Gladstone’s Midlothian campaign in 1879 is famous in history; but it was confined to a little patch of Scotland; it lasted fifteen days, and represented perhaps twenty speeches. But Wesley carried on his campaign on a scale which leaves Mr. Gladstone’s performances dwarfed into insignificance. He did it on the great stage of the three kingdoms, and he maintained it without a break for more than fifty years!—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(3026)
See [Tact].
SPEAKING TO DO GOOD
A writer in the London Mail has this to say concerning Theodore Roosevelt while in Egypt:
At Cairo he was asked to leave out his reference to the murder of the Prime Minister. “No,” he answered, “that is just what I want to say. If you do not care about it let us call the engagement off.”
There spoke the essential Roosevelt, not the politician, but the preacher. His object in speaking is to do good. To give advice, to stiffen healthy instincts, to strengthen public opinion against meanness and cruelty, to induce every man and every woman to make the best of themselves—those are the essential Roosevelt aims. His style smacks more of the pulpit than the platform.... “If I had been a Methodist,” he once declared, “I should have applied for a license as a lay preacher.” Since then he has obtained his license to preach—but from a greater body than the Methodist Conference. He is preacher-in-general to the whole civilized world.
(3027)
SPEECH
Compare the golden oriole, swinging in the sunshine, and filling the house with flashing melodies, with the infant, moaning in his yet inarticulate speech, that lies beneath! The bird was made for enjoyment first; for work, subordinately. The infant was created for an enjoyment to be realized through fervent operation. The bird has a beauty of the Mind which created him. The gloss upon his breast, and the brilliance on his wings, were put there by God’s pencil. His gushing song warbles a tribute to Him who gave him power to sing. But the child has a struggling capacity within him, as much grander than this as the spiritual and divine are always grander than the physical. He hath in his being the germs of speech. And speech can represent the most delicate feeling. It can set forth the mightiest process of thought. It can furnish an image for all that is conceived. It can take up and interpret the very thoughts of the infinite, translating them into language for the immortals to hear.—Richard S. Storrs.