Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/21

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

without passing from one thing to another that has no relation to it. The most ordinary and easiest modes are these: ” Let us proceed to the other point, etc.; or “Thus, after having seen," etc. And passing from one argument to another, you may say: “Besides, we should consider," etc., taking care, as far as it is possible, that the last part of the preceding argument has some connection with the following point or argument.

12. We have spoken of proofs. As far as regards the amplification of proofs, one is verbal, which consists in words; another is real, which may consist either in climax; for example: "It is a virtue to suffer tribulations with patience a greater virtue to desire them; it is a greater still to take delight in them;" or it may be borrowed from the circumstances of the subject, or from comparison with another subject of equal or lesser consideration. The morals have their proper place, as we shall remark in the peroration. It is, however, occasionally allowed, after a satisfactory proof has been adduced, to address a short exhortation; and this is particularly the case in the sermons of the Mission, in which the audience is generally composed of rude, uneducated persons, on whom moral exhortation makes more impression; but these moral exhortations that are incidentally introduced should not be too long or too frequent, so as to render the discourse tedious or languid.

13. The peroration contains three parts the epilogue, the moral exhortation, and the appeal to the passions. The epilogue is a recapitulation of the discourse, in which the most convincing arguments that have been already advanced are repeated, but which must be handled with a view