by replying, "Ah, the devil has already apprised me of that!" The
recluse celibate preacher was one day asked whence he derived that
marvellous knowledge which he displayed of the passions, the weaknesses,
the follies, the sins, of human nature. "From my own heart," was his
reply. Source sufficient, perhaps; but from the confessional, too, one
may confidently add.

There is probably no better brief, quotable passage to represent
Massillon at his imaginative highest in eloquence, than that most
celebrated one of all, occurring toward the close of his memorable
sermon on the "Fewness of the Elect." The effect attending the delivery
of this passage, on both of the two recorded occasions on which the
sermon was preached, is reported to have been remarkable. The manner of
the orator--downcast, as with the inward oppression of the same
solemnity that he, in speaking, cast like a spell on the
audience--indefinitely heightened the magical power of the awful
conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with that preternatural
skill of his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret,
could have exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier
part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering
consciences of his hearers. The terrors of the Lord, the shadows of the
world to come, were thus already on all hearts. So much as this.
Bourdaloue, too, with his incomparable dialectic, could have
accomplished. But there immediately follows a culmination in power, such
as was distinctly beyond the height of Bourdaloue. Genius must be
superadded to talent if you would have the supreme, either in poetry or
in eloquence. There was an extreme point in Massillon's discourse at
which mere reason, having done, and done terribly, its utmost, was fain
to confess that it could not go a single step farther. At that extreme
point, suddenly, inexhaustible imagination took up the part of exhausted
reason. Reason had made men afraid; imagination now appalled them.
Massillon said:--

I confine myself to you, my brethren, who are gathered here. I
speak no longer of the rest of mankind. I look at you as if you
were the only ones on the earth; and here is the thought that
seizes me, and that terrifies me. I make the supposition that this
is your last hour, and the end of the world; that the heavens are
about to open above your heads, that Jesus Christ is to appear in
his glory in the