t yet so many millions should
everlastingly perish because they make light of their Savior and
salvation, and prefer the vain world and their lusts before them. I
have delivered my message, the Lord open your hearts to receive it.
I have persuaded you with the word of truth and soberness; the Lord
persuade you more effectually, or else all this is lost. Amen.

BOSSUET

THE FUNERAL SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE GRANDE CONDE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Jacque Benigne Bossuet was born at Dijon, in Burgundy, in 1627. In an
illustrious group of French Catholic preachers he occupied a foremost
place. In beginning his sermons he was reserved and dignified, but as
he moved forward and his passionate utterance captured his hearers,
"he watched their rising emotion, the rooted glances of a thousand
eyes filled him with a sort of divine frenzy, his notes became a
burden and a hindrance, and with impetuous ardor he abandoned himself
to the inspiration of the moment."

To ripe scholarship Bossuet added a voice that was deep and sonorous,
an imposing personality, and an animated and graceful style of
gesture. Lamartine says he had "a voice which, like that of the
thunder in the clouds, or the organ in the cathedral, had never been
anything but the medium of power and divine persuasion to the soul; a
voice which only spoke to kneeling auditors; a voice which spoke in
the name of God, an authority of language unequaled upon earth,
and against which the lowest murmur was impious and the smallest
opposition blasphemy." He died in 1704.

BOSSUET 1627-1704

THE FUNERAL SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE GRANDE CONDE

In beginning this address, in which I purpose to celebrate the
immortal glory of Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, I feel myself
overweighted both by the grandeur of the subject and, to be frank, by
the fruitlessness of the effort. What part of the inhabited world has
not heard of the victories of the Prince de Conde and the wonders of
his life? They are recounted everywhere; the Frenchman who boasts of
them in the presence of the foreigner tells him nothing which the
latter does not know; and in no matter how exalted a strain I might
sound his praises, I should still feel that in your hearts you were
convinced that I deserved the reproach of falling far short of doing
him justice. An orator, feeble as he is, can not do anything for the
perpetuation of the glory of extraordinary souls. Le Sage was right
when he said t