I would advise every young man who intends to enter the pulpit to read carefully the best life of this wonderful preacher, reformer, and statesman.  And supplement your study of him and his methods by reading George Eliot’s historical novel, “Romola.”

The great Dominican was a Lombard, of harsh accent and strange face, come to live in the most cultured city in the world.  Florence was then in the full flowering of literature and art; and in her overripe perfections the poison was distilling of greed and cruelty and lubricity and all loathsomeness.

Over this capital of learning, genius, and sin ruled “The Magnificent” Medici, sitting with easy power on his splendid throne and wielding his scepter with the accurate skill of a perfect craft and the strong decision of a fearless heart.

But you know the story.  It was not an inviting field for a preacher who burned to utter the Word and at the same time hoped to enjoy the smiles and favors of the great.  It was not an encouraging prospect for any one who wanted to restore the reign of righteousness, even though he were willing to pay the price of martyrdom.

But Savonarola accomplished all this and more; for he crowned the renaissance of letters and art with the renaissance of Christian morals and religion whose pure and beautiful influence reaches even unto our day.

And he did it by faith more than by all other things put together—­a faith so rapt that, to our less passionate natures, it seems to have been the very insanity of fanaticism.  But it did the work; and that is the thing after all.

His sermons do not seem to be more remarkable when you read them than those of many another pulpiteer, although they are full of thought.  We are told, however, that his voice had in it a terrible earnestness, and his manner was so impassioned that he sometimes seemed to forget himself.

But all agree that the magic with which he wrought his wonders from the pulpit was the feeling that everybody had that Fra Girolamo believed what he said, knew what he said, meant what he said.

The immediate effect was astonishing—­(the after effect still thrills the world).  Mrs. Oliphant quotes Burlamacchi’s description of Savonarola’s influence over the people thus:  “The people got up in the middle of the night to get places for the sermon.  They came to the door of the cathedral waiting outside until it should be opened, making no account of the inconvenience, neither of the cold nor the wind nor the standing in winter with their feet on the marble.”

I emphasize the point that this effect was not exclusively oratorical, nor merely magnetic.  Chiefly it was what the world has always seen and always will see when it beholds a strong man in deadly earnest for a righteous cause.

We know that this is so because “The Magnificent” induced the most cultivated pulpiteer in all Italy to preach sermons in Florence so as to divert attention from Savonarola; and this master of the pulpit, whom Lorenzo won to his purpose, was better liked and more greatly admired by the people of Florence than any other orator.