We will not attempt a repetition of his
arguments, but must record one sentence in an extempore sermon of great
versatility and power; a sentence that, if we understood it aright, was
singularly liberal and broad in view. Speaking of the rivalry that
existed between the different sects of Christians, and making pointed
allusion to the colony of protestant Huguenots established at Beuzeval
on the sea-shore, he ended with the words, 'Better than all this rivalry
and strife (far better than the common result amongst men, indifference)
that, like ships becalmed at sea,--when a religious breeze stirs our
hearts--we should raise aloft our fair white sails and come sailing into
port together, lowering them in the haven of the one true church.'
He made a pause several times in his discourse, during which he looked
about him, and mopped his head with his handkerchief, and behaved, for
the moment, much more as if he were in his dressing-room than in a
public pulpit; but he held his audience with magic sway, his influence
over the people was wonderful--wonderful to us when we listened to his
imagery, and to the means used to stir their hearts.[49]
In the picturesque and moving times of the middle ages it must surely
have needed less forcing and fewer formulae to 'lift up the hearts of the
people to the Queen of Heaven;' if it were only in the likeness of the
black doll, which they worship at Chartres to this day.
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