." The whole discourse is one well worth
the study of any reader. It is a piece of searching psychological
analysis, and pungent application to conscience. Bourdaloue, in his
sermons, has always the air of a man seriously intent on producing
practical results. There are no false motions. Every swaying of the
preacher's weapon is a blow, and every blow is a hit. There is hardly
another example in homiletic literature of such compactness, such
solidity, such logical consecutiveness, such cogency, such freedom from
surplusage. Tare and tret are excluded. Every thing counts. You meet
with two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally assume, that,
after the usual manner of homilists, Bourdaloue has thrown these in
without rigorously definite purpose, simply to heighten a general
effect. Not at all. There follows a development of the preacher's
thought, constituting virtually a distinct justification of each
adjective employed. You soon learn that there is no random, no waste, in
this man's words. But here is the promised extract from the sermon on "A
Perverted Conscience." In it Bourdaloue depresses his gun, and
discharges it point-blank at the audience before him. You can almost
imagine you see the ranks of "the great" laid low. Alas! one fears that,
instead of biting the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst
of them to set the example, only cried bravo in their hearts at the
skill of the gunner:--

I have said more particularly that in the world in which you
live,--I mean the court,--the disease of a perverted conscience is
far more common, and far more difficult to be avoided; and I am
sure that in this you will agree with me. For it is at the court
that the passions bear sway, that desires are more ardent, that
self-interest is keener, and that, by infallible consequence,
self-blinding is more easy, and consciences, even the most
enlightened and the most upright, become gradually perverted. It is
at the court that the goddess of the world, I mean fortune,
exercises over the minds of men, and in consequence over their
consciences, a more absolute dominion. It is at the court that the
aim to maintain one's self, the impatience to raise one's self, the
frenzy to push one's self, the fear of displeasing, the desire of
making one's self agreeable, produce consciences, which anywhere
else would pass for monstrous, but which, finding t