preach, but no others can. Most men do preach themselves—that is, their natural mind—and the measure and kind of their gifts or acquisitions come out and colour and limit their preaching. The eloquent preach eloquently, the learned preach learnedly, the pedantic pedantically, the vain-glorious vain-gloriously, the empty emptily, the contentious contentiously, the cold coldly, the indolent indolently. And how much of the Word of God is to be heard in such preaching? Can it be said that such men "preach not themselves, but Christ Jesus our Lord"? If our sermons are what we are, we must go a long way back in preparing to preach. The boy must preach, and the youth must preach, that the man may preach. It may be answered, S. Augustine was one of the greatest of preachers, but he began late in manhood. S. Augustine, like S. Paul, belongs to a special category, of which we will speak hereafter. The Church, in the Council of Trent, intends that from twelve years—the sacred age of the Divine Teacher in the Temple—boys tonsured, and in the cassock, "the habit of religion,"[1] should be trained up in seminaries. Of these we will speak first; and we may say at once that we need in our proportion what the Apostles had in
- ↑ Pontif. Rom. De Clerico faciendo.
