We know no other instance of a
writer, limited in his production strictly to sermons, who holds his
place in the first rank of authorship simply by virtue of supreme
mastership in literary style.

Still, from the text of his printed discourses,--admirable, exquisite,
ideal compositions in point of form as these are,--it will be found
impossible to conceive adequately the living eloquence of Massillon.
There are interesting traditions of the effects produced by particular
passages of particular sermons of his. When Louis XIV. died, Massillon
preached his funeral sermon. He began with that celebrated single
sentence of exordium which, it is said, brought his whole audience, by
instantaneous, simultaneous impulse, in a body to their feet. The modern
reader will experience some difficulty in comprehending at once why that
perfectly commonplace-seeming expression of the preacher should have
produced an effect so powerful. The element of the opportune, the
apposite, the fit, is always great part of the secret of eloquence.
Nothing more absolutely appropriate can be conceived than was the
sentiment, the exclamation, with which Massillon opened that funeral
sermon. The image and symbol of earthly greatness, in the person of
Louis XIV., had been shattered under the touch of iconoclast death. "God
only is great!" said the preacher; and all was said. Those four short
words had uttered completely, and with a simplicity incapable of being
surpassed, the thought that usurped every breast. It is not the surprise
of some striking new thought that is the most eloquent thing. The most
eloquent thing is the surprise of that one word, suddenly spoken, which
completely expresses some thought, present already and uppermost, but
silent till now, awaiting expression, in a multitude of minds. This most
eloquent thing it was which, from Massillon's lips that day, moved his
susceptible audience to rise, like one man, and bow in mute act of
submission to the truth of his words. The inventive and curious reader
may exercise his ingenuity at leisure. He will strive in vain to
conceive any other exordium than Massillon's that would have matched the
occasion presented.

There is an admirable anecdote of the pulpit, which--though since often
otherwise applied--had, perhaps, its first application to Massillon.
Some one congratulating the orator, as he came down from his pulpit, on
the eloquence of the sermon just preached, that wise self-knower fenced