To sum up: the sermon should be interesting, animated, vivifying; ten years of a lifetime should be comprised in a sermon of thirty minutes duration. Speak to the mind, to the good sense, to the imagination, to the hearts of men, in words that breathe and thoughts that burn; laying hold of them, as it were, by whatever stirs the lively and profound emotions of the soul: by grief and by joy, by hatred and by love, by tears and by consolations, by hell and by heaven. Let your speech be always powerful and triumphant. Whatever you attempt, do well. If you reason, let your reasoning be sharp, to the point, and decisive. If you exercise charity, let it flow in broad streams, that it may inundate and cheer all around. If you give vent to anger, let it escape in glowing and irresistible sallies. If you are ever at a loss what other influence to invoke, then appeal to pity. After such outbursts, there should be intervals of calm to tone down asperities, to smooth to softness any bitterness, and to express regret for having used them; but in reality to make a deeper impression by touching a different chord of the heart. These contrasts of thought and sentiment always produce a powerful effect. M. Berryer is well aware of this, and often avails himself of them with the greatest success. {240} In the celebrated discussion on the affairs of the East, after having exhibited the humiliation of France, he added:--"Let no more be said upon what has been done; above all, let us never, never again recall the humiliating admissions which have reached us both from London and Constantinople. (Profound sensation.) "Let that despatch, wherein Lord Palmerston is stated to have said that France would yield, and that the Eastern question would be settled in accordance with the wishes of England, be buried in oblivion. ... Is there a country whose ambassadors have cognizance of such language, and not only retain their posts, but become ministers? (Bravo, bravo!) That country is certainly not France. (Renewed applause.) England cannot have said so. Those who saw us even at Waterloo could not say such a thing. ..." But after this suspension of arms, we must return to the charge with redoubled nerve and bravery, implanting our weapon in the heart, and turning it again and again within the wound. In other words, our train of thought should be still more energetic, our sentiments more powerful; embodied sometimes in a dramatic or tragic form, wherein truth and error are brought together in a fierce and obstinate hand-to-hand struggle; truth being made to overthrow error and to triumph over vice, and then to raise the erring and the transgressor, to embrace them, and to bear them away with herself to virtue, to happiness, to heaven. ... {241} The following extract from M. de Cormenin furnishes an admirable summary of the foregoing chapter:--