Let the speaker, then, have no fear of knowing too much. Neither need he despair if he does not now know a great deal. He cannot be perfect at once, but must build for future years. If he wishes a sudden and local celebrity that will never widen, but will probably molder away even in his own lifetime, he may possibly gain it in another way. Let him learn a few of the externals of elocution, and then, with great care, or by the free use of the materials of others, prepare a few finely worded discourses, and recite or declaim them over and over again as often as he can find a new audience. He may not gain as much applause as he desires by this method, but it will be sufficiently evanescent. He will not grow up to the measure of real greatness, but become daily more dwarfed and stereotyped in intellect.
The following quotation contains a good example of the seductive but misleading methods sometimes held up before the young orator: “They talk,” said Tom Marshall to an intimate friend, “of my astonishing bursts of eloquence, and doubtless imagine it is my genius bubbling over. It is nothing of the sort. I’ll tell you how I do it: I select a subject and study it from the ground up. When I have mastered it fully, I write a speech on it. Then I take a walk and come back, and revise and correct. In a few days I subject it to another pruning, and then recopy it. Next I add the finishing touches, round it off with graceful periods, and commit it to memory. Then I speak it in the fields, in my father’s lawn, and before my mirror, until gesture and delivery are perfect. It sometimes takes me six weeks or two months to get up a speech. When I am prepared I come to town. I generally select a court day, when there is sure to be a crowd. I am called on for a speech, and am permitted to select my own subject. I speak my piece. It astonishes the people, as I intended it should, and they go away marveling at my power of oratory. They call it genius, but it is the hardest kind of work.”
No objection is made to the quantity of work thus described, but might not the same amount be expended in more profitable directions? A speech thus prepared was a mere trick intended to astonish the people. Sometimes the great Daniel Webster took equal pains in the verbal expression of some worthy thought, which was afterward held in the grasp of a powerful memory until a fitting place was found for it in some masterly speech. The difference between the two processes is greater than seems at first glance. Marshall’s plan was like a beautiful garment thrown over a clothes dummy in a shop window; Webster’s, like the same garment, worn for comfort and ornament by a living man.
It is better that the speaker should “intermeddle with all knowledge,” and make the means of communicating his thoughts as perfect as possible. Then out of the fullness of his treasure, let him talk to the people with an adequate purpose in view, and if no sudden acclaim greets him, he will be weighty and influential from the first, and each passing year will add to his power.
CHAPTER VII.
Peculiarities Belonging to the Various Fields of Oratory.
The laws which govern extemporaneous speech are so generally applicable to all forms of address that only a few things which are peculiar to each need be considered before pointing out the best modes of planning and delivering a speech.
Probably a sermon differs from the common type of speech more than any other form of address. Some of the distinctions usually made are purely conventional, and not a few are more honored in the breach than in the observance. A certain slowness and stiffness of manner is supposed to characterize the pulpit, and also the selection of grave and solemn tones. All these, so far as they tend to constitute ministers a class apart from other men, with manners and modes of speech peculiar to themselves, are a mere survival of ancient superstition. The preacher’s tone and address should be just such as any other competent speaker would employ in treating the same themes. Of course, when the preacher makes a solemn appeal, voice and action should all correspond in solemnity. But when he denounces sin, or holds vice up to ridicule, there should be an equal correspondence. In some denominations, a peculiar dress is given to the preacher as the garb of his office; and it may be that a peculiar manner will be grateful to those who love all things that have the flavor of antiquity. But all such mannerisms belong to another realm than that of eloquence. From the orator’s standpoint they can only be condemned. Let the preacher speak and act like any other educated gentleman, under like circumstances, and his power over his audiences will be the greater.
But the sermon possesses some real distinctions of importance. The custom of taking a text furnishes a point of departure to the preacher and greatly simplifies the work of introduction. The opening services in the church—the prayers and the music—put his audience into a mood to receive his words. They are calm and quiet when he begins to speak—indeed, this may easily go too far. Another peculiarity is that he has the whole field to himself: neither he nor his auditors expect a word or gesture of dissent from any position he may assume: all the criticisms of his hearers will be mental, or reserved to another occasion. In this, his position is diametrically opposed to that of the lawyer, and the politician, who expect all they say to be contradicted, as a matter of course, and are apt to acquire the fault of uttering self-evident truths in a combative manner, as if they expected the other side to deny even that the whole is greater than any of its parts, or that things each equal to another thing, are equal to each other. The preacher, on the other hand, is liable to utter propositions, which to many of his hearers are very doubtful, as if they were axioms.
The preacher should select a text which fairly covers the subject of his discourse or contributes to advance the object he has in view. The text should always be employed in its true sense. It partakes of the nature of a quotation by which the speaker fortifies his position, and all quotations should bear the meaning intended by their authors, as far as that meaning can be ascertained. This is required by common fairness, and the Bible is surely entitled to fair treatment as much as any other book. Generally the text should be read and treated as a part of the introduction, although some fine sermons have been constructed on the opposite principle of beginning far from the text and so leading up to it, that its perfect illustration or application only appears in the conclusion. No fault can be found with this method if conscientiously adopted and consistently carried out.
The great aim of preaching is persuasion, and this must largely influence its whole character. It is from this cause that emotion—ever the most valuable agent in persuasion—is so highly valued in the pulpit. The hearers are to be persuaded, first to embrace a religious life, and then to cultivate all those virtues and avoid all those evils incident to such a life. It may be proper to devote some time and attention to mere instruction, but that instruction derives all its value from its bearing upon action: it should be given as the means of rendering persuasion more effective. Warning, reproof, exhortation, consolation, promise—the whole field of motives and inducements—is very wide; but the great object is to make men better, and only incidentally to make them wiser or happier.