THE EMPEROR AND THE PREACHER.
There are some preachers who are ever striving for dramatic effect, and who take much pains to prepare things beforehand for some unstudied burst of eloquence which they have carefully committed to memory against the appointed time. We remember one minister who requested another to occupy a certain position on the rostrum at a public meeting, that he, while speaking, might make allusion to one of his dear friends. The preacher did not propose to take part in that kind of “show business,” and so the eloquent allusion perished on the parent stock. It appears that the chief court preacher of the Emperor William, of Germany, came to grief a while ago in showing off some of these tactics. Instead of preaching Christ and him crucified, he undertook to preach Queen Louise, and her glorified, and gave an elaborate and pathetic account of her interview at Schwedt, after the disastrous defeat of the Prussians by Napoleon at Jena, October 14, 1806, with her two sons, the late king and present emperor, whom she urged to redeem their country from disaster, and avenge the wrongs committed by France. Of course such a sermon, viewed in the light of the recent war between France and Germany, was deeply interesting, and moved all to tears and applause, except the Emperor. He sat stern and unmoved. After the oration was ended, he waited patiently until the preacher had laid aside his clerical robes and stood at the chapel door ready to go home, when he addressed him thus:— “No such scene as you have elaborately described ever took place. The words attributed to her certainly expressed my mother’s sentiments, but all that she said to her sons was, ‘You see me in tears. I weep for the sad fate which has overtaken us. The king has been mistaken as to the efficiency of his army and its leaders; therefore we have been defeated, and are obliged to fly.’” The preacher, thus corrected, could neither excuse nor defend himself. The Emperor added, “Let me advise you not again to give a sermon of this sort. My family and myself go to church to worship God and to hear the gospel preached; not to listen to flattering notices of our deceased ancestors.” From which it appears that emperors are not always destitute of common sense, though preachers are sometimes woefully lacking in that respect. —The Observer.