Whenever you hear the last words of each sentence of a sermon growing faint, like Marathon runners staggering feebly towards the goal, and the final word dropping completely under, that sermon, no matter how beautiful its conception or eloquent its composition, is doomed to failure.
The entire meaning of many a sentence is completely lost if the last words fail to reach the listeners' ears. Very often the last word is the important member of a sentence, the others being merely ancillary to it. In oratory, especially, many a sentence has to depend for its driving force on the energy with which the final words are sent home.
Now, when people give a preacher attentive interest, the least they are entitled to expect is that he should let them hear every word. But finding themselves invariably baffled by the last word becoming inaudible, it is small wonder if, tantalised and disgusted, they abandon all effort to follow him.
The cure
It is therefore of great importance that this defect, so fatal yet so common, should be provided against in time. But how?
Since it comes from exhaustion, consequent on the mismanagement of the voice, the remedy is obvious.
Let the student daily practise reading aloud in the open air, preferably sermons or speeches by the best authors.
Let him nervously guard against allowing his voice to show the slightest trace of fatigue in the final words of each sentence. This can be accomplished by inhaling fully, going slowly, and not only giving full value to the punctuation stops, but resting at the rhetorical and logical pauses.
Advantages of the remedy
By this excellent practice he strengthens his lungs and vocal organs, cultivates his ear, and acquires a control over his voice so perfect that he can husband his reserve fund of breath and strength to impart at will freshness to the final syllable.