[1]. This reference may carry the student beyond the immediate point of the subject in hand, but it will be well for him to read the pages of the work indicated, and then extract from them what is there said which bears immediately upon the point in the lesson.
LESSON X.
(Scripture Reading Exercise.)
(SPECIAL LESSON.)
THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' SUPERIOR GROUNDS FOR FAITH IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
(A DISCOURSE)
NOTES.
1. Suggestion to the Speaker: (a) Suggestions for constructing a discourse or lecture will be found in the Seventy's Year Book, No. I, pp. 59, 60; also 86, 87; and Year Book No. II, pp. 113-115; also 149-150.
(b) The theme of this lesson will call for both expository and argumentative treatment. Of argumentative treatment of a subject something, and doubtless enough, has been said in Seventy's Year Book, No. II, pp. 68-71, and it only remains to say a word on exposition. "Exposition consists merely in explaining the meaning of a proposition or subject, and giving proof and reasons for the explanations made. It consists in defining terms and setting forth a subject in its various relations, or "presenting principles or rules for the purpose of instructing others." A treatise on grammar, for instance, consists principally of exposition. This Year Book is an exposition of the "Doctrine of Deity." "Clearness being the chief object (of exposition), and the nature of the subject excluding ornament, this kind of matter should be presented in a neat, concise style." (Quackenbos Rhetoric.)
2. The First Moment of Speech: In our last special lesson a word was said in relation to the "first moment" of speech. Further suggestions from the same authority then quoted may not be amiss here. "The most formidable and common foe of the speaker's, in these preliminary moments, is a general dread that can neither be analyzed nor accounted for. Persons who have never felt its power sometimes make light of it, but experience will change their views. The soldier who has never witnessed a battle, or felt the air throb with the explosion of cannon, or heard the awful cries of the wounded, is often a great braggart; while "the scarred veteran of a hundred fights" never speaks of the carnival of blood without shuddering, and would be the last, but for the call of duty, to brave the danger he knows so well. There may be a few speakers who do not feel such fear, but it is because they do not know what true speaking is; they have never known the full tide of inspiration which sometimes lifts the orator far above his conceptions, but which first struggles in his own bosom like the pent fires of a volcano. They only come forward to relieve themselves of the interminable stream of twaddle that wells spontaneously to their lips, and can well be spared the pangs preceding the birth of a powerful and living discourse.