HOW TO GET STRONG
And you, whose interest is higher than either—whose hope is to win souls; valuable as is the pastoral side, is not one-half of your work to be in the pulpit? And, on your present plan, will you ever be a power there?
Do you think he is a power in the pulpit who, indifferent, feeble even, of body and of voice, with eyes glued to his manuscript; and his body half hid, chained and motionless, reading off that which half his hearers could have read as well or better than he—do you think this kind of thing is not crippling the power of the pulpit in our land to-day? Aptly does one writer ask: "Who has not heard a minister whose sermons were packed with facts; whose style was elegance itself; whose logic was without flaw—and yet who went to sleep"? Who knew better than Spurgeon, or had better chance to know, when he said he thought it "less a crime to cause momentary laughter than a half-hour slumber"? Or than Beecher, when he said, "Nothing is more eloquent than the full form of an earnest man!" All over our land to-day is it not the rule that, at the evening service on Sunday, the churches are not a quarter full? In any other field of instruction, benefit, or entertainment, would you call such an attendance a success,—or not? And are you likely to cure it by following the same stiff, formal course which has made it, for every one else, a failure?
Is this the kind of speaking which accomplishes anything in any other field? Try it once before a jury and see. You will not have a chance to again—at least for that client. Try it before a popular assembly on election-eve; when the people's blood is up and party strife is at boiling-point; and just wait a few minutes till your rival or your adversary has his innings; and see how he will retire you. If a man trying to sell you a carpet
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