It is desirable, doubtless, that you should read Bourdaloue for doctrine, Bossuet for touch and for the sublime, Massillon for style and form; but let that suffice. {169} Then read the Scriptures, the Fathers, books of devotion, and such other works as will make you acquainted with the wants and tendencies of the age, and teach you how to combat its passions and its errors. You must beware, however, of attempting to preach like Bossuet, Bourdaloue, or Massillon. They addressed courtiers, and the elite of society of their times, when men had more knowledge of religion than they have now. Besides, if those eminent preachers lived in these days, there is every reason to believe that they would not always speak now as they did then. Plain speech should be coupled with plain thought. The thoughts which serve as starting points, should always be simple, natural, and popular. The people do not understand abstractions or the speculations of reason, which are to them a strange language. You should start from the known to lead them to the unknown. That is the mathematical and logical method. You must begin with sensible, visible, and above all with actual things, in order to draw them gently toward spiritual and invisible things, and to the life that is to come. By adopting this course, you may conduct them far onward, and elevate them to great heights, even to the sublimest aspirations of heart and soul. ... As we have already said by way of example: first exhibit religion to them as grand, good, and lovely, then as true and divine; winding up by fervently and energetically insisting on the necessity of submission to its moral law. {170} It is an excellent plan to adopt the ordinary expressions in every-day use among the people, and to apply them in a religious sense. Thus, you might tell them to lay up in the _Savings Bank_ of Heaven, to become members of the _Refuge Fund_ of Eternity, and you will be understood. Monsigneur the Archbishop of Paris, during some of his visitations, furnishes us with a delightful model of this style of addressing the people:-- "My children," said he to the operatives who had assembled in a courtyard to see and hear him, "my children, while attending to your worldly interests and material welfare--for the increase of which you have my sincere wishes--think also sometimes of that God who created us, and in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Do you know what that man resembles who lives without God and without hope? He is like a piece of wheel-work out of gear, or a faulty machine, which only mars what it ought to make, wounds the hand which it should help, and obliges the owner to break it up and throw it aside.