EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE

AND

MISSIONARY CHRONICLE.

MARCH, 1861.

Reminiscences of Adolphe Monod, the Great French Preacher.*

BY THE REV. J. C. HARRISON.

WHEN I visited Montauban, M. Monod was throwing all his strength into his work. He was then in his prime; perhaps a little over forty years of age. His figure was of middle height, well formed and symmetrical. His forehead was broad and lofty-his features small-his hair and complexion very dark-his eyes black and near-sighted-his expression at once thoughtful and amiable, with a slight shade of melancholy-his voice rich and melodious-his manner friendly and modest, unpatronising, and absolutely free from assumption. The day after my arrival, I heard him preach in the Great Church on the occasion of the opening of the College Session. His text was remarkable, and, when first announced, seemed not very appropriate "Thou shalt not kill." But his opening sentences at once commanded your attention, and compelled you to acknowledge the hand of a master. His manner was singularly natural and unaffected, without the slightest appearance of self-consciousness-calm in the didactic parts, rising into warmth as the subject grew in interest, and highly impassioned when the interest had reached its height. He had the air of one who so fully realized the solemnity of his position as a preacher of the Gospel, that self was forgotten in the absorbing greatness of his work and aim. And yet you were convinced that in years past he had cultivated his oratorical powers with the utmost care, and had brought them to the highest point of which they were capable. You saw that he had been unwilling to rest in the possession of high natural gifts, but that he had regarded each one of those gifts as a talent to be sedulously improved. You felt that his graceful and significant action,-his varied modulation of voice, -his clear and beautiful enunciation, were as much the result of diligent culture as the skill which he displayed in the collection and arrangement of his thoughts. Moreover, you could not doubt that he had bestowed much pains in the preparation of the sermon itself. He Continued from page 79.

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had evidently determined not only what he should say, but how he should say it, he had decided on the form as well as the substance; and although he did not slavishly recite the very words he had written, it was clear that he used them whenever great accuracy or point was needed.* The line of thought was not, as might have been expected from the text, foreign to the occasion. He showed that the prohibition -“Thou shalt do no murder "—was based on the superiority of man to those animals which it is lawful to slay, and that this superiority consisted in his possession of a moral and spiritual nature, and of consequent accountableness; that the human body ought to be treated with more respect than that of the brutes, and its life more carefully guarded, not merely in consequence of its associations and uses, but because, when it dies, the soul's probation is ended, and its destiny is fixed for ever. If, then, it is criminal to injure the body, or destroy natural life, because of their relation to the soul, how much more criminal to injure the soul directly, or to be the means of inflicting on it moral and spiritual death. Thus, to sin against your own soul, or to sin against the soul of another-in plain terms, moral suicide and moral murder are the most awful crimes that can be committed. On the other hand, to "deliver those who are drawn unto death, or those who are ready to be slain,"-" to save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins," is a work which, as it engaged the heart and hands of the Son of God, is the highest and noblest that man can achieve. This, or something like this, was the substance of his discourse, but the form and manner it is impossible to reproduce. The vast audience were kept spell-bound for an hour and a half-intellect and heart alike. moved and were sometimes thrilled with excitement under passages of unwonted power or pathos. The impressions left on the mind were not those of delight or admiration at the eloquence of the preacher, but rather of solemn responsibility of the importance of living and working for God.

After this, I had the privilege of hearing him almost every Sunday afternoon for several months; for although the office he held was simply that of Professor in the College, he was well aware that preaching was his forte, and therefore, on his arrival at Montauban, partly for the advantage of the students, but mainly for the benefit of the town, he obtained the use of the Chapel of the Faculté for an afternoon service. There he preached, without fee or reward, from the simple love of doing good, Sunday after Sunday; and as often as he preached, crowds came to listen. These afternoon sermons had not the elaborate finish, nor the oratorical power, of that which I have already described; but they were remarkably fitted to instruct and edify, and had that

* M. Monod never read his sermons. This, I fancy, would have been opposed to his very idea of preaching.

peculiar charm which made those who heard him once anxious, as often as they could, to hear him again. They were, in great measure, expository, and were founded on consecutive portions of the Gospel history, but were always remarkable for unity of purpose and compactness of form. They were highly evangelical in spirit, and abounded in illustrations of the central truths of the Gospel. These truths were discussed sometimes in an argumentative and doctrinal manner, but much more frequently in a practical or experimental; and were presented and brought home, in appeals of amazing vividness, as they only could have been by one who felt their power.

Besides the privilege of hearing him, I had often the opportunity of conversing with him on the subject of preaching. As I was then young, and was anxiously looking forward to the ministry, he took pleasure in throwing out any hints which he thought would help me. He laid as much stress on the maintenance of unity of design and spirit in a sermon, as the French dramatic poets do on the maintenance of a severe unity in their plots. He complained that many English sermons which he had heard and read, though abounding in thought, were faulty in this respect,-were in fact two or three short sermons thrown into one, each part complete in itself; and, as a consequence, failed to leave a clear, distinct impression on the mind. He also insisted on the necessity of carefully preparing every sermon; not simply of laying out the plan, but filling in the details. Without this, he used to say, your illustrations are sure to be more or less inapposite, or to break down; your language to be inaccurate, slovenly, often pointless; you are in danger of preaching at random, of introducing remarks not because they help forward the matter in hand, but because they chance to occur to you at the moment. He therefore recommended that sermons should be well thought out, and even written, as frequently as possible; not to be recited word for word, but to furnish a thoroughly connected chain of thought, with accurate, pointed expressions, which, as they would be sure to lodge in the memory, could be used when required. He dwelt on the necessity of making every illus tration conducive to the grand purpose of the discourse, and condemned the introduction of facts which were likely to be more interesting to the audience than the subject which they were intended to elucidate or enforce. He used to point out how the preacher thus defeated his own end, and sent his hearers home full of the imagery and anecdotes he had employed, but with the vaguest possible notion of the main drift of his remarks. He was strongly of opinion, that just as no musician, however mellow his voice and accurate his ear, attains great excellence as a singer without training, so no speaker, whatever his natural gifts, acquires a good and faultless elocution without diligent cultivation of voice and manner in early life. To speak with perfect naturalness through a long set discourse, and yet with adaptation, ever varying, to

the varying moods of thought and feeling, he considered an attainment most valuable, but as difficult as it is rare.

As a means of acquiring proficiency in the composition of sermons, he strongly advised all young ministers diligently to study the best orations in the classical languages, and the best speeches and discourses in their own tongue; to analyse them; to observe how the great points are thrown into prominence,-how every subordinate remark contributes to the progress of the main design,-how every lawful expedient is used to awaken curiosity, to create surprise, and to keep the mind of the hearer active, how much skill is shown in the choice of words, the character of the arguments, the style of the illustrations. He urged the benefit which must accrue from committing portions of these masterpieces to memory, so as to familiarize the mind with felicitous and varied combinations of words and forms of expression, examples of adroit reasoning, and modes of forcible appeal. Moreover, he cautioned against writing or preaching on a subject with which the heart had not been brought to sympathise, in which it did not take a living interest; otherwise the mind could not call up its full power, or gird itself for action, the sermon would appear like a thing got up and delivered, and not as the outflow of the preacher's own soul; and there would actually be a want of reality in the whole proceeding, which must ever be a fatal defect, especially in the pulpit.

All these recommendations, as may be concluded from my account of his opening sermon, he carefully observed in his own preaching. But after all, it was not these things (except, indeed, the last) which gave the principal charm to his pulpit labours.

With him, his life and his ministry were one. He had the loftiest conception of his work-an assured conviction that he was called by God to preach the Gospel. He never felt, when he arose in the pulpit, that he was simply about to declare his own views and feelings, or to speak in his own name, but that he stood there as a servant of Christ, with a message from his Master to the people. This high estimate of his vocation, whilst it made him most conscientious in his endeavour "to find out acceptable words, so that what he spoke should be upright, even words of truth," gave a profound solemnity, an intense reality to all his discourses. He never regarded his sermons as orations on religious subjects, the effect of which depended on his personal skill or eloquence, but as instructions, warnings, invitations, which God had commissioned him to deliver, and which were powerful just in proportion as they represented the mind of God. Moreover, his earnestness out of the pulpit corresponded with his ardour in the pulpit; for, as I have said, his ministry was not regarded as an appendage to be taken up or laid aside at pleasure, but as inwoven into the very tissue of his life.

A natural consequence of this estimate of his vocation was his self