Two years ago, the late pious and gallant Captain Marceau was present at a meeting of operatives in Paris, many of whom were unbelievers and wrong-headed men. He felt moved to address them, and the impression which he produced was almost magical. He had never before spoken in public; nevertheless, he did so on the occasion referred to with that accent of conviction and candor which finds its way at once to the heart, overcoming all resistance, and sometimes seeming to take away one's breath. "My friends," said he, "there are doubtless some among you who are not yet Christians, and who have no love for religion. I was once as ungodly as you are--perhaps more so; for no one has hated Christianity more cordially than I have done. I am bound, however, to do it this justice, that while I was not a Christian, that is, till I was twenty-three years old, I was unhappy, profoundly unhappy. ... Up to that period, my friends, I had not lived. No, it was not living ... I worried myself, or, rather, my passions drew or drove me hither and thither, and carried me away; but I did not live ... I was a machine ... but I was not a man. ..." Strange to say, scarcely any attention is paid to this accent of conviction, which is the soul of all eloquence; more especially of sacred eloquence. Those destined to proclaim the Divine word are instructed in every thing else but this. ... Hence the language from the pulpit is often cold, monotonous, turgid, stiff, cramped, conventional, perfunctory; savoring of a formal compliment, but of nothing to indicate the effusion of a genial soul, and without any of those felicitous sallies of the heart, those insinuating and familiar tones, as Fénélon calls them, which produce in you almost a Divine impression. {251} And yet there are many pious priests amongst us, many who are truly men of God. Still, such is the deplorable power of routine, that their piety seems sometimes to abandon them when in the pulpit--the very place where it should be most conspicuous.