[a]2] Dr. Croke, late Archbishop of Cashel.
The first essential for a preacher is the power of lucid reasoning. That this faculty is ours is now abundantly established. The next talent requisite is imagination. That we have imagination, often teeming in tropical luxuriance, but shared in great or less degree by all, has never been questioned. One more requisite and the oratorical outfit is complete.
Sensibility
On this score it is sufficient to say that we are Celts, endowed with the ardent nervous temperaments. But suffering has given to ours an acute refinement that nothing else could impart.
"Never soul could know its powers
Until sorrow swept its chords."
"We give preference to Jews and Irishmen on our staff," said the proprietor of a leading journal. "Both have suffered, and a man with a grievance writes passionately. He dips the pen into his own heart and electric energy thrills his sentences; hence the crisp pungency and compressed fire of our columns."
What gift that goes to make an orator has God denied us? Reason, fancy, passion, a pathos and humour where the smile trembles on the borderland of tears.
Why then this barrenness? Mainly because of the criminal neglect of colleges in the past to cultivate the abundant material placed at their disposal; other contributory causes are cynical criticism and want of courageous ambition.
Colleges are now bestirring themselves—it is high time—but criticism has not died. Refined natures have heartstrings like the chords of Aeolian harps, sensitive to the faintest touch, responsive to the gentlest whisper of the evening breeze; such shrink in terror from the icy breath of the scoffer: the purpose is frozen dead within their souls. O criticism! what crimes have been committed in your name! How many noble careers have you blasted?
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