The Clergy and the Pulpit in Their Relations to the People. Isidore Mullois
they have their faults, their frailties, and their vices; but are we not more blameworthy than they? The people are always what they are made. Is it their fault if the pernicious doctrines and scandals of the higher orders have stained the lower classes of society? Moreover, they have been treated without pity and without mercy. They have been despoiled of all: even that last resource, hope, has been taken from them. They have been forbidden to dream of happiness. Heartless men have interposed between them and heaven, and have said to them, "Listen; your toil, your trials, your rags, your hunger, the hunger of your wives and children—such is your lot. You have nothing else to hope for; except, perchance, the pleasures of revelry." They have been deprived of every thing: they had hopes of a better future, which have been taken from them; they had God above, who has been robbed from them, and they have been told that heaven consisted in the enjoyments of earth. Meanwhile, they are miserable; and being miserable are, as it were, doomed already: yet, what have they done to merit this?
Yes, there has been no pity shown to the people; for has not the present age regarded Christianity as a delusion? Christianity ought to have been respected among the people, because it benefited them, because it alleviated their wretchedness. But no, a cruel age has had the fell courage to snatch it from them. A tale is told of a prisoner who became deeply attached to a spider, which served to while away the tedium of his captivity. He fed it with his own food, and it was his delight to see it scamper about his cell; but the jailer, noticing this innocent gratification, crushed the insect. … The spider was undoubtedly an insignificant thing; but the jailer's conduct was harsh, and all would denounce it as a gratuitously brutal act. Well, then, if religion among the people had been regarded merely as the spider of this poor prisoner, it ought to have been respected, because it might have done them good. On the contrary, the laborer has been denied the hope that there will be a time of rest; the sufferer, that some day there will be consolation; the wronged has not been allowed to anticipate that hereafter justice will be meted out; the mother who deplores the loss of her child has been denied the hope that some day she shall behold him again. Every thing has been taken from the people, and nothing has been left them but material pleasures to be enjoyed at rare intervals.
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."
Lastly, on this Charity depends the success of evangelical preaching.
To be co-workers with Christ in regenerating and saving mankind, we must love it as He loved. He first did men good, then He addressed them. Hence it was that the people, unmindful of their most urgent wants, followed Him exclaiming: "Never man spake like this man."
Let us never forget that the object of preaching is to turn men from wrong-doing, and to lead them to that which is good. This is the great aim of the Christian orator. But where is the seat of good and evil, and where are both elaborated? 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. … What we most want nowadays is not additional knowledge, for nearly all of us know full well what we ought to do. What we really want is the courage to act, the energy to do what is right. Truth has sadly diminished amongst us, and its characteristics also. What we need, then, is a style of preaching which enlightens and sustains, which threatens and encourages, which humbles and exalts, and which throughout speaks to individuals, saying, "I love thee."
It is not by essays of reasoning, any more than by the sword, that the moral world is to be swayed. A little knowledge, much sound sense, and much more heart—that is what is requisite to raise the great mass, the people, and to cleanse and purify them. To be able to reason is human, very human, and one who is a man and nothing more may possess that ability as well as you, perhaps in a higher degree. But to love, to devote one's self, to sacrifice self, is something unearthly, divine, possessing a magic power. Self-devotion, moreover, is the only argument against which human malevolence can find no answer. …
You may employ the most splendid reasonings, clothed in the grandest phraseology, and yet the mind of man will readily find wherewith to elude them. Who knows but that French wit, by one malicious word, may not upset all at once your elaborate structure of arguments? What is required in sacred eloquence is something new, something unexpected. Ask you what it is? It is love; for loving, you will surprise, captivate: you will be irresistible.
For it is useless to disguise the fact that in France nowadays there is scarcely any belief in disinterestedness. Even the people are beginning to think that no one acts without a motive of self-interest; and their thought is aptly expressed in the frank and original reply of a poor devil who was brought before the correctional police for having inscribed some Legitimist sentences on a wall. The president, observing his tattered garments, and his any thing but aristocratic appearance, asked him if he was really a Legitimist. "By no means, Monsieur le President," was the answer; "I merely do as others, as you do, as all do nowadays—I work for those who feed me."
But when the people meet with real affection, a thorough devotedness, then they are overcome at once and yield heartily.
You visit a poor family, or one of the working-classes in a large town, where the people are generally frank, and hardly know how to conceal their thoughts. Do not be surprised, then, if something like the following dialogue should take place:
"Well, sir, but who pays you for visiting us?"
"Nobody."
"What interest, then, have you in coming?"
"None whatever, beyond that of wishing to benefit you and your little ones, whom I love."
"I can scarcely believe it. There must be some thing underhand in this."
But when such persons are convinced that you entertain a sincere affection for them—that there is nothing underhand in what you do—you become all-powerful. The disclosure breaks in upon them like a divine revelation, and they may be said to love the truth even before knowing it. Then you may speak, entreat, or command; you will be listened to, you will be believed, obeyed. What else, indeed, could any do who love you, and also inspire love on your part?
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.
You say to a worldly woman:—"If you were to occupy yourself a little in good works, such as visiting the poor." … Forthwith she starts a thousand objections against the suggestion:—"What, I, in my position! … I really have no leisure. I have my house, my children, my servants, and so many other things to attend to. Then, my health is so wretched, and my husband cares for nothing. … Besides, it is a woman's first duty to look after her domestic concerns." In a word, she instantly bristles up with good reasons. You encounter a pointed defence everywhere, and no gap to admit your arguments. 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