' He elevated our hearts with his
moving voice, and, by what we might call the electricity of sympathy,
almost to a frenzy of adoration; he taught us how the true believer,
'clad in hope,' would one day (if he leaned upon Mary his mother in all
the weary stages of the 'Passage of the Cross') be crowned with
fruition. He lingered with almost idolatrous emphasis on the charms of
Mary, and with his eyes fixed upon her image, his hands outstretched,
and a thousand upturned faces listening to his words, the aisles echoed
his romantic theme:--
'With my lips I kneel, and with my heart,
I fall about thy feet and worship thee.'
A stream of eloquence followed--studied or spontaneous it mattered
not--the congregation held their breath and listened to a story for the
thousandth time repeated.
The preacher paused for a moment, and then with another burst of
eloquence, he brought his hearers to the verge of a passion, which was
(as it seemed to us) dangerously akin to human love and the worship of
material beauty; then he lowered our understandings still more by the
enumeration of 'works and miracles,' and ended with words of earnest
exhortation, the burden of which might be shortly translated:--'Pray
earnestly, and always, to Mary our mother, for all souls in purgatory;
confess your sins unto us your high priests; give, give to the Church
and to the poor, strive to lead better lives, look forward ever to the
end; and bow down, oh! bow down, before the golden images [manufactured
for us in the next street] which our Holy Mother the Church has set up.
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