
the opportunity of learning much from their skill, - yet struck out
a wholly new method for himself.
Each of the three evinced enor-
mous native oratorical talent. Each had acquired and mastered what-
ever the schools can furnish of rhetorical skill and finish; and this is
much. But Massillon evinced an enormous superiority in that which



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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
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was a peculiarity of his own and it was a peculiarity of measure-
less consequence. He evinced a moral constitution more subtle and
more refined than either; a knowledge of the secret depths of the
human heart more profound; and a certain sympathetic power, inde-
scribable in words, but infinitely effective in stirring the emotions and
rousing the passions of the hearer into an irresistible conflict in his
soul with his own perverse inclinations: while at the same moment
he was enchanting him with the purest and most perfect graces of
style; and was sweetly, almost unconsciously, leading him along, not
able, not wishing, to resist; or even affrighting him by a sudden cry
of alarm, as sincere and tender as that of a mother frightening her
infant away from the wrong way into the right.
In respect of purity and beauty of style, Fénelon, and Fénelon alone
of all preachers, might come into competition with him; but Fénelon
having ordered his sermons to be burned, we have little or nothing
of his in this line.
It is a happy consequence of this extreme elegance, this match-
less purity and beauty of style,- and it is one of the rarest in the
world, in the case of the great preachers, — that after deducting the
necessary and unspeakable loss of his majestic presence, his impress-
ive manner, his wonderfully lovely voice, his perfect and bewitch-
ing elocution, his printed sermons were read by the most refined of
his contemporaries in the closet, and for nearly two hundred years
have been and are still read (in the original), with unabated delight.
The young King Louis XV. , we are told, “learned them by heart,
the magistrate had them in his office, the fine lady on her toilet
table. Unfortunately there are not, perhaps there cannot be, any
translation of his masterpieces which in respect of style would be
judged, by those most competent to judge, to be worthy of him.
From the smoothness and harmonious flow of his sentences, Voltaire
named him the Racine of the pulpit; and tells us that the Athalie)
of Racine and the Grand Carême' of Massillon (the forty-two ser-
mons preached at Versailles before Louis XIV. during the Lent of
1704) are always lying on his table side by side.
This remarkable man was the son of a minor officer of the law;
born in the little city of Hyères, — an ancient watering-place on the
French Riviera, some fifty miles east of Marseilles,- and educated
at the College of the Oratorians at Marseilles, of which liberal
order he became in due time a priest. He was a true child of the
fervid south. The warm blood of Provence galloped through his
veins, and the hot passions of human nature were strong in his soul.
His infant rambles were among orange groves, olives, and palms.
The soft breezes of the Mediterranean fanned the cheeks of his
youth; and from infancy up his ears were daily saluted by the gay


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
and amorous melodies of the Troubadours. He was rusticated from
his college for some faux pas with the sex. It was nothing very
serious, we imagine (he was only eighteen), and he was restored to
his classes within the year. After his great sermon on the Prodigal
Son, in which he so profoundly analyzes the workings of the volup-
tuous passions, he was asked “where, being a recluse, he could have
obtained such a profound knowledge of the voluptuous life? ” He
replied, “In my own heart. ”
He was not only born in the land of love and song, he was born
an orator. It is related of him that in early childhood he was ac-
customed, on Sundays and holy days, to gather his comrades around
him, then mount a rock, a box, or a chair, and declaim to them the
substance of the sermon he had heard at mass. In college he pur-
sued the humanities with the greatest zeal, and was greatly distin-
guished in all the rhetorical exercises; yet after becoming a priest
and furnished with such a magnificent equipment, he grew shy of
this great talent, made repeated attempts to escape the pulpit, and
finally began the exercise of his remarkable gifts only on the abso-
lute command of the superior of his order. From the first moment
a brilliant career was assured. Success swiftly followed success. He
passed rapidly up the ladder of promotion. The great capital was
already whispering his fame, when in his thirty-third year he found
himself actually planted in that wicked Babylon, and summoned to
preach in its most prominent pulpits. Improving his opportunity to
hear the greatest preachers there (including of course Bossuet and
Bourdaloue, and probably Fléchier and Mascaron), he said on
occasion to a brother priest who accompanied him: "I feel their
intellectual force, I recognize their great talents; but if I preach, I
shall not preach like them. ” And surely he did not.
From this moment, to hear a sermon of Massillon was a new expe-
rience to Paris. Many stories have come down to us of the effects
of this new method in the hands of this unparalleled master. We can
cite but a specimen. To illustrate how widely his influence pervaded
the lowest as well as the highest classes of society, it is related that
when Massillon was to preach in Notre Dame, the crush at the en-
trance was something extraordinary even for a Paris crowd. On one
occasion a rather powerful woman of the town, bent on hearing him,
roughly elbowing her way through the mass, whispered aloud, "Eh!
wherever this devil of a Massillon preaches, he makes such a row! ”
Baron, the comic author and actor, at that time the leading star of
the French stage, soon went to hear him. Struck by the simplicity
of his manner and the impressive truthfulness of his elocution, he
said to a brother actor who accompanied him, «There, my friend,
is an orator: we are but players. ” Laharpe relates that a courtier,
one


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
9783
going to a new opera, found his carriage blocked in a double file of
carriages, the one bound for the opera, the other for the Quinze-
vingts. The church was near where Massillon was preaching. In his
impatience he dismounted from the carriage, and out of curiosity for
a sight of the famous preacher, he entered the church. The sermon
was already begun. It was the celebrated discourse On the Word
of God. ' At that moment Massillon raised his usually downcast look,
and sweeping the congregation with his wonderful eye, uttered the
apostrophe - Tu es ille vir! [Thou art the man. ] The gentleman
was struck as by an arrow. He remained till the end of the sermon,
fixed in his place as by a charm. At the close he did not go to
the opera, but returned to his home a changed man. Bourdaloue,
after hearing him, being asked by a distinguished brother of his own
order how he ranked the new orator, is said to have replied in the
words of the Forerunner concerning the just appearing Messiah: “He
must increase, but I must decrease. ” The celebrated compliment of
Louis XIV. at the close of the Grand Carême, though threadbare
and possibly intended to be equivocal, must not be omitted, because
it was unquestionably as true as it was elegant, when he said to
him: “Father, I have heard several great orators in my chapel; I
have been mightily pleased with them: as for you, every time I have
heard you, I have been very much displeased — with myself. ” He
presently added: “And I wish to hear you, father, hereafter every
two years. ” Yet for this or some other now unknown reason, Mas-
sillon was never again invited by Louis XIV. to preach before him.
Bourdaloue, than whom there could be no abler or severer judge,
after reading his printed discourses declared: “The progress one
has made in eloquence must be judged of by the relish he finds in
reading Massillon's works. ” In 1717 he was appointed by Louis XV.
Bishop of Clermont, and in 1719 he was elected one of the French
Academy. He died at the age of eighty, of apoplexy, in his country
house a few miles outside his see-city.
Now what were the great and distinguishing features of this new
method,” which resulted in such enormous contemporary as well as
lasting success? Setting aside, as having been sufficiently noticed,
the extraordinary witchery of his person, of his voice, of his manner,
of even his delicious language and perfect literary form, what partic-
ulars can we discover, in the printed pages of his sermons, as we
have them in our hands to-day, to account for the prodigious strength
and unrelaxing permanence of his grip on the minds and hearts of
men ? This we shall try to show in the selections we now offer the
reader from his most famous discourses.
There are two observations to be made in a general way toward
answering this question, before descending to more definite particulars.
»


## p. 9784 (#192) ###########################################

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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
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. He
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 interests —
the reasons why each one in particular, without contesting the exist-
ence 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 Amplifica-
tion. 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 intensi-
fying clauses, flowing in one indivisible stream of multiplying minor
thoughts, which roll the fundamental sentiment along, exhibiting con-
tinually 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 con-
victions, 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
PICTURE OF THE DEATH-BED OF A SINNER
T*
WHEN 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


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9785
to deliver him from death; nor to the just God, whom he regards
as his declared enemy, whose indulgence he must no longer ex-
pect; — 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 strug-
gles, 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. ]
M
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 sad.
ness of hypocrisy, which observes the letter of the law, wearing
an affected exterior, pale and disfigured, in order not to lose be-
fore men the merit of its penitence,- and this is rare; finally,
there is a sadness of corruption, which opposes to this holy law


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
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 frugal-
ity 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 ever-
lasting righteousness, and for that blessed estate in which, estab-
lished 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 atten-
tion 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


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
9787
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 chastise-
ment, 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 in-
discretion 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 ?
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 them-
selves, in the most awful functions of the priesthood, appear at
the altar — where they ought to bring only the sins of the people —
loaded 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
Do you


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9788
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
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 mag-
nificent 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 chari-
table? 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 assem-
blies 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 recom-
pense 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;
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,
we


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
9789
the alms which have almost always rolled along in secret, have
arrived much more pure into the bosom of God himself than
those which, exposed even against our will to the eyes of men,
have been somewhat befouled and disturbed on their course by
the unavoidable complaisances of self-love and the praise of the
spectators: like those streams which have almost always rolled
under the ground, and which carry into the bosom of the sea
waters living and pure; while, on the contrary, those which have
traversed level and exposed tracts in the open ordinarily carry
there only defiled waters, which are always dragging along the
rubbish, the corpses, the slime which they have amassed on their
route.
Translation of J. F. B.
Massillon was especially noted for the appositeness and beauty of
his exordiums; and one of his sermons of great repute owes its enor-
mous fame to that peculiarity of the text and to the action of the
first three minutes. Massillon used no gestures, properly so called:
but in the words of the Abbé Maury, he had an eloquent eye; which,
Sainte-Beuve has added, made for him the most beautiful of gestures.
The sermon in question was that which he pronounced in the final
obsequies for Louis XIV. He entered the pulpit with lowered eyes,
as was his custom. At length, raising them, he swept them in silence
over all that magnificent funeral pomp. Then he fixed them on the
lofty catafalque, and slowly pronounced the words of his text, taken
from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. in the French version of the
Vulgate: "I have become great; I have surpassed in glory all who
have preceded me in Jerusalem. ” After a long silence, and upon
the excited expectation of the auditory, he began with the ever since
famous words: “My brethren, God alone is great. ”
Perhaps this bewitching felicity was never more striking than in
the exordium of his first sermon before the same Louis XIV. , when,
knowing that a reputation for austerity had preceded him, he made
his début before that glittering earthy crowd in the following way,
with the sermon on
THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE RIGHTEOUS
Text: “Blessed are they that mourn. ”
Sire: If the world were speaking here instead of Jesus
Christ, no doubt it would not offer such language as this to
your Majesty.
« Blessed the Prince,” it would say to you,
who has never
fought but to conquer; who has seen so many powers in arms
(


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9790
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
(C
against him, only to gain glory in granting them peace; who
has always been equally greater than danger and greater than
victory!
"Blessed the Prince, who throughout the course of a long and
flourishing reign has peacefully enjoyed the emoluments of his
glory, the love of his subject peoples, the esteem of his enemies,
the admiration of all the world, the advantage of his conquests,
the magnificence of his works, the wisdom of his laws, the
august hope of a numerous posterity; and who has nothing more
to desire than long to preserve that which he possesses! ”
Thus the world would speak; but, Sire, Jesus does not speak
like the world.
“Blessed,” says he to you, “not he who is achieving the
admiration of his age, but he who is making the world to come
his principal concern, and who lives in contempt of himself, and
of all that is passing away; because his is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed, not he whose reign and whose acts history is going
to immortalize in the remembrance of men, but he whose tears
shall have effaced the story of his sins from the remembrance of
God himself; because he will be eternally comforted.
“Blessed, not he who shall have extended by new conquests
the limits of his empire, but he who shall have confined his
inclinations and passions within the limits of the law of God;
because he will possess an estate more lasting than the empire
of the whole world.
« Blessed, not he who, raised by the acclamations of subject
peoples above all the princes who have preceded him, peacefully
enjoys his grandeur and his glory, but he who, not finding on the
throne even anything worthy of his heart, seeks for perfect hap-
piness here below only in virtue and in righteousness; because he
will be satisfied.
"Blessed, not he to whom men shall have given the glorious
titles of Great' and Invincible, but he to whom the unfortu-
nate shall have given, before Jesus, the title of Father' and of
Merciful'; because he will be treated with mercy.
"Blessed, in fine, not he who, being always arbiter of the
destiny of his enemies, has more than once given peace to the
earth, but he who has been able to give it to himself, and to
banish from his heart the vices and inordinate affections which
trouble the tranquillity of it; because he will be called a child
of God. ”
C


## p. 9791 (#199) ###########################################

JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
9791
These, Sire, are they whom Jesus calls blessed, and the Gos-
pel does not know any other blessedness on earth than virtue
and innocence.
New translation by J. F. B.
Further on in this same discourse, where he feels called upon to
defend himself from the charge of preaching on imaginary or at least
exaggerated delusions of the world, he draws, as follows, –
ONE OF His CELEBRATED PICTURES OF GENERAL SOCIETY
What is the world for the worldlings themselves who love it,
who seem intoxicated with its pleasures, and who are not able
to step from it? The world ? - It is an everlasting servitude,
where no one lives for himself, and where to be blest one must
be able to kiss one's fetters and love one's slavery. The world?
– It is a daily round of events which awaken in succession, in
the hearts of its partisans, the most violent and the most gloomy
passions, cruel hatreds, hateful perplexities, bitter fears, devour-
ing jealousies, overwhelming griefs. The world ? - It is a terri-
—
tory under a curse, where even its pleasures carry with them
their thorns and their bitternesses; its sport tires by its furies
and its caprices; its conversations annoy by the oppositions of
its moods and the contrariety of its sentiments; its passions
and criminal attachments have their disgusts, their derangements,
their unpleasant brawls; its shows, hardly finding more in the
spectators than souls grossly dissolute, and incapable of being
awakened but by the most monstrous excesses of debauchery,
become stale, while moving only those delicate passions which
only show crime in the distance, and dress out traps for inno-
cence. The world, in fine, is a place where hope, regarded as a
passion so sweet, renders everybody unhappy; where those who
have nothing to hope for, think themselves still more miserable;
where all that pleases, pleases never for long; and where ennui
is almost the sweetest destiny and the most supportable that one
can expect in it.
This, my brethren, is the world: and it is not the obscure
world, which knows neither the great pleasures nor the charms
of prosperity, of favor, and of wealth,-it is the world at its
best; it is the world of the court; it is you yourselves who hear
me, my brethren.


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
This is the world; and it is not, in this aspect, one of those
paintings from imagination of which the resemblance is nowhere
to be found. I am painting the world only after your own
hearts; that is, such as you know it and always feel it yourselves
to be.
There, notwithstanding, is the place where all sinners are seek-
ing their felicity. There is their country. It is there that they
wish they could eternize themselves. This is the world which
they prefer to the eternal joys and to all the promises of faith.
New translation by J. F. B.
An exhaustive, masterly, and tremendous discourse, perhaps without
a parallel in all literature for boldness and terrible severity in scor-
ing the sin of unchastity, was that on the Prodigal Son, pronounced
before Louis XIV. in the chapel at Versailles during the Grand
Carême. His text was: “He went into a far country, and there
wasted his substance with riotous living. ” His exordium consists in
repeating minutely the story, dwelling on the willingness to live far
from home, with swine and like swine, — the nastiness, the emptiness,
the deadliness of such a life,- and closes with this affecting
PRAYER
P"
URIFY my lips, O my God! and while I shall recount the
excess of a voluptuous sinner, furnish me with expressions
which will not offend a virtue, the love of which I come
to-day to inspire in those who hear me; for the world, which
no longer knows any restraint on this vice, exacts much notwith-
standing of us in the language which condemns it.
Then he opens upon this sin his clean-sweeping artillery thus:-
The vice the deadly consequences of which I am to-day un-
dertaking to expose -- this vice so universally spread abroad on
the earth, and which is desolating with such fury the heritage
of Jesus; 'this vice of which the Christian religion had purged
the world, and which to-day has prevailed on religion itself - is
marked by certain peculiar characteristics, all which I find in the
story of the wanderings of the Prodigal Son.
There is never a vice which more separates the sinner from
God; there is never a vice which, after it has separated him from
God, leaves him less resource for returning to Him; there is
a vice which renders the sinner more insupportable to
never


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
9793
con-
himself; finally, there is not one which renders him more
temptible in the eyes even of other men. Observe, I pray, all
these characteristics in the story of the sinner of our gospel.
The first characteristic of the vice of which we are speaking
is the putting, as it were, an abyss between God and the volup-
tuous soul, and the leaving him almost no more hope of return.
The prodigal of our gospel went off at first into a very far
country, which left no longer anything in common between him
and his natural father: "He took his journey into a far country. ”
Indeed, in all the other vices, the sinner seems still to hold
upon God by some feeble ties. There are some vices which respect
at least the sacredness of the body, and do not strengthen its
inordinate inclinations; there are others which do not spread so
deep darkness on the mind, and leave at least some use of the
light of reason; finally, there are some which do not occupy
the heart to such a degree as absolutely to take away from it the
relish for all which could lead back to God. But the shameful
passion of which I am speaking dishonors the body, extinguishes
reason, renders all the things of heaven disagreeable, and raises
a wall of separation between God and the sinner which seems to
take away all hope of reunion. —"He took his journey into a far
country. ”
I said that it dishonors the body of the Christian; it profanes
the temple of God in us; it makes the members of Jesus do an
ignominious service: it soils a flesh nourished on his body and
his blood, consecrated by the grace of baptism; a flesh which is
to attain immortality and be conformable to the glorious likeness
of Jesus risen; a flesh which will repose in the holy place, and
whose ashes will await, under the altar of the Lamb, the day of
revelation, mingled with the ashes of the virgins and the martyrs;
a flesh more holy than those august temples where the glory of
the Lord reposes; more worthy of being possessed with honor
and with reverence than the very vases of the sanctuary, conse-
crated by the terrible mysteries which they inclose. But what a
barrier does not the opprobrium of this vice put to the return of
God into us! Can a holy God, in whose sight even the heavenly
spirits are unclean, sufficiently separate himself from a flesh cov-
ered with shame and ignominy? The creature being but dust
and ashes, the holiness of God must suffer by lowering himself
down to it: ah, what then can the sinner promise himself who
joins to his own nothingness and baseness the indignities of a
XVII-613
.


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JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
>
(
body shamefully dishonored ? — "He took his journey into a far
country. ”
I said that this vice extinguishes even in the soul all her
lights, and that the sinner is no longer capable of those salu-
tary reflections which often lead back an unbelieving soul. The
prodigal of our gospel, already blinded by his passion, does not
see the wrong he is doing himself in separating himself from his
paternal home; the ingratitude of which he is rendering himself
culpable towards his natural father; the dangers to which he is
exposing himself in wishing to be the sole arbiter of his own
destiny; the decencies even which he is violating in setting out
for a far country, without the counsel and advice of him to whom
he owes at least the sentiments of reverence and deference which
mere nature itself inspires.