THE PREACHER'S TECHNIQUE
which are almost bound to sound muffled and unnatural where bondage to the written word holds sway. The minister of the Gospel is essentially a herald of the most magnificent and moving tidings that ever broke upon the world; but how shall he make the world feel the living urgency of the message if he is perpetually fettered and shackled by the tradition of the read discourse? If you dispense with your manuscript, and preach freely from a single page of notes, your sermon may indeed lose something of artistry and literary expression; there may be gaps and broken sentences–occasionally even murdered grammar. "Brethren," cried Father Taylor, the sailor-preacher, finding himself entangled in a sentence from whose labyrinthine subordinate clauses there seemed to be no exit, "I have lost the nominative of this sentence, and things are generally mixed up, but I am bound for the Kingdom anyhow!" You may lose some polished idiom or nicely rounded phrase; you may perpetrate many an abrupt and violent anacolouthon. What matter if you do? Take courage: you are in good company. Are there no anacolouthistic sentences in the New Testament, beginning one way, ending another? In any case, what you stand to lose is more than compensated by the gain in personal grip, in directness and urgency and reality, in the immediate impact of mind upon mind and the living encounter of heart with heart. Do you remember Jeanie Deans, in The Heart of Midlothian, telling Reuben Butler of her decision to make the long journey to London and plead in person for
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