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 REAL-WORLD PYTHON
A Hacker’s Guide to Solving Problems with
Code

by Lee Vaughan

San Francisco
REAL-WORLD PYTHON. Copyright © 2021 by Lee Vaughan.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of
the copyright owner and the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0062-4 (print)

ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0063-1 (ebook)

Publisher: William Pollock

Executive Editor: Barbara Yien
Production Editor: Kassie Andreadis
Developmental Editor: Frances Saux
Project Editor: Dapinder Dosanjh
Cover Illustrator: Rob Gale
Interior Design: Octopod Studios
Technical Reviewers: Chris Kren and Eric Mortenson
Copyeditor: Kim Wimpsett
Compositor: Shawn Morningstar
Proofreader: Paula L. Fleming
Indexer: Beth Nauman-Montana

The following images are reproduced with permission: Figure 3-3 from
istockphoto.com; Figure 5-1 courtesy of Lowell Observatory Archives; Figures 5-2, 6-
2, 7-6, 7-7, 8-18, and 11-2 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Figures 7-2, 7-9, 7-17, 8-
20, and 11-1 courtesy of NASA; Figure 8-1 photo by Evan Clark; Figure 8-4 photo by
author; Figure 9-5 from pixelsquid.com; Figure 11-9 photo by Hannah Vaughan

For information on distribution, translations, or bulk sales, please contact No Starch

Press, Inc. directly:
No Starch Press, Inc.
245 8th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
phone: 1-415-863-9900; info@nostarch.com
www.nostarch.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vaughan, Lee, author.
Title: Real-world python: a hacker’s guide to solving problems with code
/ Lee Vaughan.
Description: San Francisco, CA : No Starch Press, Inc., [2020] |
Includes
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020022671 (print) | LCCN 2020022672 (ebook) | ISBN
9781718500624 (paperback) | ISBN 1718500629 (paperback) | ISBN
9781718500631 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Python (Computer program language)
Classification: LCC QA76.73.P98 V383 2020 (print) | LCC QA76.73.P98
(ebook) | DDC 005.1/33--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022671
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022672

No Starch Press and the No Starch Press logo are registered trademarks of No Starch
Press, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the
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occurrence of a trademarked name, we are using the names only in an editorial fashion
and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the
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The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the
author nor No Starch Press, Inc. shall have any liability to any person or entity with
respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by
the information contained in it.
 For my uncle, Kenneth P. Vaughan.
He brightened every room he entered.
About the Author
Lee Vaughan is a programmer, pop culture enthusiast, educator, and
author of Impractical Python Projects (No Starch Press, 2018). As an
executive-level scientist at ExxonMobil, he constructed and reviewed
computer models, developed and tested software, and trained
geoscientists and engineers. He wrote both Impractical Python Projects
and Real-World Python to help self-learners hone their Python skills and
have fun doing it!
About the Technical Reviewers
Chris Kren graduated from the University of South Alabama with an
M.S. in Information Systems. He currently works in the field of
cybersecurity and often uses Python for reporting, data analysis, and
automation.
Eric Mortenson has a PhD in mathematics from the University of
Wisconsin at Madison. He has held research and teaching positions at
The Pennsylvania State University, The University of Queensland, and
the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. He is an associate professor
in mathematics at St. Petersburg State University.
 BRIEF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Saving Shipwrecked Sailors with Bayes’ Rule

Chapter 2: Attributing Authorship with Stylometry

Chapter 3: Summarizing Speeches with Natural Language Processing

Chapter 4: Sending Super-Secret Messages with a Book Cipher

Chapter 5: Finding Pluto

Chapter 6: Winning the Moon Race with Apollo 8

Chapter 7: Selecting Martian Landing Sites

Chapter 8: Detecting Distant Exoplanets

Chapter 9: Identifying Friend or Foe

Chapter 10: Restricting Access with Face Recognition

Chapter 11: Creating an Interactive Zombie Escape Map

Chapter 12: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

Appendix: Practice Project Solutions

Index
 CONTENTS IN DETAIL

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION
Who Should Read This Book?
Why Python?
What’s in This Book?
Python Version, Platform, and IDE
Installing Python
Running Python
Using a Virtual Environment
Onward!

1
SAVING SHIPWRECKED SAILORS WITH
BAYES’ RULE
Bayes’ Rule
Project #1: Search and Rescue
The Strategy
Installing the Python Libraries
The Bayes Code
Playing the Game
Summary
Further Reading
Challenge Project: Smarter Searches
Challenge Project: Finding the Best Strategy with MCS
Challenge Project: Calculating the Probability of Detection
2
ATTRIBUTING AUTHORSHIP WITH
STYLOMETRY
Project #2: The Hound, The War, and The Lost World
The Strategy
Installing NLTK
The Corpora
The Stylometry Code
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Hunting the Hound with Dispersion
Practice Project: Punctuation Heatmap
Challenge Project: Fixing Frequency

3
SUMMARIZING SPEECHES WITH NATURAL
LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Project #3: I Have a Dream . . . to Summarize Speeches!
The Strategy
Web Scraping
The “I Have a Dream” Code
Project #4: Summarizing Speeches with gensim
Installing gensim
The Make Your Bed Code
Project #5: Summarizing Text with Word Clouds
The Word Cloud and PIL Modules
The Word Cloud Code
Fine-Tuning the Word Cloud
Summary
Further Reading
Challenge Project: Game Night
Challenge Project: Summarizing Summaries
Challenge Project: Summarizing a Novel
Challenge Project: It’s Not Just What You Say, It’s How You Say It!

4
SENDING SUPER-SECRET MESSAGES WITH
A BOOK CIPHER
The One-Time Pad
The Rebecca Cipher
Project #6: The Digital Key to Rebecca
The Strategy
The Encryption Code
Sending Messages
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Charting the Characters
Practice Project: Sending Secrets the WWII Way

5
FINDING PLUTO
Project #7: Replicating a Blink Comparator
The Strategy
The Data
The Blink Comparator Code
Using the Blink Comparator
Project #8: Detecting Astronomical Transients with Image Differencing
The Strategy
The Transient Detector Code
Using the Transient Detector
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Plotting the Orbital Path
Practice Project: What’s the Difference?
Challenge Project: Counting Stars

6
WINNING THE MOON RACE WITH APOLLO
8
Understanding the Apollo 8 Mission
The Free Return Trajectory
The Three-Body Problem
Project #9: To the Moon with Apollo 8!
Using the turtle Module
The Strategy
The Apollo 8 Free Return Code
Running the Simulation
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Simulating a Search Pattern
Practice Project: Start Me Up!
Practice Project: Shut Me Down!
Challenge Project: True-Scale Simulation
Challenge Project: The Real Apollo 8

7
SELECTING MARTIAN LANDING SITES
How to Land on Mars
The MOLA Map
Project #10: Selecting Martian Landing Sites
The Strategy
The Site Selector Code
Results
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Confirming That Drawings Become Part of an Image
Practice Project: Extracting an Elevation Profile
Practice Project: Plotting in 3D
Practice Project: Mixing Maps
Challenge Project: Making It Three in a Row
Challenge Project: Wrapping Rectangles

8
DETECTING DISTANT EXOPLANETS
Transit Photometry
Project #11: Simulating an Exoplanet Transit
The Strategy
The Transit Code
Experimenting with Transit Photometry
Project #12: Imaging Exoplanets
The Strategy
The Pixelator Code
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Detecting Alien Megastructures
Practice Project: Detecting Asteroid Transits
Practice Project: Incorporating Limb Darkening
Practice Project: Detecting Starspots
Practice Project: Detecting an Alien Armada
Practice Project: Detecting a Planet with a Moon
Practice Project: Measuring the Length of an Exoplanet’s Day
Challenge Project: Generating a Dynamic Light Curve

9
IDENTIFYING FRIEND OR FOE
Detecting Faces in Photographs
Project #13: Programming a Robot Sentry Gun
The Strategy
The Code
Results
Detecting Faces from a Video Stream
Summary
Further Reading
Practice Project: Blurring Faces
Challenge Project: Detecting Cat Faces

10
RESTRICTING ACCESS WITH FACE
RECOGNITION
Recognizing Faces with Local Binary Pattern Histograms
The Face Recognition Flowchart
Extracting Local Binary Pattern Histograms
Project #14: Restricting Access to the Alien Artifact
The Strategy
Supporting Modules and Files
The Video Capture Code
The Face Trainer Code
The Face Predictor Code
Results
Summary
Further Reading
Challenge Project: Adding a Password and Video Capture
Challenge Project: Look-Alikes and Twins
Challenge Project: Time Machine
11
CREATING AN INTERACTIVE ZOMBIE
ESCAPE MAP
Project #15: Visualizing Population Density with a Choropleth Map
The Strategy
The Python Data Analysis Library
The bokeh and holoviews Libraries
Installing pandas, bokeh, and holoviews
Accessing the County, State, Unemployment, and Population
Data
Hacking holoviews
The Choropleth Code
Planning the Escape
Summary
Further Reading
Challenge Project: Mapping US Population Change

12
ARE WE LIVING IN A COMPUTER
SIMULATION?
Project #16: Life, the Universe, and Yertle’s Pond
The Pond Simulation Code
Implications of the Pond Simulation
Measuring the Cost of Crossing the Lattice
Results
The Strategy
Summary
Further Reading
Moving On
Challenge Project: Finding a Safe Space
Challenge Project: Here Comes the Sun
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
quoting the fable of Daphne to illustrate the denial of the Apostle.
“The nymph of the wood,” said he, “being pursued by the shepherd
Apollo, fled over hill and dale, till she reached the foot of a rock up
which she could not climb, and, seeing herself at the mercy of her
pursuer, she began to weep,—in like manner, St. Peter seeing
himself arrested by the rock of his denial, ‘wept bitterly.’” And
Camus, Bishop of Belley, who flourished in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, could use such words as these on Christmas
Day:—“We now, skimming over the sea in our boat, come to behold
the Infant born into the world to conquer it. He is our Bellerophon,
who, mounted on the Pegasus of His humanity, winged by union
with the Deity, has overcome the world, ‘confidite, ego vici
mundum;’ the world, a true and strange Chimera! lion as to its front
by its pride, dragon behind in its avarice, goat in the midst by its
pollution! He is our youthful Horatius overcoming the three Curiatii
of ambition, avarice, and sensuality! He is our Hercules, who has
beaten down the triple-throated Cerberus, and who has in His cradle
strangled serpents. The one crushed only two, but ours has
destroyed three, the vanity of the world by His subjection, the
avarice of the world by His poverty, the delights of the world by His
mortification.”
Sometimes preachers, carried away by their feelings, gave vent to
the most violent and indecorous expressions. As, for instance, the
Père Guerin preaching on the danger of reading improper literature,
could not refrain from using the following language with reference to
Theophilus Viaud, who had written a very immoral poem, “La
Parnasse des Poètes,” 1625, for which he and his book were
condemned to be burned. “Cursed be the spirit which dictated such
thoughts,” howled the preacher. “Cursed be the hand which wrote
them! Woe to the publisher who had them printed! Woe to those
who have read them! Woe to those who have ever made the
author’s acquaintance! But blessed be Monsieur le premier Président,
blessed be M. le Procureur Général, who have purged our Paris of
this plague! You are the originator of the plague in this city; I would
say, after the Rev. Father Garasse, that you are a scoundrel, a great
calf! but no! shall I call you a calf? Veal is good when boiled, veal is
good when roast, calfskin is good for binding books; but yours,
miscreant! is only fit to be well grilled, and that it will be, to-morrow.
You have raised the laugh at monks, and now the monks will laugh
at you.”
Preachers have been quite unable at times to resist the chance of
saying a bon mot. Father André, being required to give out before
his sermon that a collection would be made for the dower of a
young lady who wished to take the veil, said—“Gentlemen, your
alms are solicited in behalf of a young lady who is not rich enough to
take the vow of poverty.” I believe it is of the same man that the
story is told, that he halted suddenly in the midst of a sermon to
rebuke the congregation for indulging in conversation whilst he was
speaking. One good woman took this in dudgeon, and standing up,
assured the preacher that the buzz of voices came from the men’s
side of the church, and not from that reserved for the females. “I am
delighted to hear it,” replied the preacher, “the talking will then be
sooner over.” This reminds me of Gabriel Barlette’s dictum, “Pone
quatuor mulieres ab unâ parte, decem viros ab aliâ, plus garrulabunt
mulieres.”
Kings even have been publicly rebuked for something of the same
kind. Every one knows that Mademoiselle d’Entragues, Marchioness
of Verneuil, was mistress of Henry IV. One day that the Jesuit father,
Gonthier, was preaching at St. Gervais, the king attended with
Mademoiselle d’Entragues, and a suite of court ladies. During the
sermon the marchioness whispered and made signs to the king,
trying to make him laugh. The preacher, indignant at this conduct,
turned to Henry and said, “Sire, never again permit yourself to come
to hear the word of God surrounded by a seraglio, and thus to offer
so great a scandal in a holy place.” The marchioness was furious,
and endeavoured to obtain the punishment of the preacher, but
Henry, instead of consenting, had the good sense to show that he
was not offended, by returning to hear Father Gonthier preach on
the following day. He took him aside however, and said, “My father,
fear nothing. I thank you for your reproof; only, for Heaven’s sake,
don’t give it in public again.”
I have said that the preachers of the fifteenth century often
degenerated into the burlesque, in order to attract the attention they
failed to rivet by the excellence of their matter. Unfortunately this
fault was not confined to the fifteenth century, but we find it again
and again appearing among inferior preachers of the next two
centuries. It must be remembered that the monasteries had then
fallen from their high estate through the intolerable oppression of
the “in commendam,” and that learning was far less cultivated than
in an earlier age. The popular friar-preachers, the hedge-priests,
who took with the vulgar, were much of the stamp of modern
dissenting ministers, men of little education but considerable
assurance; they spoke in the dialect of the people, they understood
their troubles, they knew their tastes; and, at the same time, like all
people who have got a smattering of knowledge, they loved to
display it, and in displaying it consisted much of their grotesqueness.
The following sketch of one of these discourses is given by Father
Labat, in his “Voyages en Espagne et en Italie, Amst., 1731, 8 vols.
in 12mo.” He says that he was present on the 15th September, 1709,
at a sermon preached in the open air under a clump of olives near
Tivoli.
The day was the Feast of the Name of Mary. “Those who did the
honours of the feast placed me, politely, right in front of the
preacher. He appeared, after having kept us waiting sufficiently long,
mounted the pulpit, sat down without ceremony, examined his
audience in a grave and perhaps slightly contemptuous manner; and
then, after a few moments’ silence, he rose, took off his cap, made
the sign of the cross on his brow, then on his mouth, and then on
his heart, which after the old system he supposed to be on his left
side; lastly, he made a fourth sign, which covered up all the others,
since it extended from his head to the pit of his stomach. This
operation complete, he sat down, put on his cap, and began his
discourse with these words, ‘I beheld a great book written within
and without,’ which he explained thus: Ecco il verissimo ritrato di
Maria sempre Virgine; that is to say, Behold the veritable portrait of
the ever Virgin Mary. This application was followed by a long
digression upon all books ever known in MS. or in print. Those which
compose the Holy Scriptures passed first in review; he named their
authors, he fixed their date, and gave the reasons for their
composition. He passed next to those of the ancient philosophers, of
the Egyptians and of the Greeks; those of the Sibyls appeared next
on the scene, and the praise of the Tiburtine Sibyl was neatly
interwoven into the discourse. Homer’s Iliad was not forgotten, any
more than the Æneid; not a book escaped him; and then he
declared that none were equal to the great book written within and
without; a book, said he, imprinted with the characters of divine
virtues, bound in Heaven, dedicated to wisdom uncreate[1],
approved by the doctors of the nine angelic hierarchies, published by
the twelve Apostles in the four quarters of the globe; a book
occupying the first place in the celestial library, in which angels and
saints study ever, which is the terror of demons, the joy of heaven,
the delights of saints, the recompense of the triumphant Church, the
hope of the suffering, the support, the strength, the buckler of the
militant. He never left this great book, the leaves of which he kept
turning, so to speak, for three good quarters of an hour, and then
finding that it was time to rest, he quitted us suddenly without a
‘good-bye.’ I mean without the blessing, and without having spoken
of the Blessed Virgin in any other light than that which served him in
the explanation of his text.
“I confess I never heard a sermon which pleased me better, for I
was not a bit wearied during it; and, in his style, I suspect he was
unequalled. The Passion of Father Imbert, Superior of our mission at
Guadaloupe, his sermon on St. Jean de Dieu, that of Father Ange de
Rouen, a Capuchin, on a certain indulgence, had hitherto appeared
to me inimitable masterpieces; but I must award the palm to that
which I have just reported, and to do the preacher justice, he
surpassed the others mentioned as the empyrean sky surpasses the
lunar sky in grandeur and elevation.”
 I must speak here of a famous preacher of the fifteenth century,
to whom I cannot afford a separate notice, and who is more
offensively ridiculous than the man spoken of by Labat; I mean
Gabriel Barlette. I do not give him other notice than this for two
reasons; the first, because there is reason to believe that the
sermons which pass under his name are spurious compositions, as
indeed is asserted by a cotemporary, Leander Alberti, who says that
they were the composition of a pretender who took the name of the
great preacher.
It is therefore not fair to judge of a really famous man from works
which may not be his. Another reason why I have limited to a few
lines my notice of sermons which were undoubtedly popular, if we
may judge of the number of impressions they went through, is that
there is positively no good to be got from them; they are full of the
grossest absurdities and the most profane buffoonery. I have given
an account of some three or four of this class of sermon, and I can
afford no more room to similar profanities.
Gabriel Barlette was a Dominican, and was born at Barletta in the
kingdom of Naples. He lived beyond 1481, for he speaks of the siege
and capture of Otranto by Mahomet II. as a thing of the past. In one
of the sermons attributed to him is the following passage on the
close of the temptations:—“After His victory over Satan, the Blessed
Virgin sends Him the dinner she had prepared for herself, cabbage,
soup, spinach, and perhaps even sardines.”
In a sermon for Whitsun-Tuesday, he rebukes distractions in
prayer, and he illustrates them in this unseemly way. He represents a
priest engaged at his morning devotions, saying, “Pater noster qui es
in cœlis—I say, lad, saddle the horse, I’m going to town to-day!—
sanctificatur nomen tuum,—Cath’rine, put the pot on the fire!—fiat
voluntas tua—Take care! the cat’s at the cheese!—panem nostrum
quotidianum—Mind the white horse has his feed of oats.… Is this
praying?” No, Gabriel, nor is this preaching!
Another preacher of the same stamp was Menot. Michael Menot
was born in Paris; he was a Franciscan, and died at an advanced age
in 1518.
Take this specimen of his reasoning—

“The dance is a circular way;

The way of the Devil is circular;
Therefore the dance is the Devil’s way.”

And he proves his minor by the Scriptural passages “circuivi terram,”

“circuit quærens quem devoret,” “in circuitu impii ambulant.” In his
sermon for Friday after Ash-Wednesday he thus expresses his sense
of the value of magistrates: “Justices are like the cat which is put in
charge of a cheese lest the mice should eat it. But if the cat lay
tooth to it, by one bite he does more mischief than the mice could
do in twenty. Just in the same manner,” &c. The following is a
specimen of his style, a sad jumble of Latin and French. He is giving
a graphic description of the prodigal son wasting his goods. “Mittit
ad quærendum les drapiers, les grossiers, les marchands de soye, et
se fait accoutrer de pied en cap; il n’y avait rien à redire. Quando
vidit sibi pulchras caligas d’écarlate, bien tirées, la belle chemise
froncée sur le collet, le pourpoint fringant de velours, la toque de
Florence, les cheveux peignés, et qu’il se sentit le damas voler sur le
dos, hæc secum dixit: Oportetne mihi aliquid? Or me faut-il rien?
Non, tu as toutes tes plumes; il est temps de voler plus loin. Tu es
nimis propè domum patris tui, pro benè faciendo casum tuum. Pueri
qui semper dormierunt in atrio vel gremio matris suæ, nunquam
sciverunt aliquid, et nunquam erunt nisi asini et insulsi, et ne seront
jamais que nices et béjaunes. Bref qui ne fréquente pays nihil videt.”
Of course this sermon was not thus preached, but it gives us an
idea of Menot’s acquaintance with Latin, and of his utter inability to
render the slang which had disfigured his vernacular by classic
phrases.
But it must not be supposed that all preachers of the fifteenth
century were like these clerical jesters.
 Gabriel Biel was grave and dignified, his sermons remarkably
simple in construction, and full of wisdom and fervour. The same
may be said of Thomas à Kempis, John Turricremata, and Henry
Harphius.
With the sixteenth century a new phase of pulpit oratory was
about to dawn. Men wearied of conventional restraints, and spoke
from the heart, knowledge was profounder, less superficial, the
conceits of schoolmen were kept in the background, and scriptural
illustrations brought into greater prominence. Anecdote was still
used as a powerful engine for good, but it was anecdote such as
would edify. Similes were introduced of the most striking and
charming character; and the preachers sought evidently rather to
instruct their hearers, and to render doctrine intelligible, than to
surround themselves with a cloud of abstruse doubts and solutions,
to the bewilderment of their hearers, and to their own possible
glorification. It is impossible not to see in this a fruit of the
Reformation. To people famishing for the bread of life, the preachers
of the fifteenth century had given a stone, and now their successors
were alive to the fact, and strove earnestly to remedy it. They threw
themselves forward like Phineas, and stood in the gap, so that it is
to them, perhaps, more than to great theologians like Bellarmin, that
the Catholic Church must look with thanks for having stayed the
advancing tide of reform.
If, in that age of religious upheaval, the pulpit had remained as
unedifying as heretofore, there can be no manner of doubt that the
eruption in Germany would have devastated Italy, France, and Spain.
Indeed the Huguenot party in France was very powerful, and
extended so widely that it must be a matter of surprise to many to
find its tenets now represented by a few miserable, quivering
fragments. In fact the Roman Church, after the first shock,
recovered ground on all sides, for her clergy rose to meet the
emergency, and turned to the people as the true source of strength
to the Church, and leaned on them, instead of putting her trust in
Princes. I cannot believe that the massacres of the Huguenots had
any thing to do with the extirpation of Protestantism in France, for
persecution strengthens but never destroys. I am rather inclined to
attribute it to the vigour with which the clergy of the time set
themselves to work remedying the abuses which had degraded
pulpit oratory. Sacred eloquence is the most powerful engine known
for influencing multitudes, and the Catholic clergy resolutely
cultivated it, and used it with as much success as Chrysostom,
Gregory, or Augustine. They had a vast storehouse of learning and
piety from which to draw, the writings of the saints and doctors of
the Church in all ages, and they drew from it unostentatiously but
effectively. Their sermons were telling in a way no Protestant
sermons could equal, for the Calvinist or Lutheran had cast in his lot
apart from the great men of antiquity, whilst the Catholic could focus
their teaching upon his flock. The former had but their own brains
from which to draw, whilst the latter had the great minds of Catholic
antiquity to rest upon. There are vast encyclopedias and dictionaries
of theology, moral and dogmatic, filled with matter any Catholic
preacher of the meanest abilities could work up into profitable and
even striking discourses, great collections of anecdote and simile,
which he might turn to for illustrations, and, above all, exhaustive
commentaries on every line, aye, and every word of Scripture.
From all these great helps to the preacher, the Protestant minister
conscientiously, and through prejudice, kept aloof.
This may account for the undoubted fact that after the first flush
of triumph, sacred oratory in the reformed communities sank to as
dead and dreary a level as it had attained in the fifteenth century.
The Protestant preachers were not always as grotesque, but they
became as dull and unspiritual, whilst the Roman Church having
once napped, never let herself fall asleep again, but with that tact
which once characterized her, but which is fast leaving her, she
stirred up and kept alive ever after the fire of sacred eloquence.
And here I must make an extraordinary statement, yet one
indisputably true, however paradoxical it may appear.
 The main contrast between Roman Catholic sermons and those of
Protestant divines in the age of which I am speaking, consists in the
wondrous familiarity with Scripture exhibited by the former, beside a
scanty use of it made by the latter. It is not that these Roman
preachers affect quoting texts, but they seem to think and speak in
the words of Scripture, without an effort; Scriptural illustrations are
at their fingers’ ends, and these are not taken from one or two pet
books, but selected evenly from the whole Bible.
Let me take as an instance a passage selected at hap-hazard from
Königstein, an unknown German preacher. He is preaching on the
Gospel during the Mass at dawn on Christmas Day. I choose him, for
he is as homely a preacher as there was in the sixteenth century,
and as he may be taken as a fair representative of a class somewhat
dull.
“‘And the Shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto
Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass’ (Luke ii. 15).
The Saviour being desirous of weaning altogether the hearts of His
own people from worldly glory, not only chose to be born in poverty,
but to be announced to poor folk, and to be proclaimed by them.
And this He chose lest the beginning of our faith should stand in
human glory or wisdom, which is foolishness with God, whereas He
desired that it should be ascribed to Divine grace only; therefore the
Apostle says, ‘After the kindness and love of God our Saviour
towards man appeared,’ &c. Kindness and love in His conversation,
and His nativity into this world, by taking our flesh; of God our
Saviour, by His own vast clemency; not by works of righteousness
which we have done, for we were by nature children of wrath, so
that our works were not done in justice, nor could we gain safety by
them; but according to His mercy He saved us by present grace and
by future glory, as we are saved by Hope; and it is He who hath
called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but
according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in
Christ Jesus before the world began, by the washing of regeneration
and the renewal of the Holy Ghost, that is, by the washing of
Baptism, which is a spiritual regeneration, for, except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.
Water cleanses the body without, and the Spirit purges the soul
within. In Baptism man ends the old life which was under the law,
that he may begin the new life which is under grace; so that he who
believes is daily renewed more and more by the Spirit, which is
given us in Baptism; as says the Apostle, Be renewed in the spirit of
your mind,” &c.
Of a similar character are the sermons of Helmesius, and the
simple; earnest, and thoughtful postils of Polygranus.
There is another observation which I must make upon these
venerable preachers. It is impossible to read them attentively
without observing how different in tone they are to modern
ultramontane theologians, and how sadly modern Romanism has
drifted from primitive traditions, and how rapid has been its descent,
when this is noticeable by ascending the stream of time but a few
centuries.
I am not prepared to say that there is nothing false and
unprimitive in the doctrine of these great preachers, but that
doctrinal corruption was not then fully developed. I suppose that an
English priest would find it hard to select a sermon of the new
Roman school, which he could reproduce in his own pulpit; but if he
were to turn to these great men of a past age, he would meet with
few passages which he should feel himself constrained to omit. The
germ of evil had been slowly expanding through the middle ages; it
flowered at the close, and now it has seeded, and become
loathsome in its corruption.
Let me take the worship of the Blessed Virgin, which has of late
assumed such terrible dimensions. A modern Roman preacher rarely
misses an opportunity of inculcating devotion to Mary. But it was not
so with the old preachers. They do use language which cannot
always be justified, but, more often, language which ought to be
frankly accepted by us, considering that the tone of English
reverence is unwarrantably low with regard to the blessed ever-
virgin Mother. Often when there is a natural opening for some words
of deification of Mary, the preachers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries turn from it to make a moral application to
their hearers. I will only instance De Barzia, a bishop of Cadiz. He
gives three sermons for the Purification.
The first is on the care which a Christian man should take not to
scandalize his neighbours by any act which though innocent might
give offence, or by the neglect of any duty.
The second is on the great danger of setting an evil example.
The third is on the funeral taper, by the light of which those
truths, which man saw not in the day of his life, are then most
evidently discerned.
For the Annunciation he gives three sermons. The first on the
modesty of Mary, which all should imitate. The second is on the
general confession of sin made in Lent. The third is on the
promptitude with which man should act on Divine impulses.
It is true that De Barzia uses strong language from which we
should dissent, on the feasts of the Assumption and the Nativity of
Mary; but the fact of letting two of her festivals pass without
pointing her out as a prominent object of worship is what, I should
suppose, no modern Ultramontane would do.
I must now turn to a bright and pleasant feature in these
preachers—their keen appreciation of the beauty of nature. This
indeed had been a distinguishing characteristic of the Middle Ages.
In architecture, in painting, and in poetry, even in preaching, the
great book of nature had been studied, and its details reproduced.
As the sculptor delighted to represent in stone beast, and bird, and
plant; as the painter rejoiced to transfer to canvas, with laborious
minuteness, the tender meadow flowers; so did the preacher pluck
illustration from the book of nature, or refer his hearers to it, for
examples of life.
With the Renaissance, the artist turned from the contemplation of
God’s handiwork, but not so the sacred orator. In him the same love
for the works of God is manifest, his mind returns to them again and
again, he gathers simile and illustration from them with readiness
and freedom, he seems to stand before his congregation with the
written word in his right hand, and the unwritten word in his left,
and to read from the written, and then turn to the unwritten as the
exponent of the other. Nature was not then supposed to be
antagonistic to Revelation, but to be its Apocrypha, hidden writings
full of the wisdom of God, and meet “for examples of life and
instruction of manners.”
The great Bernard used the heart-language of every mediæval
theologian when he said, “Believe me who have tried it; you will find
more in the woods than in books: the birds will teach you that which
you can learn from no master.”
In like temper did Philip von Hartung preach to a courtly audience
on the text, “Consider the fowls of the air,” and drawing them away
from the glitter of the palace, and the din of the city, set them down
in a meadow to hear the lessons taught them by the lark.
“Consider the fowls of the air, and look first to the lark (alauda),
drawing its very name, a laude, out of praise; see how with
quivering wing it mounts aloft, and with what clear note it praises
God! Aldrovandus says that he had been taught from childhood, that
the lark mounted seven times a day to sing hymns to its Creator, so
that it sings ascending, and singing soars.
“St. Francis was wont to call the larks his sisters, rejoicing in their
songs, which excited him to the praise of his Creator. Seven times a
day might we too chant our praise to God: first for our creation,
which was completed in seven days; then for our Redemption, which
was perfected by the seventh effusion of blood; thirdly, for the seven
sacraments instituted by Christ; fourthly, for the seven words uttered
from the Cross; fifthly, for the seven gifts of the Spirit shed on us
from on high; sixthly, for our preservation from the seven deadly
sins, even though the just man falleth seven times a day (Prov.
xxiv.); and lastly, for the seven sad and seven glorious mysteries of
the Blessed Virgin Mary.
 “A heavenly lark was royal David, going up to Thee, O God, ‘seven
times a day’ to praise Thee! David from the softness of a palace;
David from the cares of a kingdom; David from the tumult of battle;
David engaged in so great correspondence with many and mighty
kings, seven times a day, rose to the praise of God; and shall not
you, my brethren, mount from your ease seven times a day to give
thanks unto God? Threefold, aye! and fourfold, were our
blessedness, if from this vale of tears our hearts would but wing
their way on high to seek true and never-fleeting joys. Notice the
lark! it is not content, like the swallow, to skim the surface of earth,
but it must struggle up higher and higher. ‘The higher the soul goes,’
says Hugo, ‘the more it rejoices in the Lord.’ And just as the lark
when on earth is hushed, but mounting breaks into joy and song; so
does the soul raised to Heaven rapturously and sweetly warble. It
sings not upon the topmost boughs of trees, as though spurning all
that is rooted in earth. And so do you cast away all cares, all
intercourse, all affairs of life, all that is evil, all, in short, that is
earthy. Socrates was wont to say that the wings of a lark failed us
when we came down from Heaven, drawn by the host of earthly
objects. But we can spread them again to flee away and be at rest,
if we will, by earnest endeavour, dispose our hearts to mount, and
so go on from grace to grace.”
Beside this let me place a lesson from the flowers, culled from
Matthias Faber. “They teach us to trust in God. I pray you look at
Divine Providence exerted in behalf of the smallest floweret. God has
given it perfect parts, and members proportioned to its trunk; He
has provided it with organs for the performance of all those
functions which are necessary to it, as the drawing up of juice, and
its dispersion through the various parts; a root branching into tiny
fibres riveting it to the soil; a stalk erect, lest it should be stained
and corrupted through contact with the earth, strong also, lest it
should be broken by the storm, a rind thick or furred to protect it
from cold, or heat, or accident; twigs and leaves for adornment and
shelter; a most beauteous array of flower above the array of
Solomon in all his glory. He has given it, besides, a scent pleasant to
beasts or men; He has endued it with healing properties, and, above
all, with the faculty of generating in its own likeness. How many
benefits conferred on one flower! one flower, I say, which to-morrow
is cut down and cast into the oven! What, then, will He not give to
man, whom He has made in His own image, an heir of Heaven!…
‘Consider the lilies of the field how they grow,’ aye! how they grow,
how is it? They grow steadily night and day, stretching themselves
out and expanding, so that no man may discern the process going
on. So, too, let us grow, daily extirpating vices, daily implanting
virtues, thus sensibly increasing, so that, after the lapse of years, we
may be found to have advanced in spiritual growth, though we
ourselves may not have known it. As said the Apostle, ‘Forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
which are before, I press towards the mark’ (Phil. iii. 13).
“They teach us, also, to sigh for heavenly beatitude, and the
society of the blessed. If even in this world such variety of flowers is
seen, such beauty, such fragrance, and these in flowers which to-day
are and to-morrow are cast into the oven, what will be the beauty,
what the variety, what the glory of the elect in the kingdom of God!
Those who go to distant lands are ever discovering fresh and fresh
flowers; and so in Heaven is there unmeasured variety among the
angels and the elect.
“Yet in all this variety there is perfect unity. For as in the same
garden, or meadow, the flowers are content with their several
beauties, and no one impedes the growth of another, or thrusts it
out of its place, but all look up to the one sun, and bask and grow
and gather strength in his brightness; so also in Heaven. There each
of the Blessed will be content with his portion of glory, none
interfering with another, none envying another. For all will see God
face to face, and live and move and have their being in His
presence, and therewith be satisfied through eternity.”
Simile has been used extensively in all ages of the Church, but in
the fifteenth century it had become very mean and coarse. Meffreth
could talk of the world as being untranquil, like a globule of
quicksilver, never to be brought to rest till fused to a black residuum
in the sulphurous blast of Hell; and could illustrate the text, “Here
we have no continuing city,” by comparing this poor world of ours to
the weed-covered back of a large whale, which an eminent and
veracious navigator—of course he means Sinbad—mistook for a
verdant isle, only to discover his mistake when he began to drive
into it the stakes of his habitation.
Far nobler was the use of simile in the great revival of the
sixteenth century.
Pre-eminent among those who made it a vehicle for conveying
truths, are the names of De Barzia and Osorius; both men of great
refinement of taste and richness of imagination.
What, for example, could be more graceful than the following,
given by the Bishop of Cadiz, when speaking of the impossibility of
man comprehending the reason of God’s dealings, when He touches
with the finger of death at one time a child, at another an aged
man, then a youth, and next, perhaps, one in full vigour of
manhood? To us, this selection seems to be a matter of chance, but
there is no chance in it. The Bishop then uses this illustration. The
deaf man watches the harpist, and sees his fingers dance over the
strings in a strange and unaccountable way. Now a strong silver cord
is touched, then a slender catgut string. At one time a long string is
set vibrating, at another a very short string; now several are
thrummed together, and then one alone is set quivering. Just so is it
with us; we hear not the perfect harmony, nor follow the wondrous
melody of God’s operations, for the faculty of comprehending them
is deficient in us, and to us in our faithlessness there seems chance
and hazard, where really there exists harmony and order.
Osorius uses a different simile in illustrating an idea somewhat
similar.
He is speaking to those who murmur at God’s dealings in this
world, and who would fain have His disposition of things altered in
various particulars. He then says, that those who look on an
unfinished piece of tapestry see a foot here, a hand there, a patch of
red in one spot, of green in another, and all seems to be confusion.
Let us wait till the work is complete, and we shall see that not a
hand or foot, not a thread even is out of place. Such is the history of
the world. We see blood and war where there should be peace; we
see men exalted to be kings who should have been slaves, and men
condemned to be slaves who would have ruled nations in wisdom
and equity, and we think that there is imperfection in the work. Wait
we awhile, till at the Last Day the great tapestry of this world’s
history is unrolled before us, and then we shall see that all has been
ordered by God’s good providence for the very best.
But Scripture supplied most of the illustrations needed by these
preachers. It was to them an inexhaustible storehouse, from which
they could bring forth things new and old. Holy Scripture seems to
have supplied them with every thing that they required; it gave them
a text, it afforded confirmation to their subject; from it they drew
mystical illustrations for its corroboration, and examples wherewith
to enforce precept.
To some, the sacred page may be crystalline and colourless as a
rain-drop, but to these men who knew from what point to view it, it
radiated any colour they desired to catch.
They did not always make long extracts, in the fashion of certain
modern sermon-composers, who form a sermon out of lengthy
Scriptural passages clumsily pegged together, always with wood; but
with one light sweep, the old preachers brush up a whole bright
string of sparkling Scriptural instances, in a manner indicating their
own intimate acquaintance with Scripture, and implying a
corresponding knowledge among their hearers. Take the following
sentence of an old Flemish preacher as an instance: he is speaking
of the unity prevailing in heaven:—
“There all strife will have ceased, there all contradiction will have
ended, there all emulation will be unknown.
 “In that blessed country there will be no Cain to slay his brother
Abel; in that family, no Esau to hate Jacob; in that house, no
Ishmael to strive with Isaac; in that kingdom, no Saul to persecute
David; in that college, no Judas to betray his master.”
Let me take another example from a sermon on the small number
of the elect.
“‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’
“Noah preached to the old world for a hundred years the coming
in of the flood, and how many were saved when the world was
destroyed? Eight souls, and among them was the reprobate Ham.
Many were called, but only eight were chosen.
“When God would rain fire and brimstone on the cities of the
plain, were ten saved? No! only four, and of these four, one looked
back. Many were called, but three were chosen.
“Six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, went
through the Red Sea, the like figure whereunto Baptism doth even
now save us. The host of Pharaoh and the Egyptians went in after
them, and of them not one reached the further shore. And of these
Israelites who passed through the sea out of Egypt, how many
entered the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey?
Two only—Caleb and Joshua. Many—six hundred thousand—were
called, few, even two, were chosen. All the host of Pharaoh, a
shadow of those who despise and set at nought the Red Sea of
Christ’s blood, perish without exception; of God’s chosen people,
image of His Church, only few indeed are saved.
“How many multitudes teemed in Jericho, and of them how many
escaped when Joshua encamped against the city? The walls fell,
men and women perished. One house alone escaped, known by the
scarlet thread, type of the blood of Jesus, and that was the house of
a harlot.
“Gideon went against the Midianites with thirty-two thousand
men. The host of Midian was without number, as the sand of the
sea-side for multitude. How many of these thirty-two thousand men
did God suffer Gideon to lead into victory? Three hundred only.
Many, even thirty-two thousand men, were called; three hundred
chosen.
“Type and figure this of the many enrolled into the Church’s army,
of whom so few go on to ‘fight the good fight of faith!’
“Of the tribes of Israel twelve men only were chosen to be
Apostles; and of those twelve, one was a traitor, one doubtful, one
denied his Master, all forsook Him.
“How many rulers were there among the Jews when Christ came;
but one only went to Him, and he by night!
“How many rich men were there when our blessed Lord walked
this earth; but one only ministered unto Him, and he only in His
burial!
“How many peasants were there in the country when Christ went
to die; but one only was deemed worthy to bear His cross, and he
bore it by constraint!
“How many thieves were there in Judæa when Christ was there;
but one only entered Paradise, and he was converted in his last
hour!
“How many centurions were there scattered over the province;
and one only saw and believed, and he by cruelly piercing the
Saviour’s side!
“How many harlots were there in that wicked and adulterous
generation; but one only washed His feet with tears and wiped them
with the hair of her head! Truly, ‘Many are called, but few are
chosen.’”
We hear but little in modern sermons of the mystical interpretation
of Scripture, which was so common in all earlier ages of the Church.
The Epistles of St. Paul show us that the primitive Church was
accustomed to read Scripture in a mystical way. What, for instance,
can be more “fanciful,” as we moderns should say, than his
allegorizing of the history of Isaac (Gal. iv. 22-31), and of Moses (1
Cor. x. 1), or his argument from the law that the laity should pay for
the support of their pastors: “For it is written in the law of Moses,
Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the
corn” (1 Cor. ix. 9, 10), and “Let the elders that rule well be counted
worthy of double honour (i.e. honorarium, contribution in money) …
for the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth
out the corn?” (1 Tim. v. 17, 18.) Bacon said that we should accept
as conclusive the meaning of Scripture which is most plainly on the
surface, just as the first crush of the grape is the purest wine,
forgetting, as Dr. Neale aptly remarks, that the first crush of the
grape is not wine at all, but a crude and unwholesome liquor.
Certainly modern preachers are ready enough to give us the most
superficial interpretation of Scripture, and rarely trouble themselves
with probing the depths of Holy Writ for fresh lessons and new
beauties. In the same way it was quietly assumed till of late that the
ocean below that depth which is storm-tossed was quite azoic. We
know now that that untroubled profound teems with varied forms of
life, and is glorious with hitherto undreamt-of beauties. Our modern
divines are content with the troubled sea of criticism, and pay no
heed, and give no thought, to the manifold beauties and wonders of
the tranquil deeps of God’s mind, above which they are content to
toss. The analogy between God’s word written and God’s unwritten
word is striking. Yet we are satisfied to know that the further the
great volume of Nature is explored, the closer it is studied, the
greater are the wonders which it will display. Why, then, do we
doubt that the same holds good with the written word? Deep
answers to deep, the deep of Nature to the deep of Revelation. The
Same Who is the Author of Nature is the Author of Revelation; and
we may therefore expect to find in one as in the other that “His
thoughts are very deep,” “His ways past finding out;” that in one as
in the other there is a similarity, a mighty variety yet an essential
unity, a vast diversity yet a perfect harmony; that there are
mysteries in both, through which, as through a glass darkly, shines
the wisdom of the Creator.
 Commentators on Scripture, such as Scott and Henry, really fill
pages and volumes with the most deplorable twaddle, and exhibit
conclusively their utter incapacity for commentating on any single
passage of Scripture. Not only are their comprehensions too dull to
grasp the moral lessons in the least below the surface, but they
entirely ignore the mystical signification of the events recorded in
the Sacred Writings. To the Mediæval divines and those who
followed their steps, every word of Scripture had its value; indeed,
the very number, singular or plural, of a substantive was with them
fraught with significance. Take one instance; Stella the Franciscan
remarks, on St. John xiv. 23:—“‘Jesus answered and said unto him,
If a man love Me, he will keep My word (τὸν λόγον μου τηρήσει): he
that loveth Me not, keepeth not My words (τοὺς λόγους μου οὐ
τηρεῖ).’ Love of God makes one command out of many, for to him
who loves, the many precepts are but as one. So here Christ says, ‘If
any man love Me, he will keep My word;’ but of him who loves not,
He says, ‘He keepeth not My words.’ Of him who loves, it is spoken
in the singular; of him who loves not, in the plural. Eve said, ‘Of the
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said,
Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die’ (Gen. iii.
3); whereas God forbade only the eating, not the touching. But a
chilled heart made one command into two; whilst a heart full of love,
like that of David, could sum up the six hundred and thirteen
precepts of the old law into one, when he exclaimed, ‘Thy
commandment is exceeding broad,’ and ‘Lord, what love have I unto
Thy law, all the day long is my study in it.’”
Compare with this suggestive passage the only remark made on
the text in D’Oyly and Mant: “The manifestation I mean is, that of
inward light and grace, which shall never depart from those who are
careful to live as I have commanded them.” The observation of Stella
is suggestive, that in D’Oyly and Mant is decidedly the reverse.
But I would speak now of the mystical interpretations of Scripture.
I have only room for a very few. The following are from Marchant.
“Unless Christ had been sent, none of us would have been released
from our iniquities. Wherefore the Apostle often exhorts the Jews
not to glory in the law, for the law did not suffice to justify and to
make alive. Do you desire a figure of this mystery? Listen to that of
Elisha. He was asked to come and call to life a child which was dead:
he sent his servant first with a staff, which he was to lay upon the
dead child; but neither servant nor staff were of avail. Then went he
himself, and see what he did: ‘He went up, and lay upon the child,
and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and
his hands upon his hands:’ contracting himself to the form of the
child; ‘and the flesh of the child waxed warm … and the child
opened his eyes.’ You see the figure, attend to the verity. God sent
Moses His servant, and the Prophets, with the staff of the law; but
neither they nor the law could avail to restore man to life from the
death of sin. It was necessary, therefore, that He Himself should go
to man, and bow Himself to man by the assumption of man’s nature,
and contract Himself to the form of a child by the Incarnation, not
only casting Himself on this our dead nature, but taking our nature,
hands, arms, mouth, and soul to Himself.… This circumstance of the
closing of the door that none might see, when Elisha stretched
himself upon the child, is not without significance. For as none
discerned how Elisha, that great man, was able to contract himself
to the form of a little boy; so no one can comprehend how the Son
of God, so high and so mighty, could unite, and apply, and abase,
His nature to ours; so that He became mortal Who was immortal,
passible Who was impassible, infant Who was God. In all these the
mystery is great, the door is shut; it is not necessary for us to see,
but it is necessary for us to believe. We have another figure in the
sign given to Hezekiah. When he was sick unto death, the sun going
back ten degrees was the sign of his restoration to health. ‘And the
sun went back ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz.’ In like manner, that
man might rise from the sickness unto death of sin, it was necessary
that ‘the Sun of Righteousness’ should descend through the nine
angelic choirs, ‘being made a little lower than the angels,’ as though
going down nine degrees till He reached man the tenth.”
“The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Moses My servant is dead: now
therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto
the land which I do give them’ (Joshua i. 2). Joshua is by
interpretation a Saviour, and is the same as Jesus. As he, after
conquering Amalek, brought the people into the land of promise,
and divided the land between them; so has Christ come to overcome
the devil, and to introduce Christians daily into His Church through
the Baptismal stream, and finally to lead them into glory. Moses
could not bring them in, for the Father saith unto the Son, ‘Moses My
servant is dead.’ The ceremonies of the law are made of none effect,
‘now, therefore, arise’ from the bosom of the Father, enter the earth
in human form, expel the devils: ‘go over this Jordan,’ drink of the
brook of Thy Passion in the way, ‘Thou, and all this people,’ for by
the way by which goes the head, by that must the members go, and
where leads the general, there must follow the soldiers, ‘and go unto
the land which I do give them’—the land of the living, to which
Christ ascends and we follow; to which neither law nor prophets, no
nor Moses, could introduce us, but only our Joshua, our Jesus, the
Son of God.”
I have not yet spoken of the text, except to mention Maillard as
having preached on the same throughout a season of Lent. Some of
the earlier mediæval preachers delighted in selecting strange texts,
and even went so far as to take them from other books than Holy
Scripture. Indeed Stephen Langton composed a sermon, still
preserved in the British Museum, and published in Biographia
Britannica Literaria, on the text:—

“Bele Aliz matin leva

Sun cors vesti e para,
Enz un verger s’en entra,
Cink flurettes y truva,
Un chapelet fet en a
de rose flurie;
Pur Deu trahez vus en là,
vus hi ne amez mie;”
which was a dancing-song. Maillard also did the same thing when he
preached in Thoulouse, singing at the top of his voice as a text the
ballad “Bergeronnette Savoisienne.”
Peter of Celles took a stanza from a hymn, and his example has
been followed by others. Hartung preached from the words, “It fell,
it fell, it fell,” occurring in the parable of the sower.
Texts have sometimes been selected with remarkable felicity. I
have room for two instances only.
In the reign of King James I., a clergyman was to preach before
the Vice Chancellor at Cambridge, who was a very drowsy person.
He took his text from the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew,
“What, can ye not watch one hour?” and in the course of his sermon
very often repeated these words, which as often roused the vice-
chancellor from his nap, and so irritated him, that he complained to
the bishop. The bishop sent for the young man, that he might hear
what he had to say for himself in extenuation of the offence; and so
well pleased was he with the preacher’s defence, that he
recommended him to be one of the select preachers before the King.
On the occasion of his occupying the pulpit before James (First of
England and Sixth of Scotland), he took for his text James i. 6,
“Waver not,” from the translation then in use. This somewhat
startled the King, for it touched him on a weak point; but he loved a
joke, and was so well pleased with the preacher’s wit, that he
appointed him one of his own chaplains. After this the bishop
ordered the young man to preach again before his university, and
make his peace with the vice-chancellor. He did so, and took for his
text, “Whereas I said before, ‘What, can ye not watch one hour?’
and it gave offence; I say now unto you, ‘Sleep on, and take your
rest.’” And so left the university. The other story is less known. A
Capuchin having to preach one day in a church at—I believe—Lyons,
slipped on the steps into the pulpit, and fell on his head. The
Franciscan garb is scanty, and the congregation were startled by the
apparition of a couple of bare and brawny legs protruded through
the banisters. The unlucky preacher however picked himself up with
great rapidity, and stationing himself in the pulpit, before the general
titter had subsided, gave out his text, selected with great readiness
from the gospel for the day—“Tell the vision to no man.”
Next to the text in a sermon comes the exordium.
If a royal personage were present, some compliment was
expected to be paid by the preacher to his august hearer, at the
opening of the sermon. Some of the greatest preachers have injured
their reputation by indulging in unmerited flatteries. Chaussemer, a
Jacobite, preaching after the famous passage of the Rhine, before
Louis XIV. in Holy Week, when according to custom, the king washed
the feet of some poor folk, used these words, “The haughty waves
of the Rhine, which you, Sire, have passed as rapidly as they
themselves are rapid, shall one day be dried up; but these drops of
water, which your royal hands have sprinkled over the feet of the
poor, shall ever be treasured before the throne of God.” Noble was
the commencement of a sermon of Father Seraphim, when
preaching before the same monarch. “Sire!” he began, “I am not
ignorant of the fact that custom requires me to address to you a
compliment; I pray your Majesty to excuse me; I have searched my
Bible for a compliment,—I have found none.” I cannot omit here the
really magnificent exordium of a preacher, who, in his matter and
style, belonged to the seventeenth century, but who flourished in the
eighteenth—I allude to Jacques Brydaine, born in 1701. He had been
a mission-preacher in the country, when he was suddenly called to
preach at St. Sulpice, before the aristocracy of Paris. The humble
country parson, on mounting the pulpit, saw that the church was
filled with courtiers, nobles, bishops, and persons of the highest
rank. He had been instructed in the necessity of acknowledging their
presence by a compliment. But listen to the man of God.
“At the sight of an audience so strange to me, my brethren, it
seems that I ought to open my mouth to ask your favour in behalf of
a poor missionary, deficient in all the talents you require, when he
comes before you to speak of your welfare. But far from it, to-day I
feel a different sentiment; and though I may be humbled, do not
think for one moment that I am troubled by the miserable anxieties
of vanity;—as though, forsooth, I were preaching myself. God forbid
that a minister of Heaven should ever think it necessary to excuse
himself before such as you! Be you who you may, you are but like
me, sinners before the judgment-seat of God. It is then only
because I stand before your God and my God, that I am constrained
now to beat my breast. Hitherto I have published the righteous
dealings of the Most High in thatched temples. I have preached the
rigours of penitence to unhappy ones, the majority of whom were
destitute of bread. I have announced to the good inhabitants of the
fields, the most awful truths of religion. Wretched one that I am,
what have I done! I have saddened the poor, the best friends of my
God; I have carried terror and pain into the simple and faithful souls
which I should have sympathized with and consoled.
“But here, here, where my eyes rest only on the great, the rich,
the oppressors of suffering humanity, the bold and hardened in sin;
ah! here only is it, here in the midst of these many scandals, that
the word of God should be uttered with the voice of thunder; here is
it that I must hold up before you, on one hand the death which
threatens you, on the other, my great God who will judge you all. I
hold at this moment your sentence in my hand. Tremble then before
me, you proud and scornful men who listen to me. Listen when I
speak of your ungrateful abuse of every means of grace, the
necessity of salvation, the certainty of death, the uncertainty of that
hour so terrible to you, final impenitence, the last judgment, the
small number of the elect, hell, and above all eternity! Eternity!
behold the subjects on which I shall speak, subjects which I should
have reserved for you alone. Ah! what need I your suffrages, which
may, perchance, damn me without saving you? God Himself will
move you, whilst I, His unworthy minister, speak; for I have acquired
a long experience of His mercies. It is He, and He alone, who in a
few moments will stir the depths of your consciences.”
Passing from the exordium to the subject: that which is so tedious
in modern sermons is the want of variety in the matter. There are a
stock of subjects of very limited range upon which changes are rung,