HERALDS OF GOD
magnificently impressive: but with ninety-nine men out of a hundred the risk of an abrupt descent from the sublime to the ridiculous would be prohibitive. It is a wise rule to be sparing of gesture, and to suffer no movement which is not the natural and instinctive expression of a deeply felt mood.
The fact is that this whole matter of delivery can be resolved into two precepts which are not so paradoxical as they appear: Be yourself—Forget yourself. God has given to each man his own individuality, and standardization is emphatically no part of the divine intention for your ministry. How intolerably dull it would be if every preacher had to be cut to the same pattern! You are to give free rein to your personality. "We are too formal," cried Dr. Alexander Whyte. "We have too much starch in our souls." And he went on, in his downright way: "Starch is more deadly than sin. Your soul may be saved from sin, but scarcely from starch." Henry Ward Beecher was no less outspoken: "There may be a propriety in a man's preaching that will damn half his congregation, or there may occasionally be almost an impropriety that will hurt nobody, and accompanied with the right manner will save multitudes." Do not think that personal idiosyncrasies are merely to be suppressed and levelled out. Be yourself. And do not complain if you cannot be someone else. Nothing is more preposterous or pathetic than the sedulous attempts which are sometimes made to imitate external mannerisms or ways of speech. "David played before the
186
