The Young Priests Keepsake | Page 5

neglects to arm himself with the light-diffuser: the only medium of communication between him and his people? Though the sun is poised in the firmament above us, this earth would remain for ever wrapped in midnight darkness were it not that there is an interposing medium--whatever it be--to waft to us its heat waves and carry its splendours to the tiniest nook and crevice. The language, its graces and powers, are for the priest the instruments by which darkened minds are illumined, by which the clear rays of living truth are flashed into their gloom.
The man that neglects to acquire a mastery of this instrument incurs a great responsibility.
The devil, too, has a message to deliver, a message of error; but at his command there are not only perverse intellects but all the elegance of polished language and all the persuasive graces of elocution.
[Side note: An illustration from everyday life]
Let me take an illustration from everyday life. A Catholic child under his father's roof has religion instilled into him. He goes to school, and here his knowledge is developed and enlarged. From the schoolroom he is transplanted into the world to strike roots if he can in stubborn soil and preserve his faith amidst the ice-chills of infidelity.
Foes beset him on every side. He turns to the public library. The infidel review is crisp in style, its arguments catchy, and the brilliancy of its diction captivates. The pages of the fashionable novel are strewn with the rose leaves of literature: the plot enthrals. The arguments of the free-thought lecturer are well reasoned, the sophistries artistically concealed, whilst his mastery over the graces of elocution holds his audience spell-bound.
The young man staggers. He now turns to where he should expect to find strength. Under the pulpit next Sunday is a mind where the mists of doubt are gathering and darkening. He looks up to the "Light of the World" to have these mists dispelled. Instead of seeing his foes battered with their own weapons he sees these weapons, that in every domain are conquering for the devil, here despised.
He is forced to listen, perhaps, to an exhibition of tedious crudity. He goes away disheartened; perhaps to fall.
Now, the solid theological knowledge in that preacher's head is more than sufficient to shatter the arguments of infidelity; the analytic power acquired during his college course would enable him to tear every sophistry to shreds; but the art of making both of these effective for the pulpit, the mastery of clear and nervous English, the elocution that sends every argument like a quivering arrow of light to its mark, these he neglected, or perhaps contemned.
This is our weak spot; here our position wants strengthening.
Sit by the fireside with that preacher and suggest the advisability of cultivating English and elocution. He replies: "I have two thousand souls to look after, sodalities to work up, schools to organise, and attend, perhaps, four sick calls in one night." No, _not now, but long years before_, he should have been trained. It is not on the battlefield, when the bugle is sounding the "charge," that the soldier should begin to learn the use of his weapons. In the college, and not on the field of action, is the place to acquire this science.
[Side note: A ruinous advice]
One of the most fatal directions ever tendered to Irish students is--devote all your college years to Classics, Philosophy, and Theology _exclusively_--these are your professional studies--and when you become a curate it will be time to master English and Elocution.
Analyse this and see what it means. Do not learn English or its expression till you are flung into a village without a soul to stimulate or encourage you; or, worse still, till you find yourself in the fierce whirl of an English or American city. "Wait till you are in the pulpit and then begin to learn to preach" is very like advising a man to wait till he is drowning and then it will be time enough to learn how to swim. Would any sane man give such an advice to an aspirant of the fine arts? What would be thought of the man who would say--"If you wish to become a good musician neglect to learn the scales till you come to your twenty-fifth year; or if it is your ambition to be a great painter, permit a quarter of a century to roll over your head before you learn how to hold the palette or mix the paints." The man that would tender such ridiculous advice would be laughed at. Yet it is not one whit more absurd than the transparent nonsense that has grown hoary from age, and passes unchallenged as a first principle.
It is often asked how is it that the Irish Church has remained so barren.
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