trates the heart, moves it, transports it, and which he who has received it conveys to the souls and the hearts which are prepared to receive it also.

"Unction is felt, is experienced, it can not be analyzed. It makes its impression silently, and without the aid of reflection. It is conveyed in simplicity, and received in the same way by the heart into which the warmth of the preacher passes. Ordinarily, it produces its effect, while as yet the taste of it is not developed in us, without our being able to give a reason to ourselves of what has made the impression. We feel, we experience, we are touched, we can hardly say why.

"We may apply to him who has received it these words of the prophet Isaiah: 'Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth.'-Isaiah, xli., 15. This man makes furrows in hearts."

From all that has been said, we must not conclude that unction, which has much the same principle as piety, is exactly proportioned to piety. Unction may be very unequal in two preachers, equal in piety; but it is too closely related to Christianity to be absolutely wanting to truly Christian preaching. Certain obstacles, some natural, others of error or of habit, may do injury to unction, and obstruct, so to speak, the passage of this soft and holy oil, which should always flow, to lubricate all the articulations of thought, to render all the movements of discourse easy and just, to penetrate, to nourish speech. There is no artificial method of obtaining unction; the oil flows of itself from the olive; the most forcible pressure will not produce a drop from the earth, or from a flint; but there are means, if I may say so, by which we may keep, without unction, even a good basis of piety; or, of dissembling the unction which is in us, and of restraining it from flowing without. There are things incompatible with unction: Such are wit,* analysis too strict, a tone too dicta • Nevertheless, St. Bernard and Augustin have wit and unction.

torial, logic too formal, irony, the use of too secular or too abstract language, a form too literary; finally, a style too compact and too close, for unction supposes abundance, overflow, fluidity, pliableness.

It is the absence, rather than the presence of unction, that gives us its idea. It is from its opposite that we obtain its distinct notion, not, however, that it is but a negative quality; on the contrary, it is the most positive; but positive in the sense of an odor, of a color, of a savor.

But let us not contract the idea of unction by reducing it to an effeminate mildness, a wordy abundance, a weeping pathos. We must not think that we can not have unction except on the condition of interdicting strictness and consecutiveness in argument, and that boldness of accent, that holy vehemence which certain subjects demand, and without which, in treating them, we should be in fault.

Massillon has unction, as Maury thinks, in a piece which contains nothing but reproaches.* As an example, we cite Bossuet also, in the conclusion of a sermon on final impenitence.

7. Form of Preaching.

The true form of a sermon is composed of the double impression of the subject and of the subjectivity of the orator. The form of a sermon acknowledges only these two laws, which, so far from opposing, combine with one another.

As to general forms which we may observe among preachers, as the psychological and logical form, that of continuous discourse, and that of parallel developments, or of discourse ramified, the analytical and the synthetical sermon, they are neither conventional nor artificial; they are less differences

* MAURY: Eloquence de la Chaire (chap. lxxii.), de l'Onction. See MASSILLON, the conclusion of the first part of the sermon, Sur l'Au

of form than of thought, points of view, methods of conceiving the subject of discourse. They exist in the subjects themselves, and in the human mind anterior to all tradition.

There is the same difference between the conventional and the spontaneous form as there is between the two physiological systems, one of which makes the prominences of the skull to depend on the internal developments of the brain, and the other these same developments to depend on the prominences of the skull; one expressing the internal by the external, the other, by the external compressing and determining the internal; one subordinating the external to the internal, the other the internal to the external. We ourselves prefer that the external should spring from the internal, and, in respect to form, we give no rule but this.

But this rule we do give; and, in order to follow it, we must resolve upon doing this with a positive and determined will; for the arbitrary forms will be incessantly besetting us with their importunity; or, rather, being born in the midst of them, we shall have trouble to withdraw ourselves from their dominion. Now let it be observed that the most natural forms constantly tend, by servile and blind imitation, to become conventional types; they are a liquid always on the point of coagulation; so that we must constantly, by warmth and by spontaneity, keep them in a fluid state, or restore them to it, that we may, as far as possible, exclude formalism from our subject, our end, and our mind.*

I understand by the form of preaching not only the frame or the architecture of the discourse, but the tone, the language, and even the topics, for to introduce new topics into it will somewhat change the form of the preaching: these are nothing more than the form of an act, which is more particular or more special only as it is a discourse on divine things. Thus, in making a sermon on the life of a godly man, after the manner of Catholics in preaching on the lives

* See HERDER'S Briefe das Studium der Theologie betreffend, tome i

of their saints, we only change the form, not the object of preaching, since a life may as well serve for the text of a sermon as a passage of Scripture. On this subject a new question respecting form remains to be considered, but it is one of inferior and subordinate importance.

Now, whatever extension may be given to the idea of form, I think we are in a strait, and that we have no excuse for remaining in it.

There is a uniformity, or a too constant return of the same form-of one discourse after another, and one preacher after another.*

In the structure of our sermons, taken separately, there is something stiff and scholastic: While all things are in the process of renovation, and when, as the result of a general revision, we have effaced whatever separates unduly the means from the end, the sermon retains a costume somewhat superannuated.

Language itself has taken a costume. We are far from not liking and recommending biblical language. Religion. has a language, terms which it has introduced for the expression of new or renovated things, for Christianity "makes all things new," and there must, of course, be a change in words. But we should not think ourselves obliged to express things in no other terms than those which the Bible has consecrated. That we may better reproduce the spirit of the sacred authors, we must less imitate than be inspired by them. They used a liberty which we refuse them. We need not debar ourselves from spheres which they appear not to have permitted themselves to occupy, merely because they had no occasion to enter them. According to the old scrupulosity of the pulpit in the use of language, Paul was not justifiable in citing Aratus and Epimenides. Most certainly

* On individuality in the form of the sermon, which is very rare, see THEREMIN, Die Beredsamkeit eine Tugend, deuxième edition. Ber lin, 1837, p. xxiif., de l'Introduction.

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we ought not to make the temple a rendezvous for all those worldly recollections which our hearers should leave at the door; but it may be very useful to call certain things by the names which are given to them in common parlance.*

The rule is a good one of preaching from a text; I like it, provided place be left for exceptions. We ought to be allowed to preach without a text, or from two texts united.

"All

So far as respect for our ministry and our flock will permit, we must avail ourselves of all our advantages. things are ours."-1 Cor., iii., 21. But let us beware of the spirit of innovation, which changes for the pleasure of changing, or for the sake of appearing independent.

The homily, a species of preaching deserving great attention, has this among other advantages, that it almost necessarily breaks certain traditional forms of the sermon-those at least which respect the structure of the discourse.

As to delivery, which is the eloquence of the body, the most important rules are negative ones.† Let us remember how much the multitude is influenced by what is external, and endeavor, if possible, not to preach, but speak. Bad habits, bad traditions, perpetuate themselves; the good becomes bad by an unintelligent imitation. Let us avoid a theatrical, very familiar, excessively free manner.

8. Festival and occasional Sermons.

We have said that the fundamental ideas of Christianity, and the chief conclusions from them, should reappear, and be felt in every sermon: How much more should they be amplified in the entire course of preaching. But it does not hence follow that sermons on festivals, and the Sundays preceding them (weeks of Advent and Lent), should not have a distinct character of their own. These observances are rep* See Reflections of BURK on the Simplicitas Catechetica. For the details, see l'Homilétique.