We will give two extracts showing the power that may be wielded over language without the use of the pen. The first is from a speech made to a workingman’s institute opposing the introduction of infidel works into their library. He is speaking of the compassion that should be shown to the honest doubter:
“I do think that the way we treat that state is unpardonably cruel. It is an awful moment when the soul begins to find that the props on which it has blindly rested so long are many of them rotten, and begins to suspect them all; when it begins to feel the nothingness of many of the traditionary opinions which have been received with implicit confidence, and in that horrible insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be anything to believe at all. It is an awful hour—let him who has passed through it say how awful—when this life has lost its meaning, and seems shriveled into a span; when the grave appears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the void from which God Himself has disappeared. . . . I appeal (for the truth of the picture drawn) to the recollection of any man who has passed through that hour of agony, and stood upon the rock at last, the surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted from the sky above, with a faith, and hope, and trust, no longer traditional, but of his own, a trust which neither earth nor hell shall shake thenceforth for ever.”
The second passage we will quote is an illustration from a sermon on the doubt of Thomas, showing how weak are all arguments for immortality, except those that are exclusively Christian. He speaks of many things that are valuable as suggestions, but worthless as proofs, and next shows how the same suggestions may point the other way:
“Six thousand years of human existence have passed away. Countless armies of the dead have set sail from the shores of time. No traveler has returned from the still land beyond. More than one hundred and fifty generations have done their work and sunk into the dust again, and still there is not a voice, there is not a whisper from the grave to tell us whether, indeed, those myriads are in existence still. Besides, why should they be? Talk as you will of the grandeur of man; why should it not be honor enough for him—more than enough to satisfy a thing so mean—to have had his twenty or seventy years life-rent of God’s universe? Why must such a thing, apart from proof, rise up and claim to himself an exclusive immortality? . . . Why may he not sink, after he has played his appointed part, into nothingness again? You see the leaves sinking one by one in autumn, till the heaps below are rich with the spoils of a whole year’s vegetation. They were bright and perfect while they lasted, each leaf a miracle of beauty and contrivance. There is no resurrection for the leaves—why should there be one for man? Go and stand, some summer evening, by the river side; you will see the May-fly sporting out its little hour in the dense masses of insect life, darkening the air a few feet above the gentle swell of the water. The heat of that very afternoon brought them into existence. Every gauze wing is traversed by ten thousand fibres, which defy the microscope to find a flaw in their perfection. The omniscience and the care bestowed upon that exquisite anatomy, one would think cannot be destined to be wasted in a moment. Yet so it is. When the sun has sunk below the trees its little life is done. Yesterday it was not; tomorrow it will not be. God has bidden it be happy for one evening. It has no right or claim to a second; and in the universe that marvelous life has appeared once and will appear no more. May not the race of man sink like the generations of the May-fly? Why cannot the Creator, so lavish in His resources, afford to annihilate souls as He annihilates insects? Would it not almost enhance His glory to believe it?”
Such language Robertson was able to employ without the use of the pen. But the art was not attained without long and laborious toil. He committed much—memorizing the whole Testament, both in English and Greek, and storing his mind with innumerable gems from the poets. He also studied the modern languages, particularly German, and delighted to translate their treasure into his own tongue. He read much, but not rapidly, dwelling upon a book until he could arrange the whole of its contents with precision in his mind. Thus he attained an almost unequalled mastery of both thought and language. If he had been required to write every sermon, he could never have pursued such a thorough and long continued course of cultivation, besides mastering such a vast amount of knowledge.
We have dwelt less upon the general character of his preaching, with its strong originality, than upon the beauty, force, and accuracy of his language, because these are the qualities usually believed to be unattainable without written composition. But it is safe to say, that in these respects he has not been surpassed by any preacher ancient or modern.
HENRY CLAY.
We will take Henry Clay as an example of the American political eloquence of the last generation. He was one of a bright constellation of great men—most of them, like himself, extemporaneous speakers. In some respects he was, perhaps, superior to them all. His hold upon the public mind was great, and even yet he is regarded with love and reverence all over the Union. This, however, is not the result of his genius alone. In some points his great rivals were more unfortunate than himself. Calhoun’s influence was immense; but the effect of his teaching has been so deadly that it is not to be wondered at if his fame is of an equivocal kind. The badness of Webster’s private life, and his unfortunate course on some great questions, caused his reputation to decline, and his really great abilities to be undervalued. But the genial, large-hearted orator of the West is still a favorite with the people.
Clay was a Virginian by birth. His father was a Baptist preacher, very poor, who died when Henry was quite young, leaving a large family of children. Henry obtained all his schooling, which was meager enough, in a log school-house. The young boy was employed first as a clerk in a store, and afterward as an assistant in a lawyer’s office. Next he became an amanuensis to Chancellor Wythe, who treated him kindly and gave him an opportunity to study law. Finally, he was admitted to the bar, and removed to Kentucky. He immediately acquired practice, and met with a hearty welcome from the rough backwoodsmen of that section. He tells us how he acquired the ability to speak with fluency and power:
“I owe my success in life to one simple fact, namely, that at an early age I commenced and continued for some years the practice of daily reading and speaking the contents of some historical or scientific book. These off-hand efforts were sometimes made in a corn-field; at others in the forest; and not unfrequently in some barn, with the horse and ox for my only auditors. It is to this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for the primary and leading impulses that stimulated my progress and have shaped and molded my destiny.”