1 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM - •■■ ■ •-:" •.••:■: '.■■•■•■. ' .■.•:•!•. ■:•••. - ■ -.-■. ■ . ■;..;■ ■:•... • •.• -.'.■ •.•.-..; . .-; ;■•.-. .-.■-.-.: .>;-.•:•■'■■. .•■ ■■• ■ . HB • <■* . • "' : . I GISH PUBLISHING FUND LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, COPYRIGHT OFFICE. No registration of title of this book as a preliminary to copyright protec- tion has been found. Forwarded to Order Division &*3i-i.L!j-/&*t: (Date) (6, i, 1906—2,000.) iJS> Class JFjlAHCol Book £x PROBLEMS of Pulpit and Platform DAVID D. CULLER, A. M., Ph.D., Professor of English and German in Mount Morris College. ELGIN, ILLINOIS BRETHREN PUBLISHING HOUSE 1907 LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Receive"! NOV 20 1907 Copyright Entry CLASS XXc. No, COPY B. .C« Copyright, 1907, BRETHREN PUBLISHING HOUSE, Elgin, Illinois. Received from Copyright Office. f2F'08 liter S. H. MHUt CONTENTS Introduction, 7 I. Forecast for Public Speaking, 11 The Field. The Factors. II. The Speaker as Blood and Brawn, 18 Bodily Beauty. Dignity and Grace. Physical Endurance. III. The Voice in Public Speaking, 25 Vocal Powers. Natural and Acquired Speaking Voices. Proper Breathing. Correct and Distinct Pronunciation. Is the Singing Voice the Speaking Voice? Care of the Voice. IV. The Speaker as Mind, 42 Figure the Mind in Too. Mental Attitude. Powers of Observation. Grasp of Generalities. Phrasal Power. The Power to Describe. Emotional Power. V. The Speaker as Spirit, 60 Outlook for Life. Religious Qualifications. Keen Sense of God's Presence. An Abiding Faith. Sympathy, or the Spirit of Helpfulness. Personality. 5 VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. VI. The Audience, 70 Audiences Differ. Audience Fusing. Audience Characteristics. The Speaker's Responsibility. A Visible Factor. Winning the Ears of an Audience. The Audience Responsive. The Best Listener. VII. The Discourse, 85 Unity in Discourse. Finding a Theme. Discourse as Sermon. Length of the Sermon. VIII. Language and Thought in Discourse, 109 Belong Together. Oral or Written. Notes, the Outline. Thought Processes. Discourse in Parts. IX. Style in Discourse, 130 The Style is the Man. Clearness. Force. Emphasis. Rapidity. Tone. X. Delivery of Discourse, 143 Speaking Natural. Make the Body Speak. Deliveries Differ. Thought and Delivery Must Wed. Earnestness. Eye and Voice Aglow. Delivery as Affected by the Hearer's Attitude. INTRODUCTION In the following pages the reader is briefly intro- duced to some of the vital problems of public speak- ing. In most books upon this subject the treatment has been from the standpoint of delivery. The books are called public speakers or books on elocution. They teach how to say things. This book does not pur- pose to do that, and so should not be placed in that class. Again, there are books that tell would-be preachers how to get up sermons. These are the books on homiletics. Many of them are very ex- haustive in their treatment. They are scholarly writ- ten and require much time and thought to master them. Very few books have as yet attempted a dis- cussion of the audience as a potent factor in effective public speaking. I have tried to combine these three in my study of the problems of the public speaker and have endeavored to give such helpful hints as brevity would allow me to include. 7 Vlll INTRODUCTION. It is my purpose to give to the busy man, who has public speaking to do, some definite ideas upon the problems he has to face as a public speaker. This brief study will suit those who have never studied these subjects and want a good introduction, and it will suit those who have no time nor inclination for an exhaustive study. I believe there are many who are interested in the problems herein discussed that have no time to study all of the subjects I have drawn from. For these I have written, and I shall feel re- paid if they find profit in reading what follows. D. D. Culler. Mount Morris College March 5, 1907 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. — Proverbs 25: I L Problems of Pulpit and Platform CHAPTER I. Forecast for Public Speaking. The Field. — When a young man looks toward his future life-work and seriously contemplates public speaking as a means of bread-winning he asks himself the question, What is there in this field to merit one's most determined effort? The sincerity of his ques- tion deserves a candid answer. For when he con- siders the vast circulation of all kinds of printed mat- ter, papers, magazines and books, there is, indeed, little wonder that at first he imagines the field of public speaking narrow and uninviting. A second look will, doubtless, change his mind. About him everywhere he will find the evident need of effective public speak- ing. Not only do the pulpit and the platform beckon him who has talent, but the bar and the chair of the professor, too, hold out enticing arms. Certainly there is a wider field now, than ever in the past, for 11 12 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. the man who, with ready speech and worthy thought, can reach the masses. So many lines of work nowa- days need those who can speak in public. It is true that printed matter furnishes much in- formation and thus relieves in a large measure the burden of instruction once falling upon the public speaker, but the day has not yet come when printed matter can take the place of the speech of the law- yer or statesman, the pastor or the lecturer. Ready speech is not undervalued and never will be for any length of time. The reporter has gotten a perma- nent job, but his ceaseless newsgetting does not make void the power of the human voice in public speak- ing. In the publication known as " Who's Who in Amer- ica " short biographies of eminent men in the United States are given. In the edition of 1900, 8,602 per- sons are mentioned. From Prof. Dexter's study of these successful men and women we learn that 94 are actors, 662 clergymen, 1,101 college professors, 446 congressmen, 218 educators, 861 lawyers, 27 lec- turers, 202 statesmen. All of these must be pro- ficient as public speakers, which means that about forty-two per cent of the entire number of eminent men and women in the United States in 1900 found FORECAST FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. 13 oratory beneficial in the struggle for success. The field of public speaking is thus seen to be anything but narrow and unattractive. From the standpoint of preparation for life with its attendant success or failure, Bismarck tells us that college men rule Germany. They rule, of course, because they are able to render better service to the social, civic and religious institutions of their country. Prof. Dexter found that 3,237 of the 8,602 mentioned in " Who's Who," were college graduates, and that the whole number of living graduates at that' time, from which these had been chosen, was 33,400, show- ing that out of the college graduates, one out of every 106 found a place among the eminent in America. The ability to speak in public will enable the col- lege man to render still more effective service, thus giving him an additional right to rule. A leader in thought should be able to give effective oral expres- sion to his ideas. The cause of negro education would not be so successful if Booker T. Washington were a failure as a public speaker. The presidents of our educational institutions, the governors of our States, and all who have to meet the problems of the age in whatever line, must be able to give expression to their thoughts before assembled masses. A great ora- 14 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. tor can draw men to him as none other can. The human, spoken word has no equal in power over the hearts of men. Dr. A. A. Willits, the apostle of sunshine, who for half a century kept one foot upon the lecture plat- form while he had charge of a church; and for the last ten years has given all his time to lecturing, thus convincingly expresses himself upon the impor- tance and opportunity of the platform : " My con- viction is that the platform presents the broadest and grandest field for the discussion of all topics in which men are interested — social, political, intellectual, moral. It also gives to the orator an arena for the untram- meled use of all the faculties of the human mind — reason and logic, wit and humor — with which to incul- cate truth or combat error." Beecher in a lecture once said, " We are living in a land whose genius, whose history, whose institutions, whose people emi- nently demand oratory." Emerson has expressed the opinion that in no country is eloquence a greater power than in the United States. Here are conventions in the interests of commerce, manufacturing, education and morality. Science, too, would be served ; art needs her advocates ; and religion must enlist talent. Where a broader field? Where a worthier? FORECAST FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. 15 The Factors. — In the production of every discourse there are three factors concerned. The first is the speaker, whose function it is to prepare and deliver the discourse; the second is the audience, for the benefit of which the discourse is given ; and the third, the discourse itself, which is the means used by the speaker to accomplish his aim. Not one of these is a constant factor. Now one and now another absorbs most of the interest, and consequently contributes most to the accomplishment of the ends of oral dis- course. On every hand we see men who have a message for mankind, their mouths are open, nothing can close them except the delivery of their message. So it was in the days of the prophets and so it is even to-day. No man really has the right to take the time of his fellow-man unless he has a message worth listening to, and I can place no criterion for the worthiness of a man's message other than his own estimate of its im- portance, for when I attempt to fix a hearer's esti- mate as the final yardstick by which a speaker's dis- course is to be measured I am confronted with the fact, lamentable though it be, that some of the grand- est messages ever brought to man have been ruth- lessly cast aside by him. I need only cite the re- 16 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. jection of the prophets by the idolatry- tainted Israel- ites and the persistent rejection of Jesus by the stiff- necked Jews. Other examples can easily be pro- duced from recent times. The first essential fac- tor, then, in the production of spoken discourse is the man who has a message that must be proclaimed. A man with such a message will find an audience whether his message be truth or falsehood, but, whether truth or falsehood, he must have an audience before he can have the effects of public discourse. Without the audience the public speaker subsides into the hermit and his influence is reduced to himself alone. From this standpoint the audience is just as important as the speaker. Besides being essential in this way, an interested audience becomes a sort of potent magnet and does a great deal to draw out of a speaker all there is in him. It furnishes him inspira- tion, from which fact some of our ancestors were not slow to affirm that a speaker should not prepare for his discourse, but should depend wholly upon the in- spiration which the occasion would give. That an interested and sympathetic audience can wring from the speaker what he could not give in his study is very evident; but it does not take the place of the message which is distinctly and consciously the true FORECAST FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. 17 speaker's, even before he ever sees his audience. For an audience gives only objective value to the discourse which has previously had subjective value. Thus the three factors become essential to pub- lic discourse. Without all three it is impossible to have the practical effects sought in this form of dis- course. CHAPTER II. The Speaker as Blood and Brawn. Bodily Beauty. — " People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal." Interpreted properly this statement of Mr. Spencer's may be accepted as applicable to the public speaker. To him his physical powers are largely a true index of his oratorical ability. Though psycholo- gists may yet be quarreling over the theory that bodily defects have a definite bearing upon mental qualities, still we are safe in asserting that bodily strength and beauty are powerful factors of sustained oratorical success. To no one is a manly, good-sized physique despic- able, for it gives its possessor many advantages. It gains for him instant recognition and he has things his way from the start. The speaker of inferior bod- ily endowment must overcome the prejudice of first impressions; he has to win everything, nature does nothing for him. However, bodily strength and beau- ty do not reside alone in the symmetry of bodily 18 THE SPEAKER AS BLOOD AND BRAWN. 19 organs. One organ may be so beautiful, or another so powerful as wholly to offset other marked defects. Even in ugliness may reside a unique power, as is evidenced in Mirabeau, who said of himself, " No one knows all the power of ugliness. When I shake my terrible mane none dare interrupt me." In his hideous ugliness lay a fierce strength which nature liberally aided in the endowment of a strong, flexible voice. A shortage in stature or in symmetry of organs is often amply compensated by a strong, clear, flexible voice, a stout heart, and a manly face. In fact, an expressive countenance covers a multitude of defects. And nothing can take the place of a kindling eye, quick in its perception of truth, innocent in its frank- ness, and penetrating in its interpretation of character. Daniel Webster had such an eye, large, lustrous and beautiful. Bacon says : " Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set ; and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features and that hath rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect." Dignity and Grace. — Recent investigations have es- tablished the fact that men of genius are inclined to surpass men of common ability in awkwardness. There may be room still, however, for a difference of 20 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. opinion as to what constitutes awkwardness. Many public speaker of note, like Webster and Chatham, have had perfect command of themselves, which con- duces to both dignity and grace. If a speaker would have an audience respect him and believe him and obey him, he must respect himself — a certain lofti- ness of bearing, which does not border on arrogance, must be his; he must be at ease in his work, which gives him grace in its highest form. The peculiar charm of John C. Calhoun, the Great Nullifier, is said to have been an utter forgetfulness of self and a deference to the feelings and wishes of others, which made him famed far and wide for his courtly manners. It was his captivating manners as well as his strik- ing eloquence that won so many friends for Henry Clay. It is affirmed, indeed, that his courtly manners won many a fight for him. Elder R. H. Miller was a clear, logical, thinker and speaker. He was a de- bater of great power. Without doubt his calm, courte- ous, dignified manners aided him in whipping his op- ponent in debate as much as did his clearness or his logic. Grace is not polish, it is not stiffness, it can not be manufactured by the laundryman and tailor, it is not starch and broadcloth. Dignity is the direct out- THE SPEAKER AS J&LOOD AND BRAWN. 21 cropping of native power. It gains grace when the environment in which it works becomes familiar. Grace is strength softened by sympathy. In great natures a consciousness of power begets dignity, in small ones it breeds haughtiness. Grace is essentially the power to move effectively. So all useless move- ments are opposed to grace. Perfect knowledge of an art and power gained by practice in it, both add grace. Bacon believed " the principal part of beauty " to be derived from " decent motion." But it is folly to im- agine that grace gained on the waxed floor of the dancing hall will give grace to the aspiring orator in his speech-making. The flourishing twists of the baseball pitcher have little in common with the telling gestures of the accomplished orator. The fountain source of dignity is in an inner elevation of soul. Some who are physically insignificant are, neverthe- less, spiritually unconquerable. By many Paul is thought to have been little and feeble physically, but his soul power gave him dignity and grace. In bear- ing the orator must have dignity, the modest ac- companiment of native and acquired power. In ac- tion he must have grace, which is the evidence of cul- ture, of knowledge, and of skill in the art of public speaking. 22 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. Physical Endurance. — Genius is in the blood, for nine-tenths of it is hard work. The chief of the South Sea Islands said to Sir John Lubbock, " Ideas make me sleepy." By this he indicated that he was physical- ly unable to sustain the tremendous strain of mental labor. In the fight for life muscle tells. Commercial- ly, as proven by history, the blood of the Teuton is worth two and a half times that of the Egyptian and twice that of the native of India. " A stout heart wins a fair lady," and literally also a fair renown. You can not stifle a strong brain in a strong body. It is constructed for great service and great service will it render. Put a big brain in a little body and it is fatally ineffectual. A weak brain can do nothing in a big, unwieldy body. Physical energy is conceded by all to be one of the essentials of good discourse, and it can not be at its best unless there is a good physique upon which it is based. From the very nature of the work, the ne- cessity of vitality in the vital organs is apparent; for there will be long trips, long periods of hard study, irregular times of sleeping, and times when the strain of repeated public appearances will be excessive. To sustain all of this the public speaker must cultivate the ability to rest when opportunity offers and not THE SPEAKER AS BLOOD AND BRAWN. 23 when he would like. He must be able to snatch every moment from waste and inactivity and put it to the most urgent use. The orator must have rest and he must prepare for his next speech. Then, too, it is just as important that he be able to keep from worrying as it is that he prepare, for worry will wear him out faster than work will. Physical endurance must, then, be based upon the concerted action of brain and body. In unremitted mental toil the body must support the brain without stint and without murmur. A poor digestion may spoil what might otherwise have become a good ser- mon. Tone, originality, and force are sensibly de- pendent upon blood and brawn. Oratorical talent must be backed by physical endurance. It is not the physical power which makes the prize fighter that the orator needs; but the physical en- durance that will sustain the vital processes under heavy strain in mental as well as in physical toil. It is a good, healthy digestion; a good, healthy circulation; and a good, strong, calm nervous organization that one wants. To have these, one does not need a large body, nor even a perfectly symmetrical one. But without healthy organs one can not have the blood and brawn that wins in the race of the orator's life. 24 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. In his " Up From Slavery " Booker T. Washington says : " I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles he overcame in trying to suc- ceed." In this struggle to overcome the obstacles barring the gifted from their legitimate success phy- sical endurance is needed. In this respect oratory is no exception. Without doubt merit under any sky will be recognized ultimately; however, before the recognition comes, there is needed, frequently, the strongest nerve, and the toughest muscle to with- stand all hardships. For it is well known that suc- cess comes only after much toil, wherein the flesh, as well as the spirit, is severely tried. Recall the struggles of a Demosthenes with his stammering tongue, of a Webster with his boyish backwardness and his stage fright; and be assured that the masters in oratory had their difficulties, too; and that suc- cess, true and lasting, came to them only after much hard work. If an orator would succeed he must have the brightest blood and the bravest brawn to sustain his mental effort. CHAPTER III. The Voice in Public Speaking. Vocal Power. — Few men ever think of the wonder- ful power of the human voice. Though subtile and elusive in analysis, it still carries with it a positive kinetic power akin to authority. There is that quality in it which aptly fits it for conveying an appeal or a command. Its power is sometimes magical. Notice how quickly we change our opinion of a man when once we hear his voice, hitherto unknown to us. The voice almost invariably compels us to reconstruct our estimate of those whom we have seen but have not heard. Scientists assure us that all animals fear and respect the human voice. For each of us, too, there is some hidden power in it. A spirit seems to go with it to command or entreat — a spirit, indeed, whose magic power we can neither resist nor escape. Even the dog at the heels of his master feels its potency. In construction the voice is as intricate and delicate as any other of the bodily organs. But it is not my pur- pose to give its anatomy, for that does not belong to my topic. It is the instrument most used by the pub- 25 26 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. lie speaker and its care is of the highest importance. Through ignorance it is sometimes abused. Through false notions of oratory it is sometimes overtaxed. Its real value lies in its great versatility, its magnetic power, and its mysterious meaning. The rich, varied songs of the lark and nightingale are justly loved and admired the world over, but the voice of man is cap- able of much more than either of these. What can compare with it in richness and compass? According to Beecher the human voice is " the greatest force on earth among men." Mr. William Shakespeare in his " Art of Singing " says : " The human voice will never cease to be the most beautiful of instruments when properly used ; it will never cease to strike the chords of the human heart with a direct- ness and an intensity unapproached by any other instrument." As long as man needs his fellow, as long as lover woos a sweetheart, or as the interests of life are dear to men, so long will the tones of the human voice have a worth exceeding treasured gold, a melody and sweetness equalled by no flute or harp. Natural and Acquired Speaking Voices. — The best speaking voices are those that are naturally strong and flexible. But even a weak voice can be much strengthened by judicious practice. Sometimes we are THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 27 instructed to speak in our natural tones when ad- dressing an audience. This is all right if the orator have a giant's voice or if his audience be very small. However, the ordinary tones of the average man are not sufficient to speak satisfactorily to an audience' of five hundred. So that from this point of view all speaking voices are acquired voices. Those that are strongest naturally still need some drill, and much practice, getting better as they are brought under control. A great deal can be done with a weak voice by finding out its weakness and then studiously builds ing it up. For this, proper exercise is needed. And then, when it has been made as strong as possible, care should be taken not to overwork it or strain it. Few voices have no strong points. It should be the speaker's constant effort to make the most of the strong points, thereby shielding the weak points from excessive strain. What your voice lacks in volume or strength may be measurably made up by distinct- ness of articulation. Prof. Wilkinson says of Dr. Talmage that his voice is " a somewhat harsh and singularly inflexible and prevailingly monotonous or- gan of utterance. It lacks pathos, but for these de- fects the orator compensates by force and distinctness of speech." If a speaker does not speak so very loud we are satisfied if he gives us distinct pronunciation. 28 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. A weak voice should have the advantage of variety of delivery. All words should not be spoken in the same tone. Gesture and facial expression may be made to assist a weak voice. What your voice lacks in volume it may make up in carrying quality, for though the vocal chords may be thin they may be strong and your force of breath ample, so that, with flexibility gained through practice, you may make your thin, piercing voice do good work. Make the strongest possible voice out of the one you have. But do not try to make your minor quality do your major work. That is not wisdom. You heard a speaker with a big, strong voice the other day, and he cut and slashed things so easily that you imagined you could not be an orator until you could speak in those big, strong tones ; so you set to work to imitate them, and now you talk, sing, read the newspapers, and even laugh, in the borrowed tones. Do I think you will ever make them your own? It will be a good thing for you if you fail, for at best you can only have a weaker voice than the one you started with so far as possibilities are con- cerned. Be satisfied with your own voice, but do not rest until you have developed it to its highest capacity. A man's voice is a living instrument that deserves to THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 29 be well guarded against everything that might impair it. Proper Breathing. — One of the most effective ways to develop the voice is to practice proper breathing. Dr. Lennox Browne asserts that a change from faulty to proper breathing has been known to change a falsetto into a full, sonorous voice, and to cure the " speaker's sore throat." To breathe properly the work should be done by the midriff and ribs, and not by raising the shoulders or by using the upper part of the chest. The breath should be controlled by the same means. It should not be stopped by closing the mouth or by contracting the muscles of the throat. These latter methods give rise to faulty sounds and cause excessive labor on the part of organs not intended for that kind of work. While speaking, all muscles about the throat should be relaxed that thus they may have freedom properly to articulate the volume of air being expelled, so as to produce the correct succession of sounds. It is desirable to keep a reserve of breath while speaking. The Rev. J. P. Sandlands in his " Voice and Public Speaking " rather boastingly affirms that he once read the whole of the Lord's Prayer after a single inspiration. He did this to keep from inhaling 30 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. the cold air of the churchyard where he had to read the prayer at a funeral service. However, I do not deem such breathing gymnastics conducive to either the highest spirituality or the most effective skill in the use of the voice. It is not the straining — the speaking to the very greatest limit possible — that gives the skill most desired in public speaking. It is rather the ability to control the breath fully and easily and also to keep a reserve of breath on hand at all times so that the proper tone can be given to all of the words. To do this one must learn to breathe quickly and quiet- ly. " The celebrated basso Lablanche is said to have watched for four minutes the equally celebrated tenor Rubini without being able to discover any signs of breathing." (Wm. Shakespeare, in " The Art of Singing.") One should breathe as high up in the chest and as low as possible, but there should be at the same time no sign whatever of the exertion in so doing. It is therefore a mistake to attempt to speak with the last bit of breath, for no one can thus keep up the fullness and steadiness of the tone. Some speakers are in the habit of closing every sentence or period in a lower tone than the one in which they started. This fault may be remedied by proper breathing, for it is a lack tHE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 31 of breath and not a weakness of the vocal organs that causes it. Such speakers have not yet learned to take in air at the proper time. They should remember that the voice is much like a locomotive, that has its fixed stations for taking in its supply of water and coal. The voice must have breath to run it, and if its capa- city is not so very great the better plan is to take in air oftener. Either to carry too large a reserve, or to run too low, is alike faulty. Each speaker must regu- late the frequency of inspirations to his own capacity and the needs of the particular discourse he is deliver- ing. Persistent daily practice for six months or a year will work wonderful development in the breathing efficiency of most speakers. No one is too old to profit by judicious exercise of the diaphragm and ribs in breathing. Correct and Distinct Pronunciation. — One of the very greatest of singers, Pacchiarotti, is said to have declared : " He who knows how to breathe and how to pronounce, knows well how to sing." We can say the same thing about a public speaker. It does not all depend upon breathing, however, for the words must be properly and distinctly pronounced also. After the breath has been set in motion by the action of the diaphragm and the ribs, there still remains the proper 32 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. manipulation of the vocal chords, lips, tongue, teeth, and palate so that the sound may flow in succession properly articulated. All these organs must have the greatest freedom in which to act. The jaw and throat should be free and independent of each other. Loose- ness about the throat conduces to the free and proper use of the vocal organs. Words should be clear-cut, they should stand off distinct from each other like pearls upon a string. Words that end with a vowel sound should be finished with the mouth and throat open, for otherwise a faulty ending is given. Try it. Pronounce the word " go," and when the sound is full and strong suddenly shut the mouth. The result is " g°P-" A proper control of the breath will not give this result. Neither the throat nor the mouth should be used to stop the breath in such words. The old masters in singing used the mirror to detect any distortion of the features while engaged in sing- ing. Now, the device was a good one, for any distor- tion of feature discloses an unnatural position of the muscles used in singing. All this is as true of speaking as of singing, and the practice before a mirror is not as foolish as some have tried to make it out. An un- natural expression, a face all awry or a head thrown back, tells one immediately that the tones are not THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 33 natural and that the strain will likely end in hoarse- ness or sore throat. Get the organs back into their natural position and talk within the compass of the voice you have, using your strongest points for the hardest work, and your voice will soon be a supple, obedient servant. The vowels of the English language are not sus- tained to any great length, and this, together with the difficulty of our consonants, tends to encourage a throaty, blurred pronunciation. For this reason the public speaker needs constantly to strive for distinct- ness in utterance. Is the Singing Voice the Speaking Voice? — This question interests us because, if one, then what de- velops one will develop the other; and what wearies one will weary the other. It will also be inferred that a good speaking voice will be a good singing voice, and vice versa. So we may conclude that a singing master may be well qualified from the standpoint of voice to do public speaking. Mr. Shakespeare in " The Art of Singing," says : " Singing is so much more sustained, and so much louder and higher than ordinary talking that it re- quires a corresponding increase in intensity of breath pressure." Elsewhere he says : " We must regard 34 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. singing as a combination of tune and speech." Rev. N. D. Hillis in " Foretokens of Immortality " puts the distinction this way : " The melody is one-half in the singer's voice ; the other half is the cultivated ear." He means that without the cultured ear the singer's voice would avail little. So it is in music, indeed, for unless the ear be able to detect and locate tones, singing can not succeed. Prof. Johnson in his " Forms of English Poetry " recognizes this, too, for he says : " The secret of successful song writing is the happy combi- nation of a fine musical ear with a poetical tempera- ment. The song writer need not be a practical musi- cian, but it will assist him wonderfully if he be one." The ear of the musician must be able to distinguish every sound and place every tone in the scale, but the orator does not need to do so. In " Paradise Lost," Milton distinguishes thus : " Eloquence for the soul, music for the sense." Mr. Sheppard in " Before an Audience " emphati- cally states the singing voice to be different from the speaking voice ; he says that " you can not acquire an adequate and enduring speaking voice by acquiring an adequate and occasional singing voice." And again he puts it this way : " A good speaking voice is not a good singing voice. They are entirely different THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 35 voices." The distinction Mr. Sheppard insists upon is rather a matter of frequency of use than of function. The singer uses his singing voice only when he sings and not when he converses, but the orator uses the same voice for all kinds of work. This distinction is a mere surface distinction and not worthy of the seri- ous attention Mr. Sheppard gives it. It ought to show in function if the distinction between the singing voice and the speaking voice is to be worth our attention. Fundamentally, what is the difference between speaking and singing? It is the difference between the rhythm of prose and that of poetry when the latter has the rhythm emphasized to the greatest extent. Singing uses words only as means to bring out the music or rhythm. The music is the aim, it is pre-eminent in its command of atten- tion. The music must not be sacrificed for the sense of the words. In oratory the music is subordinate to the sense. First of all the thought must be clear, so attention must be given to the sound symbol as a means of conveying thought, first and foremost, and afterwards attention may be given to the words as a means of conveying music, namely, the music inherent in eloquent prose. This distinction necessitates a different use of the same word in singing and speak- 36 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. ing, and hence requires a different use of the voice in uttering it. There seems to be no question as to the validity of this distinction. Statistically we can easily come to the same con- clusion. For it is a well-known fact that great musi- cians or great singers are not great orators, and it is equally true that great orators have never been noted for their musical talent, either in the creation of music or in the presentation of it. Surely if the singing and speaking voice are one, there would be more evidence of it in this respect. One can easily notice the difference in the voice of the same person when he reads the hymn, leads the singing, and then speaks. Now why these differences ? Evidently the distinction is fundamentally grounded in the different attitudes of the mind toward the audience and toward the subject matter. The reader attempts to carry thought by means of thought symbols. The singer adds tune to the word symbols. The speaker who talks impromptu must give the greater attention to the thought and its appropriate embodiment in words, while the voice that produces these words in sound symbols for the interpretation of his hearer must work almost automatically, being but slightly under the conscious control of the speaker's will. THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 37 Then of the three, the public speaker, the public singer, and the public reader, the public speaker needs a voice the most reliable and the most prompt to yield ready control. Hence the public speaker needs the most practice ; indeed, his practice should be constant. With only a few speakers can this constant practice be had in public so the only means left is private practice. There are some, who through prejudice, and others, who through ignorance, discourage this private practice of the voice. But the voice must be kept in trim some way, and if the opportunity is not given for practicing in public, it should be kept in good condition by private exercise. Certainly it is not strange that your voice fails you when you use it only once a month, or so, for public speaking, provid- ed you never give it any private exercise in the inter- vals. With little use the muscles you want in public speaking have grown weak and incapable of the neces- sary strain incumbent upon them for the delivery of a discourse to a large audience. It is somewhat different if the room be small. But even then the speaker's voice will lose its flexibility if it is not kept in constant practice. Care of the Voice. — The speaker has no more im- portant tool for the delivery of his message than his 38 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. voice. And the better it is by nature the more for- tunate he is, if, perchance, he knows how to take proper care of it. The unskilled use of a good tool is likely to do more damage by misthrusts than would be done if the tool were poor. So the misuse of a naturally strong and flexible voice may be accom- panied by most serious injury to the organ itself. For it is evident that hoarseness and sore throat are usually the evil effects of a misuse of the voice. The voice is strained, or it is neglected, and then before long it is cracked and sore, and only too soon so overworked that it is wholly unfit for public service. Some speakers talk too loud, and so overwork the vocal chords; others pitch their voices too high, and so strain the chords. Not a few do too much cutting and slashing, using their voices much as a careless mower does a sharp scythe. He slashes it through weeds and briars, over stones and stumps, heedlessly and merci- lessly. Such a mower, however sharp his scythe may have been to start with, will not cut a clean swath very long. So a speaker who saws and yells and talks, and talks in doors and out of doors, paying heed neither to the size of the room, the weight of his thought in relation to utterance, nor the purity or temperature of the air in which he speaks, will soon find that his voice can not give clean-cut, smooth utterance. THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 39 The vocal chords may be played upon best by him who can control his breathing best. But just as the violinist must give proper tension to each of the strings of his violin before he can give the desired tone, so the speaker must tune, even incessantly, his vocal chords; and his speaking, whether good or bad, will depend upon his skill in tuning as well as in breathing. Still the violinist has not played his music when he has finished his tuning, neither has the speaker finished his speech when he has given the proper tension to his vocal chords; for as the musician must dexterously wield his bow, so the speaker must dexterously control his breath. A tone that roars or pierces, stuns the ear or torments it instead of stimulating it, and thus detracts from the thought which the words should convey. I once knew a kind-hearted old German who spoke English very brokenly, and sometimes I was sorely tempted to laugh at his conduct when his lis- tener failed to understand him. Instead of trying to speak his words more distinctly he added force and spoke louder and louder at each repetition. When the limit of his lung power had been reached he would shake his head and walk off. Consequently, though he had lived here long enough to learn to speak two languages, he never mastered the oral expression of 40 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. one; because he did not go at it properly. Strive to utter your words distinctly ; it is easier. One cannot speak with closed mouth, and teeth held close together; however, I have seen public speakers try it. The vocal chords are tireless strings, but it is not right to demand too much of them. With open mouth there still remains enough for the vocal chords to do. The heart will beat for eighty or ninety years, day and night, but its relaxation and its frequent, though extremely short rests suffice for its health and activity. The vocal chords, too, will serve long and do strenuous work if they are used judiciously and allowed proper relaxation. While uniformity in de- livery is desirable, yet the tension of the vocal chords should vary in the delivery, so that they may have the required relaxation. Drinking cold water just before speaking is claimed by some to have a salutary effect, as it hardens and toughens the vocal chords, thus rendering them less liable to strain. Inhaling cold air, or drinking cold water immediately after speaking is injurious to the vocal chords, because they are then heated, and, like any other muscle, may be cooled off too quickly. In cold weather the throat should have extra protection. Silk is best for wearing next the skin, since it preserves THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 41 a mean temperature best and thus helps one to avoid colds and hoarseness. If compelled to sit in a draft, one may avoid the evil consequences in a measure by doing an extra amount of breathing, which has the same result as taking physical exercise, for it forces a more rapid circulation of the blood, resulting in an increase of the warmth of the body. CHAPTER IV. The Speaker as Mind. Figure the Mind in Too. — Brains talk. You can speak about body and spirit all you like, you can never get away from the fact that an orator must have brains; and that he must know how to use them, too. " I know of no nobler body of men, of more various accomplishments, of more honesty, of more self- sacrifice, of more sincerity, than the clergy of America. I bear them witness that in multitudes of cases they are grotesque; that in multitudes of cases they are awkward and that in multitudes still greater they are dull," said Beecher. A man may do a great deal of work and in many ways be dull, but he cannot deliver the telling message to assembled masses if he is dull — he must have brains to be an orator. Everywhere there is a lack of trained minds to do the work of the Master. According to a report com- ing from Lincoln, fifteen per cent of the Protestant churches in Nebraska are without ministers. Hands may be willing to relieve the sick, but if they lack the skill they are as useless as though not willing. The 42 THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 43 same is true of those who would work with the mind ; training for skill must precede all effective work. The speaker must be a teacher but how can he teach if he has never been taught himself? How can he make others think if he has never thought for himself? Thought alone quickens thought. Mental Attitude. — The mental attitude of the speaker is not the same as that of the hearer. The speaker must clothe thought in words, his mood is creative. He must give heed to both form and sub- stance ; he is building. He might be likened to a car- penter fitting in his boards, paying careful attention to the material used and the form in which he leaves it. The listener, on the other hand, is in the receptive or passive mood; he takes to heart the truths pre- sented, he weighs the arguments, and criticises the theories. His mind fuses with his fellows' and he cheers with hearty approval or frowns with chilly displeasure, as he in turn agrees or disagrees with the speaker. His mind is in an attitude of dependence, it is receptive but not creative. The hearer may pose as critic, but the attitude of the critic is not creative, in fact it is directly opposed to creative work. The speaker must be bent upon leading, and so his mind must not grope; for no one likes a blind guide. 44 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. His mind must be fearless and at the same time moved irresistibly toward a definite goal. Halting, hesitating, or doubting are fatal to successful leadership. The following clipped from a November number of the 1904 Pathfinder shows what moral fearlessness is sometimes needed even in our own day, and how success often hinges upon the bold stand of the public speaker. " Rev. R. J. Campbell, the eloquent young preacher who occupies Dr. Parker's old City Temple pulpit in London, several weeks ago published an article in the National Review strongly criticising the British work- man for making such poor use of his spare time, wast- ing the bulk of his earnings on ale and tobacco, etc. He was challenged to repeat his indictment before a meeting of labor unionists, and he accepted. He was greeted by a hostile and angry gathering, but he bravely stood his ground and before he had finished he had won his audience over by his candid but sincere talk." Without the fearless spirit of an undaunted leader other excellent qualities may avail little in certain try- ing situations. This is why men of inferior ability in other respects so often displace able men as leaders. Narrowness intellectually favors prejudice, and makes THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 45 its possessor assertive and positive. The masses fre- quently mistake the demonstrative positiveness of the narrow bigot for certain knowledge. They say : " He is so positive about it he must know." Though we in no way admire the forwardness of the incompetent, yet we know that a public speaker must in mind assume the independent and authoritative attitude of the lead- er. His mind must be actively creative. A man without a message has no right to talk, but he may have a message and still not be in the proper mood at all times to deliver it to an audience. Mr. R. C. Winthrop in speaking of Daniel Webster says that when he delivered his famous Reply to Hayne " he spoke in great excitement and with almost the aid of inspiration." In speaking of the same occasion Web- ster himself, said : "I felt as if everything I had ever heard or seen was floating before me in one grand panorama and I had little else to do than to reach up and cull a thunderbolt and hurl it at him." During the forty-eight hours while Lowell was composing his " Vision of Sir Launfal " he scarcely slept or ate, so keenly active was his mind and so absorbing was his mood. Powers of Observation.— No teacher impresses her lessons so effectively as experience does. Knowledge 46 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. learned first hand is most definite. The poet's line throbs with his own pulse beat. His pictures are copies of those hanging in his own gallery of expe- rience. He has seen, that is why he can describe. The concrete is the electric button that sets the emotional battery loose. The speaker must reach the emotions, and his most effective means is in the concrete attain- ed through the power to describe, to picture. The eye must not only see color and form, but it must grasp relations, for good description presupposes a keen sense of proportion, not things alone but things in their right places. It is not merely in seeing " the flower in the crannied wall," but in seeing the uni- verse in the same flower that distinguishes a Tennyson from the ordinary man. Seeing, he sees. The imaginative element is not absent in good de- scription. Even history abounds in imagination, since the historian, using all facts at hand, still finds large gaps that must be filled in by imaginative material, for how could a whole battle be observed in its com- plete details even by any number of men? And who could ever tell the story of the dead? There is no such thing, I think, as unmixed fact. Fiction must serve as padding. Or, to use a figure, it must serve as carti- laginous cushions between the dry, hard bones of fact. THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 47 Mr. Lewis in his " Principles of Success in Liter- ature " says : " Vigorous and effective minds habitual- ly deal with concrete images. This is notably the case with poets and great literates. Their vision is keener than that of other men. However rapid and remote their flight of thought, it is a succession of images, not of abstractions." While the imaginations of Shakespeare and Newton were both very active, the latter was toward things in the abstract, while the former was toward things in the concrete, and as a result Shakespeare became poet and Newton, philos- opher. The oratorical as well as the poetical mind moves in harmony with the feelings and fastens upon concrete facts in preference to abstact relations. The orator must be able to see things distinctly ; his powers of observation ought to be well developed through constant use. And yet he will not be able to make others see unless he can remember well and portray excellently. For the man who has made accurate and vivid observations at first hand, the task of moving masses from the platform becomes easy; for his ac- curate, vivid observations enable him to give a clear- ness and conciseness to his thought and language that win attention and admiration. Upon the topic " Consolidating Churches " in Ev- 48 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. erybody's Magazine, April, 1904, Rev. N. D. Hillis said : " Instead of ten preachers there ought to be three. One of these should be the preacher or prophet- man who sees the truth clearly with his intellect; who feels the truth deeply, and who is able to state the truth simply, so that the old and young, the wise and igno- rant alike not only behold the cluster of God's fruit, but find the branches on which it hangs within easy reach." But to see into the future requires a close observation of the present. A prophet who cannot see clouds to-day will likely miss the forecast of the weath- er for to-morrow. A public speaker's work is so in- timately related to his immediate environment that he cannot be effective and still be wholly ignorant of it. To the minister comes the command : Know your sur- roundings; know your neighbors and their home life and the problems they are grappling with. So often clear statement is commensurate with viv- id, accurate observation ; for not a few facts but all of them determine authority. When we read John C. Calhoun's " Address to the People of the South," we are startled to find it such a prediction of the results of abolition as amply testifies that his eye was prophetic in its penetration of future events, his scent keen in detecting threatening danger, and his voice brave in THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 49 proclaiming it. Franklin schooled himself to strength- en his powers of observation. He would pass a shop window, and then later attempt an enumeration of the articles in the window. Usually we see first and re- member longest the things we are most interested in. Cultivate broad sympathies and diversified interests, and the powers of observation will be strengthened thereby. All the senses, too, should be alive, sights, sounds, odors, — all should be seized and appropriated. When L. G. Broughton visited Luray Cave he was not satisfied with results at first, for the little tapers carried by the guide did not disclose much to him ; but after awhile the guide lit a magnesium light, and then he was fully satisfied. The reason why so many speak- ers cannot interest their audiences is because they as guides carry only small tapers of observation ; let them but chance to carry magnesium lights of brilliant mid- day observation and their audiences cannot choose but be interested, for the view of human life will be truly wonderful. Grasp of Generalities. — There are men who have a goodly share of that rarest of articles, common sense. Such men are not spoiled by education nor by a lack of it. I have seen boys act and think like men, and I have seen grown, collegiate-fledged men act like boys. 50 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. Some people know a good bit without studying for it, while some others seem to study a good bit to know nothing about anything. This difference in men is due largely to their ability to grasp the fundamentals in life. To some men one thing is just as important as another, details are details to them, and they never grasp a sufficient number of details at any one time to see the principle underlying all. Professor Wilkinson in his " Masters of Pulpit Discourse," in speaking of Henry Ward Beecher, pays no little tribute to the excellent " common sense " of the great orator. He says : " But side by side with genius in Mr. Beecher sat another gift of his, worthy to be named as almost, if not quite, an equal power. I mean his common sense. Never did so much common sense mate with so much genius. . . . . The ballast of common sense was always sufficient to counterweigh what were else the over-buoyant headiness of his genius." The public speaker must have a good grasp of gen- eralities, for it is the only means by which he can properly estimate the relative value of particulars. Unless he have this grasp he cannot well see through the outer tangible form of things and events, reading quickly and unerringly their real import. The eye of the keen student of human nature stops not with the THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 51 flesh and bones, but finds the heart of its man every time. Pope's oft-repeated truism, " The proper study of mankind is man," may well be phrased, The proper study of the public speaker is man. Just as the busi- ness man must be able to see a penny through a brick wall, so the public speaker must have an eye to pierce all outer acts and protestations and see clearly the motive, and then base the worth of deeds and acts upon that one determining factor of character. Other- wise he will make very grievous mistakes. Looked at from the point of comparison of one detail with an- other, the truth may be difficult to see, but when looked at in relation of particular to general principle, the truth is easily seen. Thus the speaker does not find it difficult to decide whether certain acts are right or wrong. And what is more important for his influence is, that, if governed by principle, his decisions will be consistent in themselves. Then the man who has a firm grasp of generalities is clearer in his thinking and more logical in his treat- ment of themes. Even unconsciously he rejects ex- traneous matter from his discourse. His hearers say, " He sticks to his text." His discourse has unity and is well balanced. The man who looks to principles will be a greater 52 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. power morally, for firmness, constancy, and consis- tency, the characteristics of a principle-governed rather than an environment-moulded man, always win over both matter and men. A man may be eloquent now and then, but if he would be eloquent at all times, his life must be the fountain of his eloquence. Paul and Christ were eloquent in word because eloquent in life. Their lives were dominated by the great principles of Christianity. This body of truth will serve as frame- work for the speaker's habitual thought. Without it his discourse lacks support. Phrasal Power. — The great poets possess the high- est skill in casting thought into language forms. With them it is a fusing of thought and form in the furnace of poetic inspiration. The poet is not so much a phi- losopher or a thinker as an artist, a linguistic artist. He must deal primarily with language form. The thought he uses is most commonly the gift of the peo- ple. He must give the thought objective value. To do this he must know the wealth and power of the language in which he writes. Its melody and its subtle undertones he must feel. It is easy for some speakers, as for some poets, to clothe thought in language ; with others it is very difficult. No amount of training, it seems to me, can ever take the place of the natural THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 53 phrasal power. A studied, halting speech is ever ir- ritating. The phrasal power of the writer is not the same as that of the public speaker, the former is more staid and classical ; the latter easy and flowing. The orator- ical temperament requires a ready, easy command of the speaker's vocabulary. There can be no waiting for words. They must come when needed. Some- times the words of a ready speaker seem to strive for the honor of being used. Such a speaker never wants for words, and indeed, for the right words, for they come to him better when speaking that when writing. Writing is too slow for his nimble wit. His mind is like some machines that need a good rate of speed to do good work. And so, whether the word needed be for force, melody, or volume, the speaker endowed with excellent phrasal power seems instinctively to know the proper word and unhesitatingly to use it. Like the artist who paints not by rule but by inspira- tion and thus creates the pictures that make rules pos- sible, so the orator, for his best work is done when he is least conscious of the words and phrases he uses. Instinctively, by force of genius, he moulds thought into matchless language forms. 54 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. The Power to Describe. — The speaker wants to call up vivid, concrete images for the hearer, and to this end he must be able to describe well. When one wants to picture a scene in the country, a crowded street, or an odd face, one is in need of more than mere words. A bki*e catalogue of characteristics does not make good description, it requires a just proportion of the several parts also. The relation of the words, too, in sentence form must have due consideration, for the sentence form and the rhythm of the words will either add to the descriptive power of a passage or detract not a lit- tle from it. Your description will tell how you see things, for it will be colored by your own individuality. One man sees a thing in one way, another in a very different way. For a man's interest in a thing will enable him to see it in the light of that interest. Should a group of men watch the burning of a building no two will afterward describe it in the same way. One watches the flames, another the falling timbers, a third the efforts of the firemen, a fourth the grief of the hapless family made homeless by the fire. Thus the images trusted to the memories of these men are greatly different. Emotion lies at the beck of the concrete. The THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 55 hearer realizes this concrete through the descriptive power of the speaker. It is true that the mind likes action, such as is had in narration ; but we must know that narration is a rapid succession of individual pic- tures or miniature descriptions. A moving picture is made up of a great number of snap-shots, so a narra- tive is made up of a great many bits of description. The concrete in action as well as in form, size, and color is to be realized through description. It is not always necessary to make a complete pic- ture, sometimes a mere sketch giving the barest outline is preferred to a labored, finished portrait. The artist must not confuse the objects in his picture, he must ever keep in mind his main object for the realization of which the others are brought in. So in description there must not be too much attention given to back- ground or to subordinate characters for fear the cen- tral, main figure, may be obscured. The artist must see or he cannot paint ; form, position and color must be noticed. There are no blind painters. A man who does not see cannot describe in sight images; how- ever, there are sound images also ; these he must hear. All his senses must be his obedient servants to gather material, and then he can phrase it all for his hearers. To be able to describe readily one must have a ready 56 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. knowledge of colors, shapes and forms. To describe well one must know sounds, odors, and a thousand and one objects of this complex age of ours. Every trade, every profession has a large technical vocabulary, a part of which, at least, must be familiar if the speaker would describe intelligently to a mixed audience. Cooper succeeded in his sea tales better than Scott did, not because he was a better novelist, but because he had been a sailor and knew the terms he used and was acquainted with the sights and scenes he described. Scott had never been a sailor, and to him the sailors' language was not familiar. By investigation Dr. Gun- saulus has found out that a very great majority of our successful city preachers were born and reared in the country. One reason for their success, I heard him remark, is their ability to bring to wearied city people the calm, fresh, restful scenes of the country. These preachers, born in the country, and familiar from childhood with all the sights, sounds, and odors of country life, must be able by description to make these scenes in all their freshness and sweetness live again before their audiences. Emotional Power. — Feeling that is not felt is not likely to make others feel. The orator, unless he is sincere, can move few to tears by his crying. Emo- THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 57 tional power, combined with power over language forms, gives to the orator's utterance a potency which painstaking can never reach. At a glance we know him to be in earnest, and though we differ from him, we will respect him. To be an ennobling, uplifting power, emotion must rest upon our sense of the good, the true, and the right. Beauty of form or beauty of color may arouse the aesthetic emotion. The loveli- ness, the grandeur of the world may stir the soul that loves the beautiful, and there may be a keen delight in the quiet charm of rural landscape, but this is not a moral emotion, it is something entirely different. The rapture inspired by paintings, music, or nature does not make for correct or incorrect character. But the emotion aroused by the contemplation of anything that involves our attitude toward the good, the true, or the right does very vitally concern our characters, morally. Coleridge and Shelley are not to be blamed if they lacked appreciation of music beyond a vague sense of melody common to most people. One may be a second-rate poet and have aesthetic emotion alone, but the public speaker must have moral and spiritual emotion. To him the moral and spiritual precepts must appeal powerfully, emotionally as well as intel- lectually. It is not enough that he know them, he can 58 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. not make disciples, since he lacks one very essential element of leadership, emotional life. Leaders are passionate, earnest advocates. Emotion is necessary for this. It must be real, too. Do not imagine that you can force yourself into the feeling which you do not have. And, what is worse, do not mistake selfishness or egotism for true moral feeling. It may chance that you are angry with your transgressing neighbor from personal motives and not angry at the sin as sin. And then as a speaker do not imagine that feeling, moral or spiritual, is commen- surate with violence in gesture and vehemence and explosiveness in speech. It is not. If you feel what you say your audience will find it out, but they will best appreciate what you feel if you make it intelli- gible to them in the most natural way. It is exceedingly difficult for you to interest others in what you have no feelings for, no sympathy with. The cold heart and the knowing brain do not appre- ciate your troubles, you do not confide to them your trials, they can not spy out your secret pain or joy — they lack heart warmth — they cannot draw you as great leaders should. A bishop of souls must know some little, certainly, but he must feel much. To be a pulpit or platform magnet you must have the true moral and THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 59 spiritual magnetism. If you have it not, get it by rub- bing up close to Christ, the great magnet, who having himself been lifted up draws all men unto him. Meas- ure your heart beat and you can tell pretty well the extent of your possible influence over the lives of men. The brain may polish the metal in man, but heart alone can melt it. Hearts must be melted and won ere masses can be moved to deeds. The orator's purpose is not accomplished unless it is crowned by the action of the hearer's will. CHAPTER V. The Speaker as Spirit. Outlook for Life. — The speaker's attitude toward the great problems of life may be designated as his philosophy or his outlook for life. Does he love the truth? Does he believe in humanity? Is he loyal to the nation and to his fellow-man? Is he an optimist or a pessimist? His answer to these questions the speaker cannot long keep from his hearers, even though he try to do so. If he think life a failure and believe in the dominion of misery, his pessimism will haunt every utterance. The ghosts of former great- ness will appear, in spite of his remonstrances, at every turn lamenting with wringing hands the decline of former strength and virtue. Even in the sweep and tone of his sentences one can feel the thwarting, de-» pressing power of his pessimism or the buoyant, ener- gizing influence of his optimism. It matters little what the speaker avowedly profess, his unconscious philosophy, the essential substance of his character, will so color his utterances that he cannot hide it. The greater the genius the less can he withhold his true beliefs. For genius is nothing unless it is sincere. 60 THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 61 To some extent physical conditions may modify momentarily the strain of pulpit eloquence. In vigor- ous, healthy hours the speaker, from a superabundance of physical energy, may naturally take the optimist's view of life; while in hours of physical weakness, or when depressed by disappointment, he may utter the bitter, halting strains of pessimism. Men of great emotional capacity experience the extremes of joy and despair. And just because they are great and have these experiences they cannot avoid giving them ex- pression. According to Prof. Wilkinson, " every public speaker must have, consciously or unconsciously, some system of truth or theory to serve him as a sort of framework to his habitual thought." He cannot be constantly thinking out over and over again the basic principles of the life of the individual and of society. The public speaker should not become a fossil. If he is not ready to change as new light comes to him, he is dead. But he must have stability while he does hold to certain opinions. Emerson declares : " Men of character are the conscience of society to which they belong." But without a positive, helpful philosophy of life a man would be but a poor conscience to any society. Not long since a man said to me : " Think 62 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. about it." " Why," said I, " your view has nothing in- viting in it, and so I prefer to avoid thinking about it, since you do not believe in an after life and hence have nothing attractive to offer. Why, pray, do you ask me to think about it? " We are so constructed emotionally, H. Ribot in his " Psychology of the Emotions " tells us, that two emotions can strive for the mastery at one time, but the tendency is to produce contradiction in us. This could result in nothing short of pain, and pain is an evidence of death unless it results in a greater rebound of joy. Long ago the great literary dictator, Samuel Johnson, catching by intuition the truth which modern psy- chologists have so elaborately proven in the labora- tories, said : " It is worth five thousand dollars a year to have the habit of looking on the bright side of things." Joy and gladness quicken the pulse beat, adding vigor and strength to the whole man. Many are the victims of despair. It lowers the temperature, weakens the pulse, thwarts hope and stabs life to the death. Unless the speaker's ultimate aim is an uplift toward life and light he has no worthy message for humanity. The time he takes from an audience is worse than stolen; he not only robs them of time but he injects THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 63 deadly venom into their veins. No pessimist should have standing room in pulpit or upon platform. Speech, to be effective, must have a soul and that soul must be buoyant, hopeful, optimistic. Rev. John S. Macintosh, in " The White Sunlight of Potent Words," insists upon it that truth and nothing else is the es- sential of eloquence. Truth must be, then, the founda- tion in character building, the ground-plane in every painting of future conditions. Every outlook for life that has truth as its ground-plane places an ultimately triumphing, happy man in the center of the view as the center of attraction with a background made aglow by the victorious rays of goodness and perfection. Error may hang as a blinding fog, obstructing the out- ward-reaching sweep of man's prophetic eye ; sin may blacken, as the mildew or the blight, the fruit of his labors ; and death may terrorize him with its appalling threat and its fierce, fiery arrows from out of the inky west; though this only for a short time, — since the orator, who has his feet firmly planted upon the foreground, truth, his heart-string securely tied to frightened, suffering, hoping humanity, and his eye fixed upon the optimism of the rosy eastern hills, can not fail to lift and inspire any audience worth address- ing. 64 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. Religious Qualifications. — First of all qualifications from the religious point of view a public speaker should have a keen sense of God's presence. Nothing, it seems to me, will make a speaker so careful and, at the same time, so earnest as this feeling. Even de- based men will at times refrain from profanity in the presence of a minister of the Gospel. Is it perhaps because they instinctively feel themselves, too, in the near presence of God, since the minister himself feels this nearness to the Creator? It is certainly true that we can not get away from our real character, and if the speaker feels this presence of God keenly, he will be able to impart somewhat of it to his hearers. Prof. Wilkinson does not think Henry Ward Beech- er a true type of the Christian minister, since he felt so keenly the independence of the " I." This is what he says : " Mr. Beecher in the very act of deducing his definition of preaching, unconsciously illustrated the insubordinate instinct and habit of his own mind. The master idea of obedience accordingly he missed. He did not find it, because he did not bring it." Though a great pulpit orator, Mr. Beecher does not give evidence of this keen sense of God's nearness, for he exalts self too much. One would expect humility instead of pride. Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:5," We preach not our- THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 65 selves but Christ Jesus." Thus this feeling of close association will not exalt self but Christ. It will urge the speaker on to plain duty. In 1 Cor. 9: 16, Paul says : " Though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to glory ; woe is me if I preach not the Gospel, necessity is laid upon me." The preacher who feels near God will not think of preaching self or selfhood or utility or anything except the Gospel of Christ. It is thus that this one all-absorbing consciousness will give unity to every discourse, for there will then be one, all- pervading motive. Then, too, this consciousness of God's immediate presence becomes an evidence of the speaker's loyalty to truth. It serves him as a prompter to champion the cause of the good and the true. He feels as one sent. And it serves him as reward for services well per- formed. Thus ever accompanied, why should the speaker not succeed? If not thus supported by God's conscious presence, what can man accomplish? Cer- tainly nothing. In the second place, the public speaker should have an abiding faith. It is faith that will avail in times of darkness. Trust is essential to any fixed course. When men cease to trust the banks, business staggers and falls. When wife distrusts husband, or husband, 66 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. wife, the fire goes out upon the hearth and home ties break. When citizen is faithless to citizen, patriotism vanishes and nationality dies. When man loses faith in God, immortal glory fades and hollow-eyed death frightens man into despair. The speaker who lacks faith will lack firmness. In doubt there is weakness. Not long since I heard a lecturer who came far short of the hearers' expectation, and I asked his agency why they had recommended him so highly. " Why," said the Bureau, " he did give good lectures until last year when he cut loose from his church, and now he seems to be all at sea ; he has no message, everywhere he goes it is the same complaint." Nothing can permanently take the place of the faith that abides. In the third place, the speaker must have the spirit of helpfulness toward humanity. It is the helpful spirit, the spirit that awakens a responsive echo in the hearts of others. Nothing kindles into action like sympathy. Men may sneer and scold and denounce without ever inciting toward the good. Little real sympathy is ever lost upon the human heart. If you give but a cup of cold water in the spirit of helpful- ness it will return in bucketfuls to replenish the pool at the fountain. We can stand a good deal of digging around loose THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 67 teeth, a good deal of scraping and probing of hollow ones, all because we feel the dentist is doing us good. We can bare the boil to the thrust of the lance and swallow without a shiver the bitter pill, all because we know it is good for the body, and that the physician does it in the spirit of helpfulness. Let there be the least doubt about this last, even let there be the least shadow of heartlessness in his sincerity of purpose, and our bile boils over at every pill, we faint at every thrust of the surgeon's knife. So, too, with the speak- er if he would cure society of its vice and folly; he must at times use knife and pill, but it must always be in the spirit of helpfulness; no other aim can suffice. If he laughs without this ultimate aim he is worse than the buffoon. The asylum were a mild place for him who can do naught but inject the quinine of despair with no other aim than that it shall leave the mouth bitter and the heart sick. In an address to the graduates on commencement time at the National School of Elocution and Oratory in Philadelphia, Henry Ward Beecher said a speaker must have a " kindly sympathy," and five years later the Rev. John S. Macintosh, upon a similar occasion, at the same place, said by way of introduction to his lecture: " For me it is a pure, strong joy to face my 68 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. bright and stirring theme, and to front this inspiriting throng." Thus it ought to be a source of inspiration to every speaker to face his audience and to catch the gleam from glowing eyes. A speaker must get into sympathy with humanity if he would lift them by his speech; he must believe in men, too, in their pos- sibilities of good. The fraternal feeling eliminates caste and ties all men together. The speaker must know no high or low in his audience. A man is a man ; a soul, a soul ; and one in the Infinite's longing is the same as another. To be absolutely or universally sympathetic the speaker cannot discriminate for accidents of birth or environ- ment. "A man's a man for a' that." This is the Christ spirit. His teaching is comprehended in Mark 10 : 43, " But whosoever will be greatest among you let him be your minister." He is great who renders to his fellows great service. The speaker must be a servant in the true sense of ministering to the highest need of his audience. His attitude toward God must be one of abiding faith; his attitude toward man, one of sympathy, fraternity, service. Around it all the atmosphere of God's presence must hover. Personality. — By the word personality I mean to sum up all the peculiarities of a man that go to dis- THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 69 tinguish him from the mass of men with whom he as- sociates. Washington, Newton and Burns are not like other men, neither are we ourselves ; but perchance our own characteristics are not very great, and so we are not very sharply differentiated from the rest of man- kind. The oddities of Washington and Burns are go- ing to live ; will ours ? They will, providing ours are to the same degree attractive and beneficial. So won- derful was the personal address of the Great Pacifi- cator, Henry Clay, that his bitterest enemies, when brought face to face with him, changed entirely. A man becomes popular to the extent that his personality contains the power to allure and win the hearts of men. A man's name lives as a cherished remembrance to the extent that his personality is a contribution to the welfare of the race. Reputation whose foundation is in the power to allure, may dazzle; but character whose strength is in stable worth, alone, possesses the power to create sincere and lasting admiration. Then fortunate, indeed, is the speaker whose natural talent and whose conscious training fit him for giving to his hearers something of real worth, a substance solid and enduring. CHAPTER VL The Audience. Audiences Differ. — Though audiences may be di- vided into various classes, yet they all have many things in common. Some may fuse more readily than others, but when once fused, they act alike. From force of local coloring, audiences are different in mental capacity, in ideals, and in motives. A speech judged from the race-prejudice of a typical South- erner may have an opposite effect from the one judged from the elated mood of the newly-fledged, black voter. What may draw peal upon peal of laughter from a stupid, slow-witted audience may re- ceive only malicious scorn from a lofty-minded, haughty-bearing, intelligent audience. Audience Fusing. — The audience, to start with, is a vast mixture of individual minds, each hugging closely his heavy pack of preferences and preconceived opin- ions. The orator's task, first of all, is to get these various minds into a state wherein the mood shall be common, so that the audience may think and feel as one man, and then they will be able to act as one man, too. 70 THE AUDIENCE. 71 Public speaking is not conversation, since as soon as the individuals are fused we have the audience, and conversation passes into the public address. If public speaking- stoop to conversation, the audience is broken into individuals and the audience as such ceases to exist. To fuse an audience it is necessary to find a common ground ; some thought, some emotion, must dominate ; the orator becomes merely the mouthpiece; what he utters is not questioned, it is seized and mothered by every listener. Under favorable conditions everyone in the audience imagines he has himself harbored the sentiment and achieved the thought of the speaker, and if he were standing up there now in the speaker's stead he would say the same thing. The audience may assist in this process of fusing by each individual remaining in a state of passivity. Ex- pectancy must not become too decidedly positive or it may even be a hinderance to audience fusing. Audience Characteristics. — The question of the per- sonality of an audience has been somewhat scientific- ally treated by Mr. Diall in a little book entitled " The Psychology of the Aggregate Mind of an Audience." He has carefully compiled answers from a number of public speakers and finds prevalent the belief in the 72 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. existence of what he terms an " aggregate mind," or the mind of an audience. This is not the mind of the individual, but the common factors of the individual minds working in harmony under the direction of a leader, the speaker. All of us have wondered why a crowd acts differently than individual men do. Why will a man, calm and sedate, do that, when in a crowd, which he would not do if alone? The answer is, that while in the crowd he has allowed his mind to fuse with his fellows' and the common mind is his own for the time being. He vociferously assents to the sug- gestions of the speaker. The eloquent orator has all of his hearers spellbound, by which we mean that they submit to his way of thinking — to his suggestions, his will is theirs. Mr. Diall's set definition of this mind of an audience is as follows : " An aggregate mind is a mental phenomenon developed when a group of in- dividual minds is experiencing the same train of men- tal states in unison, brought about by the suggestion of a leader or speaker." Without the leader or speaker there could be no union of individual minds. If this union of mind is not had, the speaker will find his work useless. The first effort of the speaker must then be to fuse the individual minds in his audience. Speakers in general agree that the instincts wield a THE AUDIENCE. 73 powerful influence over the fused mind of an audi- ence. The instincts generally found are: imitation, emulation, sympathy, fear, acquisitiveness, play, cu- riosity, sociability, shyness, shame, secretiveness, and love. To be able to move an audience demands that the orator can skillfully play upon these instincts. For when minds act in unison some of these instincts will likely dominate. The noted lecturer, Mr. Wend- ling, believes " The instincts form an important basis for an oration and are a large element in an aggre- gate mind — an element the speaker must not over- look." Closely related to the instincts, and by some psy- chologists believed to grow out of them, are the emo- tions. These, too, form a powerful factor in the ag- gregate mind. Mr. James Hedley, a lecturer of con- siderable note, declares " The emotions play a large part — a dangerously large part — in an aggregate mind." Mr. Leland Powers asserts the same when he says: "The emotions are one of the chief character- istics of the aggregate mind." Since it is incumbent upon the speaker to suggest the train of mind activity for the audience, it becomes necessary that he have emotional power, as previously shown, and also that 74 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. he know how to make it effective in guiding the fused mind along emotional paths. After the instincts and emotions in the common mind is found imagination. The imagination of the child is very active. The language of men in the early stages of civilization is filled with imaginative expres- sions. The concrete is nearer the early, untutored mind than the abstract is. So we can readily see why this should be counted as one of the elements of the mind of an audience. A host of experienced public speakers might be quoted here to sustain this line of thought, but I give only one quotation and it is from Mr. Diall's book mentioned above. " The imagina- tions," says Mr. Hedley, " play a very large part in the aggregate mind. When aroused, the imagination fancies things are better than they really are. When pleased, it exaggerates to the advantage of the speak- er." An audience does not reason much. Burk's master- ful argument on " Conciliation with America " drove nearly all of the members out of the House of Com- mons. Rufus Choate thinks " no thought too deep or subtle to give to an audience if it is given in the proper way. But it must be given in anecdote, telling illustra- tion, stinging epithet, or sparkling truism, and never THE AUDIENCE. 75 in a logical, abstract shape." In audiences reasoning is at a low ebb. Men reason when alone. The great speeches of the time have moved hearers to action. Demosthenes succeeded in rousing the Greeks against Philip of Macedonia, Cicero the senate against Catiline, and Savanorola induced men and women to denounce sin. American statesmen have not striven in vain, for the greatness of our country points unmistakably to the potency of her orators. Yet most generally the volitional element is small in the aggre- gate mind. The act of the will is individual, not very often is it very active in a fused audience. The ul- timate aim of oratory is action of the individual will, unless it be to precipitate action of the entire audience in which the laws of the mob apply. Public speakers do not all think of their audiences un- der the same images. An audience has been compared to a woman, a creature half woman and half tiger, and to a huge pink face that smiles, frowns, weeps and quivers. Mr. Leland Powers very definitely sets forth the characteristics of the aggregate mind of an audi- ence as follows : " The common characteristics of the aggregate mind are youthfulness, credulity, optimism, love of justice and fair play, belief in ideals, such ele- ments and qualities which are dominant in the healthy 76 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. youth of sixteen or twenty years of age." An audi- ence never grows old. The aggregate mind, according to such men as Ice- land Powers, James Hedley, C. C. McCabe and Emory Haynes, is less discriminating, less intellectual but more idealistic than the individual mind. And the larger the audience the lower the plane of the audi- ence mind, and the easier the chance for success to the orator. This is the reason, doubtless, why public speakers prefer to speak to crowded houses. Men who in everyday life are able to throw off a thousand suggestions frequently cannot throw off the sugges- tions of the orator when the audience is large and well fused. The Speaker's Responsibility. — It takes time to fuse an audience. It takes tact on the part of the speaker, too. But when once fused the responsibility of the speaker becomes very great, indeed. He can then mould as he likes. Upon his conscience will rest the results. If led astray, the speaker must be censured. That the mob should rush off to destroy the homes of Brutus and Cassius and rouse Rome with their out- rages none but Antony need answer for, he alone is responsible. A leader may be zealous beyond legit- imate bounds and thus disgrace, not only himself, but THE AUDIENCE. 77 his audience as well. On the other hand the oppor- tunity offered the speaker for good can scarcely be es- timated. If he can influence for evil he can also in- fluence for good if he so desire. Hence from the speaker's responsibility in the public address, it is in- cumbent upon him that he study his audience so as to fuse it as quickly as possible and then when fused to give it the proper suggestions, to lead it, like a general might a strong, united army, to the attack of vice and sin. Like fabled iEolus who held in his mountain cave all winds, loosing them as he saw fit, so the orator from the pent-up passions of the fused audience can let loose the death-dealing cyclone of mob violence or the gentle breeze of kindly sympathy. Let the orator be sure his influence is for good. A Visible Factor. — An audience is a visible factor in spoken discourse. A writer or an editor never has a chance to see his audience, it is always invisible, so it can wield only an imaginative part in the actual composition of the essay, poem, or book. Not so with the speaker. His last audience and the struggle he had to master it, or the new light it threw upon his theme, are all vividly recalled even while he prepares for his next address. And then when the moment really 78 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. comes, and he opens his mouth and gives his message, he watches every mood closely, changing here and there for better effect not only the subject matter but also his manner of delivery. With his audience right before him, instant adaptation to the audience may take place. Such adaptation, however, is un- known to the author or editor. Once a year the edi- tor does, indeed, feel the pulse of his readers by dun- ning them for renewals to his paper, but even this pulse-timing is wholly unsatisfactory, because the time elapsing from the publication of his work until he gets results from his readers is so long that he can profit little by it. The orator has the advantage of witness- ing the effect of his thought and of knowing immedi- ately the result of his effort. Though he may have made a mistake in the first part of his address, it may even yet, when he is half through his speech, be largely retrieved if he can tactfully win his audience and rule them even for a short time. An audience will be slow to censure the speaker who has had an iron heel upon their throats. They will not soon rebel against the orator who has held them spellbound beneath the mag- ic wand of his eloquence, even though the reign may have been for a short time only. THE AUDIENCE. 79 Winning the Ears of the Audience. — Where an audience is hostile to the message of the speaker there is evident need of the speaker's adjustment to his environment. First of all he must, some way or other, create a mutual ground of sympathy, or he can ac- complish nothing. Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher were masters in the art of winning hostile audiences. Dr. A. A. Willits in Talent, June, 1904, tells us, in reminiscent mood, some of his experiences in this most difficult of tasks. Some apt story of lo- cal coloring frequently helped the orator to get hold of his audiences at the beginning. If the speaker can only get the loan of the ears of his hearers to start with, he may easily end by possessing their hearts. If he does not, he will die penniless, sure. Mr. Sheppard says, " An audience is as testy as an individual. Never rub the face of an audience the wrong way, unless, indeed, you have a cause to argue with it, or an appeal to make for an unpopular cause. ,, The selection of such material as by its very local nature must interest the particular audience was very noticeable in Mr. Beecher's speeches delivered in Eng- land during the Civil War. At Manchester he dis- cussed the effects of slavery on manufacturing in- terests; in Edinburg, a literary center, he spoke up- 80 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. on the history and philosophy of slavery. The ref- erence to local events or local interests, when it can be done, aids in interesting an audience. It is fre- quently the only means by which a speaker can readily and effectively fuse his audience; because it is the only thing upon which the minds of the audience un- reservedly agree, and by such an adroit local reference the speaker is able to throw them out of their set mood of opposition, or their critical attitude toward him. Before his local hit or trite saying or apt story the orator can feel the icy, critical temperature of the hearers ; after the hit their hearts beat normal ; a rosy flush on the face tells him he has won — he has their ears and now he may win their hearts. The Audience Responsive. — Mr. Bok, the editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, thinks an audience can help or hinder a speaker to the best presentation of his theme. He says: "A speaker may. come upon the platform with the very best of intention in the world to interest his audience, and if that audience is cold as a block of ice, it naturally has its effect upon him." Unless the audience respond to the efforts of the speaker, the result is bound to be unsatisfactory to both speaker and audience. Indeed, there is no good reason why a speaker should be expected to do all THE AUDIENCE. 81 of the work. Giving up energy to make a success of a discourse should be shared by the audience. Mr. Sheppard tells us that English audiences do this more generally than American audiences do. The former seem to feel somewhat more the burden of making a success of the meeting. Not only, therefore, does the orator act upon the audience, but he is in turn acted upon by it. The response of the audience is invariably met with great- er efforts on the part of the speaker, and thus ef- fects are secured which could not otherwise be had. As long as the audience sullenly holds itself aloof, re- fusing attention and sympathy, so long will the orator be baffled — they will never know him at his best. When the audience gives sympathy, understanding, and vital outreach, then the speaker can accomplish something. The message will then be worth much to both audience and speaker. You must not imagine that the speaker gets no more out of a good discourse than he does out of a poor one — he does, much more. It is this outreach of the audience that makes a speak- er outdo his former efforts. Miss Ida Benfy Judd in Talent, June, 1904, says: " In March of this year one evening I had an audience of trained minds and of experienced men and women 82 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. and I learned so much as I stood before them that it will take me weeks to embody for other audiences all the suggestions that this one gave me. I mean that this audience was so vital, so suggestive and so well fused that as I spoke the lines to them, great flashes of meaning came to me, meaning so much deeper and richer and bigger than I had ever felt in the same lines before, that for several days after the performance I was like one born in a new world." Only under the encouraging eyes of a pleased audience can an orator give expression to the noblest thoughts, only then can he have his sublimest conceptions, then of all times does his poetic eye behold scenes never painted on canvas, and his soul swells with aspirations known only to eloquence. The Best Listener. — Who is the best listener in the audience ? Is it the man with a stoop in his shoulders, a clear, steel-gray, all-seeing eye, an ear as sharp as a cat's, who always carries his pencils and note- books with him and who is always so anxious to take down what you say ? I think not, for he is too eager, he is too busy with his notes, too anxious to have you say something, his very eagerness makes one nervous. " The trained mind alone," says Miss Judd, " can not make the ideal audience ; it is the trained and ex- THE AUDIENCE. 83 perienced mind that we long for, but if we can have but one quality then the experienced mind is more desirable than even intellectual perception only." It is very difficult to talk to an audience of children be- cause their experience is so meager; there is so little they appreciate, and the little knowledge they do possess is so often not common to the whole class or audience of them you are addressing. The normal, wholesome, all-around, open-minded person makes the best listener. To help the speak- er one must not listen to criticise. If one is busy intellectually one cannot fuse in mind with his fel- lows. An audience of newspaper reporters, all tak- ing the speech would be a sorry audience for an ora- tor to address. Imagine a speaker eloquent with such hearers ! The hearer must be normal, for if he be abnormal his fellows must have the identical ailment or he can not fuse with them. The general, healthy human is optimistic, and unless the listener be such he detracts from possible audience effects. The greater the experience of the listener the easier it is for the speaker to reach a sympathetic chord in him. And if he is not open-minded he will not yield himself to the suggestions of the speaker. Benjamin Franklin tells us how he once went to hear the great preacher, 84 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. Whitefield, plead for contributions to some charitable institution, and though he had gone with the de- termination to give nothing whatever, he ended by emptying his pockets into the contribution box when it was passed. There was something about Franklin that made him a good listener in spite of himself. What was it? He was open-minded, wholesome; and an all-around man. CHAPTER VII. The Discourse. Unity in Discourse. — About the first thing a speak- er has to learn is to maintain the unity of his dis- course. At first it may seem a hard demand to make upon a speaker that all he says shall be upon one definite subject; but it is, nevertheless, a reasonable demand; for only thus can his hearers secure the desired benefit from his discourse. Unity demands that the purpose of the speaker be single and vivid, and that the discourse be organic. In fact, without a single, vivid purpose of the author, as revealed in his discourse, there could scarcely be said to be wholeness or completeness of treatment, which the term organic necessarily demands. If the speaker has a single purpose, he will be spared many temptations to drag into his discourse extraneous matter. At a glance he will see that what he is strongly inclined to say is, in fact, foreign to his subject; and that its introduction would mar the unity of his discourse. As with the marksman, the smaller the mark, the more accurate the aim ; so with 85 86 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. the speaker, the smaller the subject, the greater the care in the selection of matter. But this is in it- self a decided advantage to the speaker as well as to the audience. For singleness of aim will give the speaker the opportunity of mastering some one line of thought, and when he has once mastered it, he will then be as good as the best in that particular field. When once he has mastered one thing, however small it may be, he has reached the point where he can choose his material independently, selecting that only which best serves his purpose. The work of a speaker relative to his subject is rather, to speak by illustration, to be compared to the man who grubs than the man who blazes. The latter knocks the bark off of a tree here and there, never looking whether or not the tree is large or small ; the former picks out a small tree, one that he thinks about his size, and then cuts and digs until the tree is felled. From all sides the grubber attacks his tree, and every root is dug up. So the speaker who allows unity to control him, attacks his subject from all available sides, and thoroughly exhausts every source of knowledge. The discourse that shows vividness does not lack personality. The speaker knows what he wants to THE DISCOURSE. 87 accomplish, he understands how to accomplish it, and thus he becomes independent, showing his personality in originality of thought and of language forms. His work is stamped as forged in the heat of one heart and brain. It belongs to him, no one else can claim it. The unity of discourse forbids that the speaker trust much to impulse. That is too apt to lead astray. New thought is attractive. Impulse would insert it, but logic may very likely reject it, because foreign to the subject under treatment. He who allows place to matter because it is new or striking, without first relentlessly testing it by its logical relation to his theme, will soon find himself hopelessly lost in hap- hazard thinking. If a speaker can not tell why a certain thing should be said under a given topic, he had better not say it there. He may find a good place for it somewhere else. All extra matter should be cut out, at whatever the cost to impulse. To secure unity, select familiar themes and find out all you can about them before trying to speak upon them. An outline made rigidly logical will assist much, because it helps to get things close together, where likeness and difference are easily discerned. Outlining will not eliminate all wandering from the 88 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. text. Writing out and committing to memory an occasional address will also aid in securing unity. Some of our faults appear to us only after we have become very familiar with our style of writing or speaking. A rambling speaker loses much by not sticking to his text, since in sacrificing unity he loses strength- He is apt to repeat until he has so diluted his thought that it ceases to taste well. Throughout the entire discourse the speaker should be conscious of hitting his theme. To do this it is not necessary to repeat it every other sentence. Repetitions should not be indulged in unless some new thought is thus brought forward. To preach from a chapter inclines to the disconnected, rambling talk, wherein many good things may be said, but because they are not connected, they do not reinforce each other, as is the case where unity of discourse prevails. If the world showed us no order, no arrangement, we might justly conclude chaos to be the highest divinity. Much the same is true of the address wherein we can discover no system, no unity; chaos must have been the dominant prin- ciple of the mind that created it. Do not hesitate to crop your speech. Much that you think good may not pertain to your theme. Cut it out; pruning THE DISCOURSE. 89 strengthens the tree, enlarges the fruit, enriches the flavor i so it is with your public address. Finding a Theme. — The speaker must learn to se- lect the topics upon which he speaks. It is true that many occasions will necessarily place limitations upon the choice, yet at the same time ability to select must be developed if efficiency is to be reached. Christ- mas time, Easter and funeral occasions will all im- mediately limit the range of topics, but they each leave room for choice ; and not only leave room for it, but also necessitate it ; just the same as does the more general occasion, only the latter grants a larger scope from which to select. There are times when the speaker may be relieved of the duty of selecting his topic by being requested to speak upon a certain theme. If he has spoken upon the subject when the one making the request was a listener in the audience, he may consider himself justified in complying with the request, provided he deems it a fit subject for the given audience upon the indicated occasion. However, if he has never spoken upon the subject, the speaker had better care- fully consider before complying, for the request may have had motives which it would not be wise for him to gratify. I have known critics to make such re- 90 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. quests merely for purposes of criticism. I do not deem it the business of a speaker to pose for criticism ; and it is better for him to avoid occasions for it, if he can do so. A good friend of yours may tell you what to speak upon, and at times his choice may be better than your own. It is all right to get all the help you can consistently while you still hold the deciding vote in the matter. Do not let the impression get out that you have run out of subjects; that will only weaken your hold upon your audience. Somehow or other the speaker ought to feel that the subject he has must be given now, that it is just the subject for the present occasion, and if he does not give it now he can not give it later. There is something wrong somewhere when a speaker feels that his subject or his address is too good for the audi- ence. I am inclined to think the speaker has made a mistake in his selection. But the lamentable thing about it is that a speaker who feels that way once is likely to feel that same way too often, for he is, in all probability, sadly wanting in judgment in so far as selecting subjects is concerned. As a matter of fact, no subject is too good for any audience; it may not be appropriate for the occasion or for the hear- ers, because of the nature of its subject matter, but it THE DISCOURSE. 91 can not be too good nor too well delivered. It is the secret of some speakers' power that they give their best to the smallest audiences. When audiences are small the speaker must seek that spur or inspiration from his own thought which he may otherwise get from the sympathy of a large audience. It may not be amiss here to show how a theme sometimes comes to an orator. In Philadelphia the Rev. John S. Macintosh gave an address entitled " The White Sunlight of Potent Words." The fol- lowing is his introductory explanation of his theme: " This striking phrase ' The White Sunlight of Potent Words ' occurs in one of his books who himself was no mean sun in the literary world, whose words were truly, forces; I mean that freshest and most striking instance of Atavism which our English-speaking na- tion has ever studied, Carlyle's worshipful portraiture of his strong-souled, true-tongued, clean-handed, God- fearing father. As the stern father depicts so vivid- ly his sterner sire, he presents him to us as one who loved the white sunlight of exact truth and told his own clear thoughts in potent words. As I read them the terms engraved themselves upon my memory, and as I searched for my subject they flashed back with 92 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. light and furnished me with the theme desired — one not, perchance, inappropriate to this occasion." In the Prelude to the First Part of his " Vision of Sir Launfal " Lowell has touched upon this sub- ject. His lines are about the musician, however, yet they apply equally well to the orator in his choice of a theme. " Over the keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay; Then as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flashes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream." Thus, too, the orator may have his subject first but faintly suggested, it may be perchance by something he hears or reads. As time goes by his theme takes form, growing clearer and more definite, until at last it outlines itself in scope and finishes by cloth- ing itself in the various forms of amplification. A. T. Pierson in his " Divine Art of Preaching " tells how one develops a theme in the following : " You have a thought to-day; you make a record of it; you draw it out somewhat in a memorandum and lay it aside. A month hence you take up your memoranda, and you find that the thought you had has unconscious- THE DISCOURSE. 93 ly matured. You have been incubating your own conception and it is growing toward completeness." To give your theme a chance to mature, it should be selected as early as possible. Meditation upon a sub- ject from time to time will give better results than a single period of study, for when the subject is re- called it is each time considered from a new view point; and just as a dwelling place appears different when viewed from different points of the compass, so a theme takes different forms in the mind as it is viewed from various angles. In the selection of themes for sermons I believe no method more fruitful than the reading of scripture. As you read, themes come to you. The same is true to some extent in reading good literature. In looking over a list of subjects or themes one can often fix upon what suits. In all your reading and study have your eyes open for themes, and as they come to you write them down and file them away. They will serve your purpose sometime later. Do not imagine they must all be used at once or they are useless. Then, too, do not imagine that once using exhausts a theme for all time. The same subject worked over and given to another audience will do you good, and it may possibly be the best message you could bring to that 94 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. audience at that time. So, whether your theme be new or old to you, see to it that you decide what the theme shall be as soon as you can do so. Discourse as Sermon. — The sermon is only one of the many forms into which spoken discourse is cast. So varied are the interests of our age that no one form of public discourse could satisfy our demands. The lawyer makes his plea for justice, the statesman for better government, the social reformer for cleaner morals, the educator for better methods of instruc- tion, the popular lecturer talks to entertain and in- struct, the preacher preaches Christ and we call his address a sermon. What is its theme? What is its character ? What are its limitations ? Dr. A. A. Wil- lits says : " He does a good work who contributes to the pure and innocent recreations of men. He does a better work, no doubt, who aids their intellectual development. But he does the grandest work for humanity who imparts moral ideas, ideas that awaken gratitude, contentment, cheerfulness, kindness, and beneficence ; thoughts that move to generous and noble deeds, that kindle loftier aspiration in the soul and that lead to higher walks in life." But Dr. Willits had the popular lecturer in mind when he wrote this, he was not thinking of preaching. THE DISCOURSE. 95 It is readily seen that the sermon must necessarily be modified by the conception of its aim or purpose. What is the preaching for? Henry Ward Beecher held up the ideal of " reconstructed manhood " as the ultimate object of preaching, and he used all the generous sentiment of human nature as appeal. A. T. Pierson looked upon preaching as a " divine art," and for that reason as " the finest of the fine arts." Dr. Phelps says a sermon is on " religious truth as con- tained in the Christian Scriptures." When Jesus was on earth he preached, Mark tells us, " the gospel of the kingdom of God." Mark 1 : 14. At another time Christ himself said : " Repent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matt. 4: 17. When he entered into the synagogue in his own home town upon his return from the temptation and the book of the prophet Esaias was given to him he turned to the sixty-first chapter and read : " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken- hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and re- covering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Then he closed the book, handed it to the 96 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. minister, sat down and said : " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." St. Luke (24: 47) says it was meet that Christ should suffer and rise from the dead in order that " repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations." Peter in his great Pentecostal sermon preached Christ as Lord and Savior. The theme of his preaching is found in Acts 4 : 12, " Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Paul when in Pisidia upon invitation stood up in the Jews' synagogue and after a terse, historical introduction preached Christ unto them, " the forgiveness of sins." Acts 13: 38. To the Romans (10: 8) he speaks of preach- ing the " word of faith." In 1 Cor. 1 : 22-23 he says : " For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified." No one can be a Christian minister and not preach Christ as Lord. No one can leave out any of the Christian doctrines or virtues and do his duty as an ambassador of the lowly Nazarene. Everything men- tioned above he must preach, and much must he preach that we can not take time here to enumerate. Preach- ing is a means whereby the life of Christ is to be THE DISCOURSE. 97 realized in the lives of men. Through preaching, men are to be Christed. The sermon is the oral dis- course by which this is to be realized. Christ should be accepted by all, so the sermon must appeal to all; it must be popular in the sense that it appeals to all classes. A sermon may be called an address to the popular mind. It was said of the Great Teacher that the common people heard him gladly. The truly great preachers are those whom the common man readily understands. This places the requirement upon the sermon that it be within easy reach of the masses. An old negro complained that their minister put the fodder up too high. Too many preachers do the same thing, I fear, not realizing that the sermon belongs also to the less learned, though no less virtu- ous, as well as to the cultured. The sermon gets its motive power from the purpose of the speaker. In proportion as his aim is noble and ideal will his efforts be of lasting benefit. For immediate effect it may not be so productive as the motive which panders to the prejudices and material desires of the hearers. Material gain or the success of party frequently conduces to effective emotion when noble appeals might fail ; however, the resultant action is not so likely to be ennobling. The preacher 98 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. must have the salvation of his hearers at heart if his sermon is to breathe the vital saving power of Christ so that it becomes an irresistible force moving his hearers to an acceptance of the Christ life. Nei- ther will this be a mere emanation of the speaker, for in the selection of his words, in the casting of his sentences, and in the rhythmic flow of his phrases, will there be present this same power; it will be a perma- nent element of his sermon, whether written or spoken. The soul of the author breathes forever through his printed page. The sermon is the chalice in which the minister offers freely his soul's best blood to all who sit at his feet. Dr. Storrs says a good sermon should paint, prove, and persuade. But Rev. T. A. Waltrip thinks that " paint " now means to interest, " prove," to instruct, and " persuade," to inspire. These are, indeed, some of the requirements of a sermon, though they are by no means the only ones. Without interest, the peda- gogue is forever telling us, we can have no concentra- tion of mind, no intellectual development. The paint- ing secures interest invariably. If there were more painting and less dry statement of principles and laws there would be more spiritual growth in our church members and fewer sleepy heads in our pews. If all THE DISCOURSE. 99 are interested it is a pleasant task to instruct. Much of the procrastination of the unsaved, much of the negligence of the professors of Christianity would be removed if the proper teaching were given. Ideals inspire as nothing else can. A sermon is not com- plete unless it lift heavenward with a buoyancy akin to angel wings. Were it not for revealed religion we would have no preaching. A sermon, then, is upon religious truth as contained in the Christian Scriptures. Preaching is one of the great means by which the Christian church perpetuates itself as well as enlarges its bor- ders. The sermon must find its grounding in some " thus saith the Lord." It is not the business of the preacher to discuss science or literature or art, un- less it be in so far as such discussion gives amplifi- cation to the gospel theme. A pastor is not preaching when he is discussing the latest novel or the oldest poem. He is then lecturing, which is all right in its place, but it has no place in the pastor's ministrations from the pulpit. The great reforms in the Christian church have been led by preachers who stood first and always for more of the Bible and less of creed, more of spirit and less of form. Huss, Wickliff, Luth- er, and the Puritan Fathers all stood for a free Bible uora 100 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. and a free pulpit. They were preachers who based their sermons upon the Bible. The sermon must reach real wants. Disputed points in theology or in church government; theories of the resurrection; of the millennium, and of the state of the dead, may all be of interest and may have their places, but what the ordinary man needs at all times is truth that reaches his case, that relieves an op- pressive want. Give that to him and he will thank you for it. To him that is athirst give water, to him that hungers give bread ; water and bread — these reach the pressing needs of man. A text makes an excellent basis for a sermon. It helps to hold the sermon together and give it unity. The inspired words of the greatest teachers are best. The words of Christ have more weight than the words of others, and naturally have our preference. The words of uninspired characters are not so forceful, though they, too, at times point lessons. Oft-used texts are not to be avoided simply because they have been used a great deal. Much rubbing only polishes a true diamond. Texts that are clear and that touch great fundamental truths are the ones to select. A whole sentence will often serve better than a part of a sentence. THE DISCOURSE. 101 There are many standpoints from which we may classify sermons. They may be looked at from the point of delivery in which we have: (1) those deliv- ered from manuscript, (2) those delivered from memo- ry, (3) those delivered extemporaneously. From considering the occasion, we have occasional and ordinary; from the subjects used, we have (1) doctrin- al, (2) practical, (3) historical, and (4) philosophical. If we look at the needs of the audience we may preach sermons to Christians, to sinners, to parents, to chil- dren, to the aged, to clergymen, to merchants, and so on. When based upon the power of mind most strongly appealed to we have sermons directed to the imagination, to the feelings, to the understanding, to the will. While if the text be considered we have topical, textual, expository, and inferential sermons. These classifications are not all rhetorical, and hence overlap a great deal. A sermon might at the same time belong to several of the above divisions. Yet every sermon has as its ultimate purpose the moving of the will. The above classifications may suggest the subject matter or the tone, but they are not in- tended as a logical classification. A sermon may be: (1) Explanatory — to make truth clear to the under- standing, so that it may be fully understood ; (2) II- 102 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. lustrative — to make truth bright or lustrous, that it may be attractive; (3) Argumentative — to prove to the reason, that truth may be admitted; (4) Per- suasive — to urge to immediate action, that the truth may be accepted. When a sermon is analyzed it is found to consist of the following parts: (1) Introduction, (2) The Proposition, (3) The Proof, (4) The Conclusion. These are the logical parts of an oration as required by Aristotle, however few sermons have all of them. Rev. Phelps gives as divisions of the sermon: (1) Text, (2) Explanation, (3) Introduction, (4) Propo- sition, (5) Division, (6) Development, (7) Conclu- sion. One readily sees that few sermons conform to this outline. Length of the Sermon. — It is no easy task to de- termine whether a given discourse is too long or not. It depends so much upon the speaker and the audi- ence, to say nothing about the occasion, that no defi- nite time limit can be stated. The size of the sub- ject, too, has something to contribute in a legitimate determination of the length of a certain discourse. Briefly stated, then, we have two very prominent fac- tors, each of which has a good right to be considered in any satisfactory settlement of this mooted question. THE DISCOURSE. 103 The speaker, since it is he who must deliver the discourse, is the first to be considered. He is sup- posed to know what his subject includes, and hence to know the scope of treatment necessary for the best results. He is expected to give unity to his discourse and can hardly be asked to chop off his discourse at a point where the effect of completeness would be lost entirely. If, to start with, he has overestimated the capacity of his audience and has outlined his subject too elaborately, he has made a serious mistake, one which, if he be wise, he will not make again with the same audience. For though it is in reality a compli- ment paid an audience to overestimate its capacity, yet so few audiences take it that way, that the much safer course is never to trust to that kind of compli- ment. But, granting that the speaker has made the mistake of overestimating the capacity and endurance of his audience, he still has the right to ask what shall be done. Shall he continue and weary his audi- ence, or shall he stop short and spoil a good discourse ? It depends largely upon the speaker what his first impulse will be, for if he be a man extremely sensi- tive to the presence and attitude of his audience, de- pending largely upon the manifest interest and at- tention of his hearers, his first impulse will unavoid- 104 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. ably be to stop at once, while, on the other hand, if he be a man capable of intense concentration, one over whom thought wields a dominant influence, his im- pulse upon noticing weariness in his audience, if he notices it at all, will be to continue his discourse, trust- ing to the unity of his thought to win approval. The audience may very generally criticise him and com- plain of his wearying them, but the intellectually strong, those who have the sense of beauty aroused, those who have a feeling of completeness, will ap- prove of the speaker's courage. They will under- stand how the speaker was carried away by the force of his own thought and his sense of unity into a sin against the audience, so that he might give symmetry to the subject he had undertaken to treat, and they will tell him they could have listened another hour. All compliments couched in similar words, how- ever, should not fully convince the speaker that he was wholly beyond just censure in the course he pursued, for such compliments -may have been given out of pity or prejudice, and to them he cannot fully trust. He himself, too, may have been actuated more by egoism than inspiration. He may have imagined it heaping honor to himself to outwind some other speaker, or he may have imagined others would measure his intel- THE DISCOURSE. 105 lectual calibre by the length of his discourse. These are all false ideas, and the sooner a speaker can get rid of them the better for him. Only a genuine in- terest, only an overflowing of personal knowledge and experience, only a burning sense of incompleteness, if he stops, will justify any speaker in continuing his discourse after the audience shows weariness. For the speaker who comes under the first class, there is no alternative; his sensitiveness, his absolute dependence upon the sympathy of his audience, makes it imperative that he stop as soon as his audience tire in the least. His studied effort must ever be to avoid an expression of weariness on the part of his audience, for in that lies certainly the most potent factor of success for him as a public speaker. He can by no means cope as effectively with wearied audi- ences as can his brother speaker of the second class. Our conclusion, then, from the standpoint of the speaker, is, that what might be too long for one speak- er is not too long for another, and that this fact is due not to the speaker's ability alone, as is usually said, but more particularly due to the constitutional habit of his mind. Considered from the standpoint of the audience, the length of discourse cannot be wholly determined 106 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. by the intellectual plane of the individual hearers, because it is a likeness of interests rather than a same- ness of intellectuality that determines the readiness of audience fusing. And a fusing of individual minds is necessary for audience attention, without which public discourse in its true sense cannot exist. The less frequently individuals mingle and exchange views or hear the same thing in public discourses, the fewer ideas they have in common, and so the lower must necessarily be the plane of audience fusing. The length of discourse suited to a given audience will be determined by the number of ideas held in com- mon by the individuals composing the audience. Here nothing counts so definitely as the social and relig- ious life. If an audience be composed of fifty farmers and fifty city doctors of medicine, the speaker who ad- dresses them will experience some difficulty, not be- cause of ignorance, but because of diversity of ideas. For either fifty, if addressed alone, a longer discourse might be outlined, since the ideas common to all are more numerous, thus giving the speaker a larger field from which to draw in sustaining interest. Now it is wholly wrong to imagine that the speaker is invari- ably to blame for a failure to hold interestingly his THE DISCOURSE. 107 audience. The very diversity of interests and of ideas makes it impossible for the speaker to hold them throughout. For illustration, take the great dailies published in our large cities. There is the page of political news, of society gossip, of sporting news, of market prices, of wit and humor, and of sermon and song, in some page of which the editor feels con- fident each person will find something to suit his taste, and he is not mistaken, for each reader greedily de- vours the special dish prepared for him and then throws away the remainder, lest by tasting he spoil the flavor of his own dish. The great daily is read by many people, but it is not read throughout by any. No one bores himself with the pages he has no interest in, and he does not need to do so, because the news- paper has no unity as a whole. It is different with a public discourse, it must have unity and it must be listened to from beginning to end by every one. If it does not interest everyone throughout, it ceases to be public discourse and becomes conversation, inas- much as the audience as such are no longer fused. The same result ensues which would be experienced if every one taking a daily were compelled t© read it through. Out of the twenty pages each reader would be wearily dragged over nineteen, only really interested 108 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. in one. So, to some extent, is the experience of the speaker who tries to hunt up some bit of speech for each one in his audience. While he is giving his mo- mentary pet his proper tidbit, all others wearily sleep, waking up just in time to take their turn in smack- ing their lips over their own sweet morsel. The de- cline of oratory ushered in by the vociferous clamor for shorter speeches is indicative of a lamentable es- trangement of individuals in interest and in thought. The multitudinous lines of modern activity and the intense specialization of the day make long discourse next to impossible, but a church-going, Bible-reading and Bible-loving community tires least quickly when a lengthy Bible discourse is imposed upon it. CHAPTER VIII. Language and Thought in Discourse. Belong Together. — Thought and language are complementary, each essential to the other. As the kernel in the nut is not possible without the hull, so thought must be grown in language forms. Even as the size and form of the kernel is determined by the hull, so, too, the limitations of language place immov- able restrictions upon thought. A rare, large gem appears to best advantage when placed in a setting that is befitting its worth. No one would think of couching a priceless stone in a mean, copper setting. The size and color of the gem will determine, with the jeweler, the character of the setting. No less impor- tant is the correspondence of language and thought, for the sublimest thought gains much complementary luster and beauty of symmetry by being conveyed in the sublimest language forms. It is not alone the beauty of idea, but equally also the beauty of word that finds the aesthetic in the poet's reader. Were his airy fancies ever so gossamer-like in their delicacy they would add no mite to poetic beauty if not clothed in seemly garments of the most gauzy texture. 109 110 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. The painter and photographer dare not ignore the background to painting or photograph; the poet and orator must both alike study language effects. Oral or Written — Which? — One of the first ques- tions the speaker must decide is whether his dis- course shall be written or not. If he decides to write it, there still remains the question of committing it to memory. An extemporaneous speech is different from a ful- ly prepared and written onfe. I do not mean to say that any one can speak without preparation, but some speakers do not entirely cast their sentences until up- on their feet in delivery. Not a few, indeed, have excellent memories and repeat more from memory than at first they think. Wordsworth at the age of seventy-three tells of the composition of his well-known poem, " Tintern Abbey," in the following words : " No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I be- gan it upon leaving Tintern after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol." It is likely true that even the minutest parts of our discourse are LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. Ill worked out in mind and held in memory, coming to us in delivery, not spontaneously as we imagine, but rather from previously trodden brain paths. Often we catch ourselves claiming another's very words as original with our own thought. Elder A. C. Wieand once told me of how he wrote a pretty little poem be- lieving it wholly his own for some time, until he chanced upon it in Shakespeare, and to his astonish- ment found his own imagined authorship slink aside and bow ceremoniously to the more lowly personality, memory. Men who pride themselves upon their extemporan- eous speaking would be surprised, if their speeches were all taken down, to find how meager their really spontaneous genius is, and how much they repeat, and how much they unconsciously declaim. Not many years ago I chanced to be in a home where the husband made no profession of Christianity; however, his wife did. He lived close to a churchhouse and when chided by someone in the company for his negligence in at- tending services he said, " Well, when I do go I in- variably hear the same sermon." Now, indeed, there was more truth than fiction in that statement, for the ministers in that church had always practiced ex- temporaneous speaking, had learned from the elder 112 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. many set phrases and an unvarying line of sermon material, all of which made the constant repetition unavoidable. So, whether a man writes and commits his sermons, or speaks extemporaneously, his memory must assist him. Still, the diction of spoken discourse will not demand as large a vocabulary as that of written dis- course, and, in the main, the words will be easier, and also not quite so accurate. The speakers vo- cabulary, though not as large as the writer's must be at a readier command ; for the speaker can not wait on words. They must crowd one another, anxiously waiting use. The speaker will use fewer synonymous terms, thus failing to draw the nice distinctions pos- sible with a more varied vocabulary. The sentences of spoken discourse are shorter and clearer than those of written discourse. The hearer can not turn back to catch up the thought, if, per- chance, he misses it, as the reader can, and so the speaker, striving to hold his hearer's attention, simpli- fies and shortens his sentences. Thus American prose has gained much in directness and simplicity through her public speakers. Spoken discourse must be immediately lucid ; gram- mar and emphasis must aid here. Not that certain LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 113 words must be spoken with greater force than others, but important words must be given important places in the sentence, and point, antithesis and epigram used to advantage. The speaker will always find some in his audience who cannot follow him. For these he must repeat. He must cast sentences into similar structure to bring out by parallelism and balance the important ideas with the least possible expenditure of mental energy on the part of the hearer. Many sentences will be exclamatory and interrogative to ar- rest attention and enforce thought. The stiff state- liness of dignified prose or lofty poetry must be dis- carded for the abrupter, more irregular and more con- tracted forms of speech. The speaker's language is sturdier, more limpid, more buoyant, and nearer the earth than the writer's. It may make use of provin- cialisms not admissible in print. In writing, the halt- ing, the inaccuracies, the poverty of vocabulary, the bald crudity in phrase, and the chaotic sentences of rapid speech disappear; words are examined, phrases are tried, and sentences are nicely pruned and pro- portioned before they are allowed to stand. This, too, ought to be true of spoken discourse, but at a glance one sees it can only be true if writing import 114 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. it into extemporaneous speech ; for these are virtues which come with writing. The subject matter may make a difference whether spoken or written discourse should be used. If the thought you want to express is close logically it may require writing out to get it just as it should be. Emerson said he wrote rather than spoke extempore, because he wished the hearer to be able to see, after he was through talking, just what he had said, and then he, too, wanted to be sure at all times of what he was saying. To do this he had to write it down and read it to his hearers. Ruskin in " Two Paths " says : " Do not think that I am speaking under ex- cited feeling, or in any exaggerated terms. I have written the words I use, that I may know what I say, and that you, if you choose, may see what I have written." Thus we see that when a man wants to be certain of what he says he had better commit it to writing. Business men are careful about the trans- actions they put to paper. Most any man will tell you in private conversation that which he would not care to write you in a letter. Writing tends to greater accuracy and to more polished forms of expression. In writing an oration, lecture or sermon, the impassioned mood of the speak- LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 115 er before his audience must take the place of the quiet mood of the writer in his study. Terseness, direct- ness, force, and exaggeration, due to intensity, must dominate, or the written discourse will be too much like an essay or a recitation and not like an address. In writing there is the idea of permanency which be- gets and sustains a constant mood of accuracy. Along with this goes a certain dignity and a certain formalism not found in unpremeditated speech. In brief, then, writing tends to add polish and in- trinsic literary worth to spoken discourse. It en- larges the live vocabulary, enriches the diction, and adds variety to phrase and sentence. It enables a speaker to avoid ruts in both thought and language, since he can readily see, when once he gets his dis- course upon paper, how much he repeats and how tri- fling his thought really is. Many a speaker has experi- enced the just self-criticism: "I alius hollers when I haint nuthin' to say." Emotion is allowed to take the place of thought, lung-power is substituted for brain-power. Writing is an excellent corrective here, for spoken discourse can not carry effectively the burden of thought that the written can, and one who constantly speaks extempore is in great danger of di- luting too much. 116 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that spoken discourse is the only one for the orator. It has an air of spontaneity, a directness akin to per- sonal appeal, an emotional plane known only to unpre- meditated eloquence, a sweep of rhythm in phrase and sentence, all of which it owes to its oral nature; writ- ing would diminish its possibilities in these. Dr. Phelps says : " A perfect orator would never write, he would always speak." The following clipped from the Pathfinder, 1905, gives a noted public speaker's opin- ion upon this subject: " Congressman ' Uncle Joe ' Cannon of Illinois in rising to make an off-hand talk at the Hamilton Club banquet in Chicago, said — as Mark Antony did in ' Julius Caesar ' — he was no speech-maker. And then he made a speech that captured his audience. He paid this somewhat sinister compliment to the 'finished orator ' : " ' I never wrote a speech in my life, and never but once used one that another man had written. I envy the man who can sit down in cold blood and achieve a thought, then dress it — put clothes on it, pants, coat, vest, shoes, and collar, and turn it out in full attire, as Minerva sprouted from the brain of Jupiter.' " It may easily be conceded that the extemporaneous LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 117 ideal is the true one for a public speaker to have. Yet I cannot refrain from saying that I believe pulpit eloquence in America is suffering from barrenness of thought, due in a large measure to unpremeditated speech in pulpit and upon platform. One reason why the masses will listen to a lecture and not to a ser- mon is because the lecturer makes them think and feel, the sermon lacks the force of charged thought. The lecture is the cream of the speaker's thought and work, the sermon the skimmed milk. Nothing short of thorough preparation on the part of the minister will bring hearers for his sermon. Only let the preach- er understand his message from the pulpit as he does from the platform, and his listeners will not sleep. Notes, the Outline. — A great many ministers speak from brief notes or outline. The outline is a sort of compromise between reading from a manuscript and speaking extemporaneously. What are its vir- tues? What its vices? For the speaker who has a poor memory and little time to prepare his address the outline is indispensable. Without it he could not readily avail himself of thought which comes to him in his study. The outline is all his memory needs, for it starts his mind on the proper line of thought, and being ready at expressing thought in language 118 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. forms, he does not need to write out what he wants to say. The outline enables the speaker to arrange his thought in a logical form, and then to follow the ar- rangement without chance for slips of memory. In most of our truly extemporaneous speeches we think of the best speech after we have taken our seats. The outline enables one to get some of his best thoughts in at the right place. It does away with a great deal of the haphazard talking, and cultivates a logical ar- rangement of topics, giving unity and proportion to one's speech as a whole. For the speaker who finds it difficult to secure and hold subject matter enough for a sermon of the usual length, the outline aids in giving length, and for the one who is in the habit of talking too long, it will serve as a reminder to stop when the address is fin- ished. Possibly no greater mistake is made by ex- temporaneous speakers in general than that of empha- sizing some one topic more than the length of the discourse justifies. This can be remedied by rigidly adhering to a well-proportioned outline. With the outline one can easily see the proportion of all parts and can thus avoid long introductions or long per- orations. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 119 The outline allows one to give himself up wholly to the topic immediately under treatment, which re- lieves the strain upon memory, and doubtless gives ease to public speakers of a certain type. It does not seem to me to be the ideal way, but at the same time, I know it is the only method used by many public speakers. When one has his subject well outlined he feels much like the speaker who has his discourse written out and knows it has intrinsic value in itself, even aside from the delivery ; so one-half of the burden of an extemporaneous speech is removed. Too much value should not be attached to the outline, for even with a good outline much yet depends upon clearness of mind and excellency of delivery, both of which depend somewhat upon the physical and mental con- dition of the speaker and atmospheric and audience conditions. The public discourses of no public speak- er are all of equal merit. Mental habitudes will large- ly determine whether an outline should or should not be used, for the outline is not without its disad- vantages. One detracting result of the outline is that it les- sens the responsibility upon the memory and thus weakens it, so that the outlines become more and more elaborate; a speaker finds himself tied closer and 120 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. closer to his notes; until finally his discourse is little other than a sort of running commentary on his notes. A discourse written out in full and then read would sound much better, for its sentences would be com- plete and it would likely contain some amount of emotion, at least, while the speaker who is put to his wits' end to interpret his notes is not able to get any emotion at all into his discourse. The outline destroys to some extent the ring of originality. Whatever the speaker has upon paper will be looked upon with suspicion by the hearers, it may not be original, while extemporaneous speech will be readily granted the advantage of originality. This last is of much value. The reader can never get as close to the heart of his listener as the extempo- raneous speaker can. For while there is more of polish and rhetoric in the written discourse, there is by far more heart in the spoken one. There is a marked advantage in an extensive out- line if future use be considered, since the subject matter is thus better held and more readily recalled. Very brief notes are of present value only. I think it best to outline and to commit the outline to memory for delivery. It is well to write out the sermon en- tirely, even if it is not committed, since a certain LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE 121 vocabulary benefit is derived by several thorough readings. Thought Processes. — When once the subject has been selected, the speaker proceeds to present it by using some form of thought process or embodiment. The forms of discourse are description, narration, ex- position, and argumentation. The nature of the theme chosen should determine which of these ought to be used. However, the purpose of the speaker must also be considered in any just determination of the form of embodiment, as the same theme may be de- veloped by different thought processes. If a speak- er wants to make vivid the " love of God," he pictures it in words or tells some touching story embodying it, while if he wants to make his hearers believe " that God loves man " he produces testimony and proceeds to argue the proposition. Let us examine the various forms of discourse a little. Description aims to present a picture, it appeals to the senses, it tries to portray the picturesque, it deals with persons and things. Narration, too, deals with persons and things. Under the topic " The Pow- er to Describe " I have treated in part the subject of description. But there I looked at it from the speak- er's standpoint, while here I want to look at it as a 122 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. form of discourse. A description is a photograph in words. It presents things as one sees them. A nar- ration is a moving picture. Description ordinarily leaves life out, striving to realize the static appearance of things. Narration lays more emphasis upon the action. Objects in motion, acting and reacting upon each other, is the fundamental in narration. If de- scription is a snapshot, narration is a series of snap- shots blended into continuous change. One might de- scribe a tree or a man, a house or a town, and one would have as a result, the appearance of the tree from a certain place and at a given time, while the narra- tive would give the life-growth of the tree or it would give the biography of the man. In description little things count. One should re- member in describing a house that one can not see opposite sides at the same time. Distance, too, makes things look differently. Some things visible close at hand are not visible at a distance. Yet in all good description there must be a viewpoint. If the view- point is not mentioned, it must at least be assumed. Consistency must rule, things not seen together should not be put together. In general there are two meth- ods of describing; the one describes things in the order in which they appear. If, for instance, you LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 123 are describing a room, you may take each object in the room in the order in which it appears there. The other method arranges tilings in the order of their importance or prominence, going either from the less to the least prominent or from the greater to the greatest in importance. The choice of important ob- jects will be in accordance with the character and interests of the author. What may seem important to you may not interest another. But when describing for certain effects it is necessary to choose such parts of a scene as contribute to the desired effect. Thus entirely different effects may be had from the same scene, all resting upon the nature and order of the parts in the description. If cheerful, you select the cheerful aspects of nature, if sad, the sad. In narration it is necessary to arrange the parts in the order of a climax, eliminating the unimportant ones, thus giving constancy of tone to the entire pro- duction. In narration the unifying element is time, and only those things which occur at a given time should be put together. A proper sequence of topics is easier secured in narration than in any other form of discourse. A great deal of the public speaker's time is con- sumed in explaining words, terms, and propositions. 124 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. Exposition is explanation, it is giving the content of expressions in easier terms. It is definition some- times, sometimes mere restatement or repetition. In description we give the particulars which are dif- ferent or are nonessential to the class to which the individual belongs, so as to be able to distinguish one individual from another; in exposition we give the essential content, or that which is necessary to the individual from the standpoint of the class. Exposi- tion takes the form of commentary, of instruction. Argumentation attempts the proof of a statement. It may take either the affirmative or the negative of a question, proving the truth or falsity. Its business is not to assert but to prove. So many who argue imagine that a vehement expression of their own opinion is argument. It is not. To prove a proposi- tion one must give reasons and cite precedents and ar- ray witnesses and quote authority. In proving a proposition one should bear in mind the rights of others, for they have a right to their own opinion as well as we have to ours. One should remember, too, that nine-tenths of the argumentation would be avoid- ed if those who argue fully understood the terms used. Since it has been shown that audiences do not, as a rule, follow argument well, it is necessary for the LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 125 speaker to illustrate his thought fully and not do much abstract reasoning. I do not think it best for a speaker to follow any one form of discourse exclusively. He will do better if he selects such themes as require a variety of treat- ment. Let him try all forms and change often from one form to another. This change will be good for his hearers and it will be good for him. However, it must be remembered that to attain the greatest ef- ficiency in any one form, it takes much practice in that form. By no means neglect description and narration, for without these pretty well developed little pro- ficiency in the other forms can be attained. Some of our best speakers owe their success to their skill in describing. Discourse in Parts. — A discourse is divisible into paragraphs, and in the printed or written page these are indented so as to enable the eye to readily mark them. In the spoken discourse, however, they exist, too, and should be considered as essential in it as in the written one. In spoken discourse pauses occur which mark the closing of one paragraph and the be- ginning of another. Sometimes transitional words and phrases are used. These are then followed by the statement of the topic of the paragraph. A paragraph 126 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. is made up of the group of sentences which treat a single topic of the theme. The paragraph, like the whole discourse, should be upon the topic alone, ex- cluding rigidly all irrelevant matter. Thus it main- tains its unity. The length of the paragraph will be determined by the amount of matter to be said upon the topic, usually graduated in harmony with its importance compared with the other topics of the discourse. If one's para- graphs are too short they give a very bald, outline-like appearance, because the proper amount of amplifica- tion is not given. Usually the topic is stated in a short sentence at the beginning of the paragraph, though this is not always the case, for sometimes the topic sentence is found in the center or even at the close of the paragraph. After the topic has thus been ex- pressed in the topic sentence, there may be a repetition of it in other words added for clearness and by way of explanation. The topic is then further developed or amplified by giving particulars or details, by citing specific instances or examples, by instituting compari- sons or contrasts, by stating causes or effects, by telling what the topic is not or by giving proof. Any one or any number of these in combination may be used in the paragraph. Which ones are to be used LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 127 must be determined by the speaker as limited by his theme and manner of treatment. In a descriptive paragraph put what you find associated in space ; in a narrative one put what you find occurring in a given time ; in an expository or argumentative one put only such thought as is logically related. If this is kept in mind and is carefully followed, the unity of para- graph, and of entire discourse, will be easily sustained. Too many speakers amplify by merely repeating in other words. There is a marked dearth of illustration and comparison and contrast, and as a consequence the paragraphs become monotonous in method of development, and the discourse, listened to at first with interest, ends by tiring everyone. Varied para- graph development would relieve the monotony and arouse interest. The larger, fuller paragraph is pre- ferable to the shorter more meagre one. The sentence of the public speaker is usually shorter and looser than that of the writer. Unity must be maintained, however, and sentences should readily yield their thought, always maintaining a clearness and definiteness for even the most ignorant listener. One should not always use short sentences, for though they are indispensable for the statement of topics, for pointed and concentrated thought, for exclamations 128 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. and for startling, stirring-up ideas ; yet the long sen- tence permits one to pass rapidly many particulars or details, to give sweep, volume and weight of thought, to add rhythmic effect unattainable with the short sen- tence. The orator soon finds the power of the periodic sentence that holds the hearer in suspense until the last part is given. Its secret lies in giving all of the unimportant, the subordinate, elements first and hold- ing the main, important idea until last. For those who have good memories this form of sentence has a pe- culiar fascination. Then there is the balanced sen- tence, so numerous in the Proverbs, the kind for com- parison and contrast; and the climax sentence that rises like rounds in a ladder, used in attaining supreme effects. The loose sentence is the one most generally used in ordinary conversation because of its easy flow and its ready understanding, since it gives up its thought as it proceeds. But it is not well to use one given form of sentence exclusively. A variety will produce better results. Frequently the shorter sen- tences occur at the beginning of the paragraph, while as the thought grows in volume and as details crowd in for expression, and as emotion arises, the sentences become longer, corresponding with the sweep of thought and the swell of feeling. As objects for com- LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 129 parison or contrast appear, the balanced sentence nicely adjusts the beam and weighs them, and then summing all up the climax instinct begins with the less important and gradually rises to the idea of most importance. This last will give an idea of the differ- ent kinds of sentences and how some of them are at times used. CHAPTER IX. Style in Discourse. Style has to do with the forms of discourse, it se- lects and arranges words and sentences so as to pro- duce desired effects. Before there can be much con- scious effort in style the thought must be pretty well developed, for if there is a mere statement of fact, style could scarcely be said to enter into consideration at all. In dictionaries, encyclopedias, and works of a similar nature, style is reduced to a minimum. In orations, lectures, sermons, and poetry style becomes a very important factor, nearly as much value attaching to the way a thought is put as to the thought itself. Sometimes when a speaker makes a blunder you de- plore the way he expresses his idea, rather than the fact that he should express such an idea at all. Then after a second thought you say, " Well, it was just like him to say it that way; he always just bluntlv blurts out what he thinks." Now in the expression " it was just like him " you have struck the key to the style of every speaker or writer; it is this, that the style is the man. 130 STYLE IN DISCOURSE. 131 The Style is the Man. — Critics have said that Ma- caulay in writing his history of England did not hesi- tate to stretch the truth if in so doing he could get a nicely balanced sentence. Carlyle is so abrupt, has so many inversions, and is withal so odd in his sen- tence structure that many do not like him and will not read him, and all because of his style. Browning packs his sentences so full, takes so much for granted which you are expected to read between the lines, that little pleasure can be gotten from reading his con- tracted, compacted pages for the first time. Yet his thought is good, it is his style that bars his works from the masses. If a man is a clear thinker he will put his thought in clear, logically-connected sentences. If he is intensely in earnest he will not play with weak, questionable words. If he is hesitating and halting, his sentences, too, will betray the weakness. The penetrating eye, the analytic mind, the throbbing heart, will fashion their own images upon the page as the author writes, or form themselves upon the tongue-tip as the orator speaks. In your style you can not get far from your- self, and yet style can be acquired. I know a minister who has one style for expressing his thought in the pulpit, and another very different style for his utter- 132 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. ances out of the pulpit. The former was acquired by the study of the Bible and by the reading of good lit- erature, the latter by conversing with his home as- sociates. In the pulpit his choice of words, grammar, and sentence structure are nearly faultless; while in his ordinary conversation his language is an extremely low grade of the provincial, in which is mixed plenty of slang of the milder sort. This minister has, in reality, two personalities, one for the pulpit and an- other for every day life. In the following pages I want to discuss some desirable qualities of style. Clearness. — In the discussion of qualities of style we find, almost invariably, clearness heading the list. Bryant, the poet, for fifty years editor of the Evening Post, said in speaking upon style : " It seems to me that in style we ought first, and above all things, to aim at clearness of expression. An obscure style is, of course, a bad style." Mr. Lewis in his " Principles of Success in Literature " tells us : "A reader can not be expected to be interested in ideas which are not pre- sented intelligibly to him, nor delighted by the art which does not touch him; and for the writer to im- ply that he furnishes arguments, but does not pretend to furnish brains to understand the arguments. i