Manual of sacred rhetoric

Introduction

Some hold that Preaching is not an art.

"All your rules of rhetoric, sacred and profane/' they say, "are comprised in the good old American maxim: Fill yourself full of your subject, as though you were a barrel; take out the bung; and let nature caper. "

It is hardly credible that such advice could be given or taken seriously. Yet men, unlikely to make a jest of sacred things, have been known to give it; and sermons heard occasionally in our pulpits prove that it is sometimes followed in practice. Nay, often the practice improves on the advice, and dispenses altogether with the "filling up" process.

There must be art in the doing of any work in which complex means have to be employed to do it well ; for art is the skillful use of such means, whether the work be a kitchen table or an epic poem. Now, ii Introduction.

Preaching relying on divine help, undertakes a very difficult and complicated work, namely, to move the will of another from a state of apathy or opposition to activity in a definite direction. To do this, several means have to be employed : obstacles and prepossessions have to be removed ; interest has to be awakened ; the intellect has to be enlightened by exposition and illustration ; the feelings have to be aroused and enlisted ; the will itself has to be brought under the direct influence of motives calculated to determine it to action. Each of these means has to be wisely regulated by laws taken from the highest achievements of oratory and based on the principles of human thought and conduct. Hence, the necessity of an art of Sacred Rhetoric, to acquire knowledge of those laws and skill in their application.

" Apostolic Preaching" is often spoken of as the ideal form of announcing the divine Word; and because the Apostles are not credited with a knowledge of rhetoric, their preaching is supposed to have been crude and unartistic. From this it is inferred that unstudied, unarranged discourse, when

Introduction. iii

prompted by zeal, is immensely superior to discourse that is well ordered and elaborated. To such reasoning it is enough to reply, that we are not the Apostles: we have not seen our Saviour in the flesh •, we have not lived in daily intercourse with Him for years ; we have not witnessed His miracles, His Resurrection; we have not the whole-souled earnestness of the Apostles, — their ardent zeal, their heroic sanctity. We cannot, therefore, presume to preach as they preached, unless, having seen what they saw, we live and labor as they lived and labored, and be ready to die as they died. The same may be said of the preaching of saints and saintly men. One must be a Cure of Ars to preach as the Cure of Ars. The truth is, that the Church, from the beginning, under divine guidance, took the arts into her service; and, from being ministers of sin, she made them agents of grace for its destruction. Music, painting, sculpture, poetry have been so employed by her ; and the glorious records of the Catholic pulpit, from Cyprian to Lacordaire, show conclusively that the art of oratory was enlisted with the others.

iv Introduction.

Preaching, then, being an art, must be studied as all art is studied, by learning its rules or methods, and by applying them. The knowledge of rhetorical rules is of no practical account without assiduous exercise in their application. Hence, to turn out efficient preachers, long and uninterrupted training in the composition and delivery of sermons is absolutely necessary. This training should begin in the preparatory seminary and be continued up to the time of ordination. In most seminaries, I believe, there is no provision made for the practice of English composition during the philosophy course; and, even in theology, the only exercises in it are the writing of a few sermons. The consequence is stiffness and gradual loss of skill in the literary expression of all thought, intellectual, emotional, or imaginative. And this consequence follows all the more surely, when Latin is the only language used in the principal classes ; for it is well known that the daily use of a foreign tongue makes it difficult to speak or write one's own fluently and idiomatically. The official language of the Church must, indeed, be familiar to

Introduction. v

every priest ; but its influence on the use of the vernacular must be neutralized; and this can be done only by systematic exercise in it as frequently as possible.

I know that those charged with the training of our clergy give much anxious thought to the selection of such exercises and studies as are best adapted, to the formation of an efficient priesthood. It is, then, with no purpose of censuring the present seminary curriculum, that I would suggest some such provisions as the following for the continuous training of our clerical students in composition and delivery.

First, in the preparatory seminary, I would recommend that subjects for essays be taken exclusively from Bible history, including the Life and Parables of our divine Lord, as well as the topography of the Holy Land and the manners, dress, domestic life and religious worship of the Jewish people. Themes taken from such subjects will surely be more conducive to the end of seminary training than those usually given in the rhetoric class. I would also confine elocutionary exercises to the practice of expressive reading and graceful gesture.

vi Introduction.

Secondly, one or two classes should be given eveiy week to composition during the philosophy course. The aim in these classes should be ease and skill in the emotional and imaginative types of prose. In all literature, no better models of these types can be found than the Psalms and Prophecies of the Bible. These, then, ought to be read carefully and repeatedly, and afterwards reproduced or paraphrased. If the seminary cannot afford a teacher for this work, the young philosophers should be urged to do it by themselves; and some gentle pressure might be brought to bear on them to provide against their forgetting it.

The rules of Sacred Rhetoric ought to be mastered in the first year's theology and applied in the succeeding years. The best means of applying them, I should say, is not class or chapel sermons — although these, too, are necessary — but carefully written and memorized instructions delivered in parish churches, at first in the Sunday school and afterwards at the Masses. I know there may be serious obstacles to such parish work ; but I am convinced there is none that cannot be overcome by tact and patience.

Introduction. vii

It will be thought by some that these suggestions, however useful in theory, require in practice an undue share of the time available for seminary study and class work. In reply, I would ask, is the main purpose of an American seminary the formation of profound theologians, without any trained ability of expression 1 Of what practical use would such men be in our missions ? Does an apprentice become a finished carpenter by the study of mechanics ? Could a man be trusted to run a locomotive because he knows all about the theory of steam ? Does not common sense insist on practical training for all other professions 1 — why, then, make exception of the priesthood ? If anything has to be crushed out of the curriculum, why must it be the art of Preaching — practised skill in discharging a primary duty of our ministry? Our divine Lord did not say to the Apostles: "Go and learn the Protean changes of Katal, the force of Greek particles, the interpretation of Koptic papyri and Telel- Amarna tablets; 7 ' but "Go teach ye all nations." This commission imposes two duties on seminaries: to impart knowlviii Introduction.

edge of what to teach, and skill in how to teach it. The one duty is as important and essential as the other. A priest who knows only his catechism and his Bible, but is well trained in the art of appropriate expression, is better equipped for saving souls, than one who has the Summa and its commentaries on his fingers' ends, but cannot turn out a decent English sentence. With all respect, therefore, for other seminary classes, I claim a place, and an important place, for the class of Sacred Rhetoric.

It is not the time, however, given for such a class that tells with seminarians, as much as the rank the class holds in the seminary and the importance attached to it by the diocesan authorities. The examination for Orders should test quite as carefully the candidate's fitness for the pulpit as his fitness for the confessional. Furthermore, diocesan promotions should be made to depend largely on efficiency in preaching. Insistance on such efficiency as a conditio sine qua non would contribute greatly to emphasize the importance of preaching for seminarians and priests alike.

This Manual has been written from a

Introduction. ix

strong conviction that something has to be done to make the average Sunday sermon more instructive, more interesting, more effective of spiritual good than it is at present. Preaching is, no doubt, of as high an order now as it has ever been; but it should be higher. The intelligence of those we address is keener, more developed, more inclined to scepticism, perhaps, than in past generations; and it will not be influenced by cant or shallowness or tricks of style or attitude. In these days, we must show ourselves "masters of the situation, " we must "teach like one having authority, " if we are to keep our hold on our people. Say what we may about our "gigantic strides' ' during the last century, there has been mucn weakening of faith among us from our close contact with non-Catholic society and literature. It is evident, then, that a much more strenuous effort is needed now than was needed fifty or a hundred years ago, to safeguard Catholics against the dangers, intellectual and moral, pressing in on them from this contact.

From what I have here written, the twofold object of this Work may be inferred.

x Introduction.

It is intended, first of all, to inculcate the necessity of earnest preparation for preaching, in view of the present requirements of American life, non-Catholic as well as Catholic. Its other object, equally important as the first and demanding more detailed treatment, is to show "How to prepare a Sermon." The idea throughout is to say a first word, not the last, on proper equipment for the American Catholic pulpit. The Chapters on the Character of the Preacher, on his Intellectual Equipment, ann on the Systematic Teaching of Religion, are republished, with permission, from the American Ecclesiastical Review.

Contents

Chapter. Page.

I. What is Preaching 5

II. Personal Character of the Preacher 20

CHAPTER I. What is Preaching?

Eloquence is the faculty of persuading another to some definite object. Spoken language is its chief and ordinary form. Refined to an art and embodied in continued oral discourse, it is styled oratory. This is divided into sacred and profane, according as the object to be attained belongs to the supernatural or the natural order.

Sacred oratory is popularly called Preaching, and may be defined as the address of a duly appointed minister of Christ on the revealed word of Grod, by which an audience, assisted by divine grace, is persuaded to some definite object in the supernatural order. Preaching of itself cannot be the efficient cause of conversion, as it was not instituted by our divine Lord to give sanctifying grace ; but it is appointed by Him to dispose the will to receive and use those actual graces by which man is raised to the supernatural life or confirmed in it. (5)

The object of Preaching is persuasion, that is, the movement of the will to some practical issue conducive to salvation. The enlightenment of the intellect by the exposition of revealed truth is a necessary means to the attainment of that object, — but only a means. A minister of the Gospel who would make it the end of his discourse might speak learnedly and usefully, but he would not preach. To do this, he should, by exposition and appeal to the feelings and passions, disgust men's souls with sin and enamor them of the sweet yoke of Christ ; he should stir them to their lowest depths and inmost recesses; he should pull the bandage from their eyes and show them, with blanched cheek and awe-stricken look, the gulf yawning at their feet, the love of Him who came to save them from it, the death by which He saved them, and the bright and endless future which that death has secured for them.

That the movement of the will — not merely the instruction of the understanding — was to be the object of all apostolic preaching, is evident from the words our divine Lord addressed to His apostles im-

JJ mediately before He ascended into Heaven : "Going therefore teach ye all nations Here the word teach is an inadequate translation of the Greek word used which means not solely to teach, but to make disciples by teaching ; that is, to use words of fire that will at the same time enlighten and inflame, — that will instruct the understanding and reform the will

This, too, is the meaning of St. Paul's words in his Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword: and reaching to the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. "

The subject-matter of Preaching is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that is, the whole body of revelation, clustered round and centering in the Atonement of Calvary. In other words, it is the Logos, foreshadowed in the Old Law and fully revealed in the New; the Logos teaching, saving, governing, as Prophet, Priest, and King; the Logos as the Way, the Truth and the Life, — the Way guiding human conduct by His commandments and counsels, the Truth enlightening the human intellect by the dogmas of revelation, the Life raising men to the supernatural state by the Sacraments, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and other salutary helps. This sublime subject must be taught in popular, persuasive language, as its direct and primary end is to unite the souls of men with Grod through the grace of Jesus Christ.

There is no true Christian Preaching without a legitimate mission. "You have not chosen me" says our divine Lord, "but I have chosen you, that you may go and bear fruit, and your fruit may remain." Hence, the preaching of those not chosen will bear no permanent fruit, though they speak with the vigor of the Baptist, with the eloquence of Chrysostom. Their words may produce a temporary commotion and excitement, such as electricity produces in a dead body ; but the body remains dead all the same. In fact, preaching without a mission is as irregular in the religious order, as the administration of Lynch law is in the civil.

Preaching is an organic function of the Church. It is like the Sacraments in this, that Christ is the primary and efficient cause or agent of the effect produced, the preacher's office being only secondary and ministerial. St. Paul teaches this truth with notable persistence. "Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and the dispensers of the mysteries of God." " We are therefore ambassadors for Christ, God, as it were, exhorting by us." "Do you seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me!" Indeed, this idea of our teaching as Christ's ambassadors or representatives is significanly contained in the Greek word used by St. Mark to express our divine Lord's commission to the apostles, so that the full meaning of the text is : Go ye into the whole world, and, as my ambassadors, teach the Gospel to every creature. Still more explicitly Christ Himself conveys this important truth in the words : You are not tliey who speak: but the Spirit of the Father speaketh in you. And elsewhere : He that heareth you heareth Me: and he that despiseth you despiseth Me. The ambassador acts ministerially and is identified with the power that sends him : to hear the one is to hear the other.

In preaching, then, the priest stands before his people as the representative, the exponent, the voice of Jesus Christ: Gk>d exhorts by him; Christ speaks in him. What a sublime dignity, and what an incentive to painstaking, adequate preparation ! " What would Christ say if He stood here in the flesh before this congregation? How would He say it? How am I to say the same thing so as not to discredit my ministry or Him whom I represent?" To every zealous priest, these questions will be full of inspiration. Knowing that "every best gift and every perfect gift is from above," he will begin his preparation with prayer ; he will study his subject thoroughly; his vivid conception of it will suggest ample illustrations; he will keep a definite object before him, and use every effort to attain it; he will be simple, direct, earnest, fearless, as Christ Himself would be ; in his delivery, he will put aside all thought of self, all timidity, all human respect, no matter in whose presence he stands; for as ambassador of his divine Master, he will teach as one having power, as a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Some pulpit deliverances that we hear and read are not worthy of the name of Christtian preaching. Here, for example, is a sermon on Honest Dealing. The preacher is wholly taken up with giving a material view of his theme, and makes but a passing allusion to its connexion with the supernatural life. " Honesty safeguards against the penitentiary ; Honesty begets confidence, respect and esteem; Honesty is the best policy — it brings compound interest/ ' These are the points developed ; and to enforce them, only the grossest self-interest is appealed to. It is safe to say that there is scarcely a passage in the whole discourse that might not have been delivered by a pagan philosopher, if, indeed, he would be capable of uttering such commonplace platitudes. The preacher evidently forgot that a minister of the Gospel should preach the Gospel and the Gospel only. " Preach the Gospel to every creature," is the commission given to the apostles and through them to every duly appointed pastor of souls. We have no divine command to teach human philosophy. Ethical discourses are useful in their place ; but their place is not the Christian pulpit. I admit that self-interest and other natural motives not only may, but should, be urged by a preacher as secondary incentives to supernatural action. But to confine one's self wholly to them and thereby imply their sufficiency for the beginning and development of Christian life is a grave mistake involving doctrinal error and leading to pernicious practical results. Christian doctrine is sometimes explained in such a dry, didactic manner, that it exercises no influence on the will or spiritual nature of the hearer. His acceptance of divine truth seems nothing more than a purely intellectual act, or, at best, it is only that dead faith of which St. James speaks. Such discourse is not preaching. Our mission is not to enlighten the intellect, while we leave the heart festering in sin. By virtue of our priesthood we can give back life to the dead soul ; and by the obligation of our mission we are commanded to do so. — Do we fulfill this duty by those vapid, pointless generalities which we sometimes pass off on our people for sermons? Think of the prophet who was told to prophesy to the dry bones, and to call the spirit from the four winds to "blow on these slain and let them live again, " — think of him, instead of fulfilling the divine injunction, discoursing to them on osteology or Babylonian history. Yet such violation of duty would not be more criminal than is that of a priest in charge of souls who leaves them to rot in sin while he explains to them the circumincessio Trinitatis or the communicatio idiomatum.

Of course, doctrinal instruction has to be given to the people. Justus meus ex fide vivit. A Christian life is essentially a supernatural life, and therefore a life directed by divine truth. Now divine truth must be first apprehended by the intellect before it influences the will. All this is undeniable; but it proves nothing more than that the knowledge of such truth is a necessary condition of effective preaching. Our divine Lord, as I have already intimated, did not send His apostles to establish a school of philosophy, but a living body of earnest men, "doers of the word, and not hearers only," — ■ men all whose actions should be supernaturalized by divine knowledge permeating their spiritual nature, regulating the operations of all their faculties, and directing them to the ultimate end of Christian life, namely, union through Christ with God.

Wo is unto me, says St. Paul, if I preach not the Gospel. But what kind of preaching fulfills this grave obligation? Is it fulfilled by merely talking at random to the people on Sundays and holidays! Some priests think so; and they talk usque ad nauseam,, but they do not preach. Being glib of tongue and in no danger of breaking down, they never think of making any serious preparation for their weekly sermon. Before going into the pulpit, they put together a few commonplace ideas on the G-ospel of the day, or they read over cursorily some other one's sermon. They then begin . They lash themselves into a passion for no apparent reason; they beat the air with unmeaning gestures; they bellow, stamp, overwhelm their hearers with a deluge of high-sounding but senseless words ; and when, after much floundering, they come to an end, they leave the pulpit with the self-satisfied air of men who have deserved well of G-od and humanity. But they are not, as they shall one day find out, of the seed of those men by whom salvation was brought to Israel. They incur the "wo" of St. Paul by not preaching the Gospel, and they incur that other curse uttered by Jeremias against those that do the work of the Lord "fraudulenter."

The people themselves contribute much toward the continuance of this kind of preaching. They seem to be satisfied with it, and sometimes they even applaud it. Yet how are they bettered by it? Does it check vice among them? Does it make them more honest, truthful, pure, charitable? Does it bring them to the Sacraments? Does it make the home happier, more united, more Christian? These questions the people never put to themselves; and hence no pressure is brought to bear on the pastor to make him supply more healthy food. Human nature does not take kindly to the earnest preparation necessary for preaching. It must feel the pressure of some external, palpable, material motives before it can be kept easily on a high level of action. Fear of consequences helps to make the priest punctual in attending sick calls : could it not be made to help also in persuading him — when persuasion is necessary — to prepare his sermons with more care and thoroughness?

The truth is, that the bulk of people prefer not to be disturbed in their sinful habits. They will listen patiently, or at least without open protest, to any amount of speculative instruction on matters of doctrine. They are interested in controversial subjects; and they love to hear heresy denounced in unmeasured terms. They even shed tears at pathetic passages of sermons, and congratulate the preacher, and they seem to flatter themselves that the tears and congratulations are manifestations of a religious spirit. But that restitution they have to make; that lie about a neighbor they have to retract ; that vicious habit or occasion of sin they do not wish to give up ; that sacrilegious confession they have to make right : these and other sore spots in the conscience they wish the preacher to handle lightly.

Every priest in charge of souls should be deeply impressed with the vital importance of preaching, as a condition of salvation, not only for his people, but also for himself. In God's ordinary providence, sinners take the first step toward conversion when they hear the truths of the Gospel announced to them. And if those truths be not fittingly announced and a sinner be lost in consequence, who — the preacher or the sinner — will merit and receive the greater punishment?

I do not believe that priets in this country are negligent in preparing their sermons; yet I presume to think that more abundant fruit might be produced, if some of them were more self-reliant and original, if they collected their matter from theology, Scripture, and Church history, rather than from foreign sermon books, and also, perhaps, if they kept their minds filled with a constant supply of fresh spiritual ideas by meditation and spiritual reading. The essential conservatism of the Church inclines priests to be conservative also in their method of preaching. Yet, non nova sed nove, is a sound principle in perfect keeping with the usage of all our great preachers and writers. The continuity of Catholic doctrine does not imply continuity in the manner of presenting it. We are therefore free from the traditional mannerisms of the European pulpit ; we are justified in breaking off from all foreign methods of preaching; and, what is more, we are obliged to break off from them, that we may adapt our mode of announcing the Gospel to the peculiar character and the advanced civilization of our people.

NOTE. It is unnecessary to tell Catholic readers that preaching has been always practised in the Church, as one of her most important organic functions. Yet, among the traditional misrepresentations which are still used to turn honest minds against us is this, that preaching fell into disuse in the Middle Ages. "When the Church," says Dr. Phelps, "lost its faith in the Bible as the only inspired source of knowledge, then sacerdotalism took the place of religious teaching, and the priesthood became too ignorant or too indolent, or both, to become preachers."

A candid speaker, before making this sweeping statement to a class of theological students, would have inquired whether we Catholics denied it, and if so, on what authority. Let us take the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as typical of the Middle Ages, and let us turn to Alzog's History of the Church, Vol. ii, p. 1033 (Pabisch and Byrne's translation;; we read as follows : "Richard of St. Victor (cir. A. D. 1164), in a sermon delivered on Easter Sunday, said that it was not his intention to instruct his hearers, but simply to recall truths and facts to their minds ; because, he added, they knew the teaching of Holy Scripture as well as him-

Manual of Sacred Bhetoric.

self." Further on Alzog writes : "Among the most eminent preachers of those times may be reckoned St. Yves of Chartres, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildebert of Mans, Godfrey of Bordeaux, Guilbert de la Porree, Abelard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many more of the Schoolmen, who put aside, for the time, the rigorous forms of the schools, and while instructing the people, employed language the most simple and the best calculated to convey to their minds a clear and intelligible idea of the matter in hand .... As was natural in an age when great preachers abounded, there were not wanting directions as to the best method of rendering preaching fruitful in good results. Treatises were written on the subject by Alanus of Ryssel and Guibert of Nogent," etc., etc.

CHAPTER II. Personal Character of the Preacher

Moeal character is the foundation of all effective preaching. Ancient writers recognized its necessity for secular oratory. Sit ergo nobis, writes Quintilian, orator quern instituimus, is qui a M. Catone finitur, vir bonus, dicendi peritus . What place, he asks, is there for the cultivation of letters or art in a mind enslaved by passion? and he answers: Non, herele, magis quam frugibus in terra, sentibus ac rubis occupata. . . . Non igitur unquam malus idem homo et perfectus orator. A priest's normal relation to Grod, established by sanctifying grace, may be interrupted in a moment of weakness and renewed afterwards ; but should he once commit himself seriously in the parish where he ministers, no repentance will give back to his words the weight they had before his fall. When he is most eloquent — makes the strongest and most impassioned appeal to (20)

the will — it will be remembered against him, no doubt unjustly, that he did not formerly act on his own words ; and the remembrance will very much discount the force of his pleading. If this be the case with one who has done his utmost to repair the past, what will it be with him who has made no effort to repair it? How can he expect to teach effectively truths and duties which, it is shrewdly suspected, exercise no influence on his own life and conduct?

Hence, for a priest's words to have due influence on his people, he must be respected by them, not only for his official position, but also for his personal worth as a man and a Christian. They must believe implicitly in his learning, his judgment, his sincerity and consistency, his personal holiness, and his earnest concern for their salvation. They may applaud a facile, graceful, sweet-voiced speaker; and, bound by the magic of his words, they may be forced to weep or smile at his bidding : but when he would persuade them to a change" of life, to the sacrifice of long-cherished habits — to the patient wearing of a crown of thorns — they look to the man behind his words, and the final issue generally depends not on what he says, but on what he is. We look for light and counsel only to honest, unselfish, reliable men — men who speak decisively, but only from experience and conviction, who are incapable of deceiving, whose sterling personal worth has passed into a proverb.