PREFACE. A WORK given to the public in print should be sufficiently intelligible to explain itself; and yet, writers will give explanations. Following this time-honored custom, we briefly explain the manner in which the present work came to be sent out into the world. Some years ago, the writer was appointed to teach a class of Theologians something about the Gospels and the manner of preaching from them. The notes made then, for his lectures, lay by him in a crude state. At the suggestion of two venerable bishops, now gone to their reward, and one living ornament of the Irish Hierarchy, he has dared to put his notes into extended shape, and trust them to the by no means tender mercy of general criticism. The difficulties besetting a young priest's first appearance in a pulpit were to him, not only matter of personal concern, but of official care. He saw these difficulties and felt them; and pitied others, more modest than himself, in their attempts to face even a kindly-disposed audience. To compose a religious Oration according to the rules of Rhetoric is not a very difficult matter; but to deliver the same is quite another affair. To blend both preparation and delivery is the acme of eloquence. To provide for the first branch of this in the easiest way possible is the object of the present work. It is an attempt at making the preparation for a sermon easy and effective. The plan pursued obviates an expensive and conscientious thing; namely, the quoting of authorities and giving the places we quoted from. This burdens the pages too much and was not wanted for the end in view. We have consulted the latest works of an exegetical character and have given the result of our researches in as few words as possible. The figurative, analogical and other senses we have barely touched upon, now and again, in the sermon-sketches. To have done so at length would make the book grow to an enormous bulk, and appear as the mere boiling down of masses of erudition which writers on the Sacred Word have so abundantly collected. Any well-chosen library contains plenty of works upon these wide fields of speculation and it may be advisable to have recourse to them when the skeleton of the sermon is planned; not before. A young priest just from college is much to be pitied. He has his memory crowded with theological and Scriptural gleanings, and is thrust into active missionary work all at once where he has little time for study or writing. After a week's hard work amongst the poor and the backsliders of his district, he finds himself called upon to preach on the Sunday morning. Two dangers beset his path here. If he have the copia fandi he is apt to trust too much to his fluency and neglect his preparation; and if he be not fluent he is apt to gather his ideas from some book of sermons and thus give a second-hand discourse, which perchance he reads. The people do not like a read sermon. It is seldom effective. The living voice was the means heavenly appointed for instructing in the doctrines and development of Christianity; and it is still the recognised organ for spreading the faith. The plan pursued in the following work will help a man to prepare a discourse in a short time. The brief gloss upon the text will refresh his memory; and the points of the discourse being set for him, as rising naturally from verses of the Sacred Scripture, will enable him without very great trouble, to prepare a sermon for his people. He has simply to put an exordium, fill up the points with a little reasoning, an instance or two from the Old Testament, one of the texts of the new amplified somewhat, then add an example. When each point is treated in this manner and an epilogue added which brings one to the peroration, the thing is done. This method has been chosen in preference to the system of Commentators, or the more complicated arrangements of Lohner and others. When a man goes to one of these well-packed storehouses to find matter for a sermon, he feels as if he were in a large library and neither knew what book to look for, or where to find anything if he did. The time lost in searching for a subject could far more profitably be spent in preparing one that is found. A Catholic writer on the Holy Scriptures cannot be expected to say much that is new. We follow lights which have shone for centuries over the Sacred pages and eschew those modern glares which disfigure them. There are men, who pretend to be ecclesiastics, endeavouring to explain away the Supernatural, because it is inconvenient for their theory. These have written little that is worth refuting. They are here styled Rationalists although some were deans, and some bishops in the Anglican Establishment. It would be amusing, were it not for the irreverence, to watch the gyrations of one of those gentlemen around a text of Scripture. He will quote the Greek and the various readings; he will then bring parallel passages from his predecessors, the pagan writers. He will describe the shape of the hill, the distance of the journey, the colour of the flowers, the size of the trees, and the hue of the clouds to a perfect nicety. When he comes to the real Scripture matter, he will try to explain it away or wind up a tough sentence of decent English with a platitude. The germ, the soul, the spirit of a passage has no more existence for him than the faith which he feels himself called upon to exterminate. Nothing is more remarkable than the contrast between the people of England and their teachers. The former almost adore the Bible and the latter scarcely tolerate its meaning. The blind lead the blind indeed. The works at the disposal of a student of the Bible are many and various. We have had but two in English, the Commentaries of the present Archbishop of Tuam and the Notes of the late Bishop of Kerry. In Latin we have a great variety-Calmet in French-D'Allioli in German-and Martini in Italian. The custom of printing the Latin with the vernacular has been followed by continental scholars; because the Vulgate alone is our authorised text and we consider ourselves at liberty to disagree now and again with vernacular renderings. The Rheims Version is very faithfully and carefully done, and it is remarkable how the Revised Version approximates to it. This latter version is very honest indeed and freed from the wilful perversions of an older and different set of scholars. The art of printing has helped to fix the text much more surely than the care of the most skilful copyist. The variations found in the Codices have been very carefully examined by scholars friendly and hostile to the Sacred Word. This work does not pretend to be a Commentary. It is, what it is called, a help for preachers. Very few opinions are advanced which have not been taken, at least in germ, from other authors. Where the writer ventured on an opinion of his own he begs to say that he does so with all due submission to the authority of the Church. All the opinions, where they diverge, are not given; but what approved itself to the writer is selected. Rejecting opinions does not mean condemning them; for many theories may look specious and be well supported by authority yet fail to win the assent of a reader-either because he is prejudiced or incapable of understanding their weight. Quisquis in suo sensu abundat and in no field can one see the liberty which the Catholic Church grants her writers, so liberally used as in commenting on the Scripture. ST. JOSEPH'S, 50, AVENUE HOCHE, PARIS. Feast of St. Paul of the Cross. 1884. |