Isidore Mullois

“ Say to the people, but with overflowing affection:—"My dear friends, do what you will, you will never find a better resource than religion; religion will always be your best stay. ... When you have spent your all, when the world will have nothing more to do with you, when your bodies shall be worn out by old age and sickness, when from dread of you men will flee from you as from a contagion, you will still find by your bedside a priest or a sister of charity to care for you and to bless you." ”

“ Take the case of a light, worldly, and gay woman—and there are many such; you will never acquire any influence over her except through the medium of charity. She will make promises, but she will take care not to keep them: you can never rely on her being faithful to them. It will be vain for you to address her in the most conclusive speeches, to ply her with refined and smart essays on good breeding—in vain that you assail her foibles and waywardness with irony and sarcasm—in vain that you hold up before her the terrors of death, hell, and eternity. ”

“ Nevertheless, strive to make it understood by persuasion. Make frequent appeals to the hearts of the rich, to their love of humanity. Invoke them to aid us in stopping the misery at its source. Invoke their pity on the masses who toil and suffer beneath us; their pity for those poor children whose fathers devour their bread; pity on behalf of the aged who pine in cold and hunger; pity for the woman who spends her Sunday evenings in tears, expecting every moment to encounter the brutality of a husband who reels home with his reason and heart drowned in liquor. ”

“ This large love for men, alike for the good and the evil, is the pervading spirit of the Gospel. It is the true spirit of Christianity. Its power was felt by our fathers in the sacred ministry, and it governed their lives.
Look at Saint Paul, that great missionary of the Catholic Church. A stream of love flows from his apostolic soul. He did not suffer himself to be disconcerted by the failings, the vices, or the crimes of men. His heart uplifts him above such considerations, and he overcomes human prejudices and errors by the power of his charity. ”

“ There is a wide difference between such powerful speeches and those dreary metaphysical sermons, those finely-spun phrases, that quintessence of reasoning, so common amongst us. For, what do we often take for an orator or preacher? ... One who wraps himself in his own conceptions, and soars into sublime regions, while the poor audience is left on the plain below to gaze at him or not, to grow weary, to sleep or to chat, when they cannot decently go away. And yet it is so easy to be popular in France. The native mind is prompt and readily roused to the noblest sentiments. ”

“ And wherever any good work is to be wrought for the Church, is it not accomplished by the words, the money, the prayers, and even by the sword of France? Surely, the citizen of such a country, the child of such a fatherland, has a right to speak well of his mother; more especially when the object is to lead souls to virtue. Reawaken, then, the old French and Christian enthusiasm, filling all hearts with the sacred emotions of earthly patriotism, and with holy love for that better home which is eternal in the heavens. ”

“ Let your speech be always powerful and triumphant. Whatever you attempt, do well. If you reason, let your reasoning be sharp, to the point, and decisive. If you exercise charity, let it flow in broad streams, that it may inundate and cheer all around. If you give vent to anger, let it escape in glowing and irresistible sallies. If you are ever at a loss what other influence to invoke, then appeal to pity. After such outbursts, there should be intervals of calm to tone down asperities, to smooth to softness any bitterness, and to express regret for having used them ”

“ Even we, with all our education, our science, the superior moral atmosphere which we breathe,—are we always blameless? When the people look above them, do they always find good examples in the higher classes of society? What would you have them think when they see men who ought to be patterns of virtue, when they see, to use their own expression, respectable scoundrels, with money in their hands and lying words on their lips, endeavoring to seduce their wives or their daughters? ”

“ To come to us the people must know the value, the necessity of religion. But do they entertain any such idea? Surrounded as they have been with so many passions and prejudices, is it surprising that they are now insensible and mistrustful? Should we be better than they if we had breathed the same pestiferous atmosphere? If they are weak in the faith, it is our duty to pity them, according to the apostolic injunction:—"We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves." ”

“ If, then, you do not feel a fervent love and profound pity for humanity—if in beholding its miseries and errors you do not experience the throbbings, the holy thrillings of Charity—be assured that the gift of Christian eloquence has been denied you. You will not win souls, neither will you ever gain influence over them, and you will never acquire that most excellent of earthly sovereignties—sovereignty over the hearts of men. ”

“ Our heart must be enlarged, and soar above the frail ties, the prejudices, and the vices of humanity. Did not Saint Paul say: "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ," for the sake of his erring brethren? And did not Moses elect to be blotted out from the book of life rather than see his cowardly, ungrateful, fickle countrymen stricken by the hand of the Almighty? The weaker men are, the more need have they to be loved.
Such love does good to all. It cheers the heart of the preacher. ”

“ What a field is here opened out for the exercise of love, of compassion, and of pity! O ye poor people whom Christ loved! is it that all your struggles and trials are merely a foretaste of eternal misery? If you are to suffer here, and to suffer also after death, then you must needs suffer forever! But that we cannot allow, and after the example of Christ, we should say to ourselves:—"I have pity upon the multitude, for if I send them away fasting they will faint by the way." ”

“ There would only be one name for such a soldier in France—he would be called a coward. {302} But no such soldier is to be found amongst us; on the contrary, at the bare thought of opposition and resistance to be encountered, his courage rises, his heart leaps, he runs, he strikes, he conquers, or he dies a glorious death. That is what a priest ought to be; ... better still; he should feel that he is safe beneath the power of the Almighty; and be like a general who maintains perfect calm while shot, shell, and death, are flying around him in every direction. ”

“ So true is this, that scholars and honest men will not hesitate to say frankly:—"The matter is not one of argument; only retrench from your religion several small commandments of God and the Church, which we need not specify, and then we will be on your side."
That is the secret of unbelief. It is not faith that is wanting, but the courage to do what is right.
How, then, are we to get rid of those preachers who are always taken up with unbelievers? How delivered from those endless sermons addressed to unbelievers? They do us much harm and very little good. ”

“ Have a heart, then, in dealing with the people; have charity; love, and cause others to love, to feel, to thrill, to weep, if you wish to be listened to, and to escape the criticisms of the learned as well as the ignorant. Then let them say what they like, let them criticise and inveigh as they please, you will possess an invincible power. What a grand mission, what a glorious heritage is that of loving our fellow-men! Let others seek to lord it over them, and to win their applause ”

“ Their confidence must be won, it must be raised by dint of benevolence, charity, and self-devotion, and the task is by no means impracticable. What! the possessors of fortune, and talent, and a name, and yet unable to gain that confidence on the part of the people which a schoolmaster, a village lawyer, a tipstaff, a man without any intellectual or moral worth, is able to secure! Of what avail, then, is it to spend so many long years in study? What does a good education mean, and of what use is it? Surely a very false idea has been formed of education. ”

“ Only a few are capable of appreciating the intrinsic value of a discourse; whereas all can see whether you speak from an inward sense of the truth—from the heart and from personal conviction.
It is more especially upon the people that action produces a powerful effect; it attracts, it transports them. A preacher who possesses sterling and noble ideas, who has genuine sentiment and true action, is irresistible with them. ”

“ But in order to remedy the evils which beset us, we must not rely on the systems of the learned or on human laws. Good heavens! if reasonings and codes of law sufficed to secure the peace and happiness of a people, France ought to be the most prosperous country in the world.
Neither must we rely upon the power of the sword. It is easily used; but, as De Maistre has said, to rely on force is like lying down on the sail of a windmill to obtain quiet sleep. Then, again, the adoption of force leads to the most terrible excesses. ”

“ In other words, our train of thought should be still more energetic, our sentiments more powerful; embodied sometimes in a dramatic or tragic form, wherein truth and error are brought together in a fierce and obstinate hand-to-hand struggle; truth being made to overthrow error and to triumph over vice, and then to raise the erring and the transgressor, to embrace them, and to bear them away with herself to virtue, to happiness, to heaven. ”

“ By incessantly speaking to men about unbelief, we may end in making them unbelievers; just as we may make a dolt of a man by dint of telling him that he has no sense. Besides, what a blow it is to Christianity to give the people to understand that a notable portion of a great nation has seriously contested its Divine origin! Is not this to suggest the temptation that they too should become unbelievers, since, by so doing, they would be in so numerous and goodly a company? ”

“ Entrench yourself behind the Divine authority; efface the man and hold up God; impose silence on the earth and let Him speak, but with power and loving-kindness.
Unhappily, we have not maintained this high standing. The Divine word has been brought down too much to a human level; it has been made too much to reflect man's image. The incessant attacks of the enemies of religion, and, it may be, our own scholastic studies also, have inspired us with a combative, and querulous humor. ”

“ That the delivery of a sermon should sometimes be accompanied with significant gestures, and that emotion should occasionally vent itself in an outburst, is all well enough; but compress such power as much as possible, so that it may be felt that you possess within your own soul a force threefold greater than you outwardly manifest. ... The more vehement you wish your sermon to be, the more you should restrain the air in its passage, forcing it to make its way in thrilling explosions and a resounding articulation. Then many will fall by the sword of the word. ”

“ But persist, give no rest; press your discourse home, and you will soon see all bosoms panting because yours pants; all eyes kindling because yours emit flame, or filling with tears because you grow tender. You will see all the hearers hanging on your lips through the attractions of persuasion; or, rather, you will see nothing, for you yourself will be under the spell of your own emotion; you will bend, you will succumb, under your own genius, and you will be the more eloquent the less effort you make to appear so. ”

“ There should also be intervals to break monotony—that stumbling-block of many sermons; to give the mind rest; to allow time for the hearts of the audience to be penetrated by what has been said; to introduce familiar topics which do the soul so much good; to soften the asperities of any great emotion; to bind up the wounded; in a word, intervals for the preacher to become the father after having represented the King, to attract the hearts after having gained the minds of his hearers.
It is a mistake to aim at making every part of a sermon equally powerful and equally prominent. ”

“ For what is unbelief? It is the conviction that Christianity is false. Now, how can such a conviction be arrived at against eighteen centuries of genius and virtue, against the authority of the Gospel, against Christ Himself? How can any man reasonably attain the position of being able to confront those eminent men and facts, and say:—"I am quite sure that you have deceived the world ... ”

“ According to the divine word, "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemy."
The heart, then, must be touched, moved, laid hold of. It is the heart which receives or rejects the truth; which says to it: "Come, I welcome you;" or, "Begone, you annoy me;" and it is love alone that can reach the heart and change it. An Arab proverb runs thus:—"The neck is bent by the sword; but heart is only bent by heart." If you love, you yourself will be loved; the truth from you will be loved; even self-sacrifice will be an act of love. ”

“ Beware, therefore, of reasoning with her. Go straight to her heart, beget charity within her, make her to feel, to love, and soon you will hardly recognize her as the same individual, for the change will be almost instantaneous, and every subsidiary stumbling-block will disappear. Then she will go and come, suffer, be humble, self-denying, examplary.
Woman is called the feeble sex. True, when she does not love; but when love takes possession of her soul, she becomes the strong, the able, the devoted sex. She then looks difficulties in the face which would make men tremble. ”

“ What ought to surprise those who know the temptations and allurements to which they have been exposed, and the kind of literature which has been put into their hands—no less than eight millions of mischievous books every year by colportage alone—is, not that the people are so bad as they are, but that they are no worse. Their nature must be good at bottom, and Christianity must still survive in their hearts, to have withstood as they have done. I deplore the good which is ours no longer; but I bless Providence for that which still subsists. ”

“ Then is Christianity false; the world believes what is false; has been converted, regenerated, civilized, by what is false; there is falsehood in the faith, in the love, and in all the other inspirations of the Christian religion; falsehood in all the blessings which have been conferred upon humanity in the name of God the Redeemer; falsehood in the heroism of innumerable martyrs; falsehood in all the master-minds who have adorned Christianity; falsehood in the whole chain of science, zeal, devotion, and superhuman virtues ”

“ The heart, then, is the better side of the French people; their honorable and glorious side; their genius. Others may claim the genius of extensive speculations in science and industry; to them belongs the genius of heart, of love, of sympathy, of charity. Endowed with so goodly a portion, what have they to complain of; for is not dominion over mankind achieved thereby? Hence, when Providence designs to spread an idea throughout the world, it implants it in a Frenchman's breast. ”

“ It is quite right to reason and to appeal to the intellect, but it is not enough. Human malice will never be at a loss for a reply to your arguments. You may be acute, logical, endowed with learning and talent, the right may be most clearly on your side, and yet your efforts will be unproductive; nay, you will often be defeated, insomuch that it may be affirmed that he who uses reason only shall perish by reason. On the contrary, love causes things to be regarded from a different point of view, removes difficulties, and imparts light and courage simultaneously. ”

“ The people in France are naturally Christian. There is more religion in the little finger of the people than in the superb bodies of our demi-savants.
The people, I say, are still capable of comprehending and of appreciating religion; and whenever their hearts are brought into contact with the Gospel, they allow themselves to be penetrated, ruled, elevated by its influence. Look at them in the presence of a preacher who speaks to the souls of his hearers. Their attention is suddenly riveted, their countenances become animated, their eyes glisten. ”

“ The time has come for us to avail ourselves of that tremendous engine which Providence has introduced into the world for good and for evil. Has not the Press injured us enough already? Has it not already thrown blood and scum enough at humanity and religion? Are not the two hundred millions of pernicious books scattered throughout France enough? Is not the world sufficiently estranged from the Church already? ”