which Christ ascends and we follow; to which neither law nor prophets, no nor Moses, could introduce us, but only our Joshua, our Jesus, the Son of God.”
I have not yet spoken of the text, except to mention Maillard as having preached on the same throughout a season of Lent. Some of the earlier mediæval preachers delighted in selecting strange texts, and even went so far as to take them from other books than Holy Scripture. Indeed Stephen Langton composed a sermon, still preserved in the British Museum, and published in Biographia Britannica Literaria, on the text:
“Bele Aliz matin leva |
which was a dancing-song. Maillard also did the same thing when he preached in Thoulouse, singing at the top of his voice as a text the ballad “Bergeronnette Savoisienne.”
Peter of Celles took a stanza from a hymn, and his example has been followed by others. Hartung preached from the words, “It fell, it fell, it fell,” occurring in the parable of the sower.
Texts have sometimes been selected with remarkable felicity. I have room for two instances only.
In the reign of King James I., a clergyman was to preach before the Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, who
