[33] An esteemed friend, the Rev. John McMillan of Ullapool, some years ago repeated to me the following rhyme on the method of constructing a sermon, and, although I have never succeeded in coming up to its standard, yet it has often floated before me with advantage in the hours of composition—
"Begin low;
Proceed slow;
Rise higher;
Take fire;
When most impressed
Be self-possessed;
To spirit wed form;
Sit down in a storm."
[34] It will be remembered that John Bright used regularly, during the session of Parliament, to read aloud from one of the poets the last thing at night.
[35] Tholuck gives another weighty reason why ministers should know the best literature: In einer Zeit wo Shakespeare eine stärkere Autorität für Viele ist als Paulus, und ein Distichon G[oe]thes eine kräftigere Belegstelle als der ganze Römer-und Galaterbrief, darf der Geistliche, welcher auf seine Gemeinde würken will, mit ihren Gewährsmänern nicht unbekannt seyn. Wenn irgendwo, so gilt auch hier des Apostels Wort: Alles ist Euer.
[36] "Aber nicht bloss die Erzeugung der Predigt geschehe im heiligen Geist, sondern auch ihr Vortrag. Es lässt sich nicht aussprechen, welch' ein Unterschied zwischen der Würkung einer Predigt, welche bloss aus der Erinnerung von der Kanzel herabgesprochen wird—wie trefflich sie auch übrigens seyn mag—und welche dort zum zweitenmal geboren wird in lebendigem Glauben.... Die Predigt muss eine That des Predigers auf seinem Studirzimmer, sie muss abermals eine That seyn auf der Kanzel; er muss, wenn er herunter kommt, Mutterfreuden fühlen, Freuden der Mutter, die unter Gottes Segen ein Kind geboren hat."
[37] Adolphe Monod, himself a distinguished master of the art of delivery, gives some good hints on it in a paper on The Eloquence of the Pulpit, translated and published as an article in The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, January, 1881:—
"In general, people recite too quickly, far too quickly. When a man speaks, the thoughts and feelings do not come to him all at once; they take birth little by little in his mind. It is necessary that this labour and this slowness appear in the reciting, or it will always come short of nature. Take time to reflect, to feel, and to allow ideas to come, and hurry your recitation only when constrained by some particular consideration."...
"Talk not in the pulpit. An exaggerated familiarity would be a mistake nearly as great as declamation: it happens more seldom; it is, nevertheless, found in certain preachers, those especially who have not studied. The tone of good conversation, but that tone heightened and ennobled, such appears to me the ideal of pulpit delivery."...
"In order to rise above the tone of conversation, the majority of preachers withdraw too far from it. They swell their delivery, and declaim instead of speaking. Now, when bombast comes in, nature goes out."
In regard to the first of these extracts I should say that many Scotch speakers fail through lack of pace in the delivery. The interest is lost in the pauses between the sentences. A slow delivery is only effective when a thought is obviously being born, for which the audience is kept intently waiting.