Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 14

In this busy age, the world wants thoughts packed into small compa.s.s.

The average audience wants a preacher to put his best thoughts into a thirty-minute package. The day was, when people would sit on backless board benches and listen to a sermon of two hours; now they won't swing in a hammock and endure one of more than fifty minutes.

Rev. Dr. Dewey, of Brooklyn, New York, tells of a minister who was given to reading his sermons. On one occasion when he had read about twenty minutes, he halted and said: "I have a young dog at my house that is given to chewing paper. I find he has mutilated my ma.n.u.script, which is my excuse for this short sermon." A visiting lady after service said: "Doctor, have you any more of the breed of that dog? I would like to get one for our pastor."

In this age of crowded moments concentration means executation; energy means success. If you can't put fire into your sermon, put your sermon in the fire.

A few years ago when in New York City, I went to see Madame Bernhardt in her famous play, Joan of Arc. She spoke in French, an unknown tongue to me; but when she came to her defense before the court, I realized as never before the power of speech and action. She had given one-fourth of that marvelous appeal, when the great audience arose and began to cheer. Madame Bernhardt folded her arms, bowed her head and waited for silence.

When order was restored she sprang a step forward. It seemed to me every feature of her face, every finger on her hands, every gleam of eye and movement of body was an appeal to the stern tribunal. In the trembling, murmuring voice that ran like a strain of sad, sweet music through sunless gorges of grief, the great audience read her plea for mercy and wept. Some who could not restrain their emotion sobbed aloud.

When from the depths of solemn sound that same voice arose like the swell of a silver trumpet, and in clarion tones demanded justice, cheer after cheer testified to the power of the orator actress. Never was there a sob of the sea more mournful, than the voice of Sarah Bernhardt as she played upon the harp strings of pity; and never did words rush in greater storm fury from human lips, than when she demanded justice. No stop nor note nor pedal nor key in the organ of speech was left untouched by this genius in tragic art.

It would be well if every public speaker could hear Sarah Bernhardt give that defense of the Maid of Orleans. Indeed I believe if the forensic eloquence of the stage could be transferred to the pulpit greater audiences and greater rewards would follow. If you doubt this, go read the sermons of George Whitefield or the lectures of John B.

Gough and you will wonder at their success unless you take into consideration their mysterious power of delivery.

I cannot give you one sentence Madame Bernhardt uttered, but I do know the influence of that address remains with me to this day and now and then I find myself reaching out after the secret of oratory. "It is not so much what you say as how you say it," has become a proverb.

Some years ago I lectured in an Iowa village on a bitter cold evening.

The rear of the hall was up on posts. When introduced there was only one inch between my shoe soles and zero, while a cold wind from a broken window struck the back of my head. It occurred to me that if I would play Bernhardt I might save a spell of pneumonia.

In a few moments I was pacing the platform, swinging my arms and stamping my feet to keep up circulation. I put all the intensity, activity and personality possible into one hour and left the platform.

Returning to the hotel a commercial traveler who had heard me a number of times said: "I congratulate you; you get younger. I never heard you put so much life into your lecture."

I replied: "Why man, I was trying to keep my feet from freezing."

He said: "I advise you to go on the platform every evening with cold feet."

John and Charles Wesley were going along a street in London when they came upon two market women engaged in a wordy war. John Wesley said: "Hold up, Charles, and let's learn how to preach. See how these women put earnestness and even eloquence into their street quarrel. Can't we be just as earnest and eloquent in dealing out the truth?" No wonder John Wesley gave such impetus to the platform.

It is said what John Wesley and George Whitefield were to the religious platform, Fox and Burke became later on to the political platform. They saw the platform was fast becoming the voice of public sentiment and dared to indorse it.

When Mr. Fox made his first platform address he said: "This is the first time I ever had the privilege of addressing an uncorrupted a.s.sembly." Going back into Parliament he said: "Let's put an end to a policy that separates us from the people. Let's cut all cables, snap all chains that bind us to an unfriendly sh.o.r.e and enter the peaceful harbor of public confidence."

When Mr. Burke made his platform debut, he was so inspired by the enthusiasm of the people, it is said, he made the greatest speech ever made in the English language up to that time. When he appeared in Parliament next evening a leader of the government took occasion to denounce the platform as a disturber of public peace, directing his remarks to Mr. Burke. The great orator was ready with the reply: "Yes, and the firebell at midnight disturbs public peace, but it keeps you from burning in your beds."

It would seem after years of fruitless effort to silence the platform, Parliament would accept it as a power for good and give it wise direction. Yet we are informed that in face of its growing popularity when Henry Hunt attempted to address an audience in a grove in England, a regiment of cavalry charged the grove. Eleven were killed and several hundred wounded. Henry Hunt was thrown into prison, but when released later one hundred thousand people welcomed him to the streets of London.

As well now had Parliament attempted to prevent a London fog as to prohibit platform meetings. John Bright said: "When I consider these meetings of the people, so sublime in their vastness and resolution, I see coming over the hilltops of time the dawning of a n.o.bler and better day for my country."

It is our privilege to live in the good day of which John Bright spoke. Yet while a public speaker today is in no dread of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and milliners persist in building up artistic barriers between speaker and audience.

Here let me give a bit of advice to my own s.e.x. Gentlemen, when you purchase a new hat, no matter if a ten dollar silk, or a twenty dollar panama, do not attend a lecture, and taking a seat in front of some intelligent lady forget to remove your hat. The lady may want to see the speaker's face, and he may need the inspiration of her countenance, while you are interfering with both. "A hint to the wise is sufficient." This hint may not be in accord with the advice of Paul, but Paul never saw a twentieth century "Merry Widow" hat. Then too, Paul was already inspired and didn't need the inspiration of human countenances. I am speaking for the uninspired, to whom an audience of hatless heads is an inspiration.

But few persons realize how a public speaker is affected by little influences. The flitting of a blind bat over a church audience on a summer evening, will mar the most fascinating flight of eloquence ever plumed from a pulpit.

When Nancy Hanks broke the world's trotting record at Independence, Iowa, some years ago, her former owner, Mr. Hart Boswell, of Lexington, who raised and trained her, was asked if Nancy would ever lower that record. He replied: "Well, if the time comes that the track is just right, the atmosphere just right, the driver just right and Nancy just right, I believe she will." See the combination. Break it anywhere and the brave little mare would fail.

Just so speakers are affected by conditions, by acoustics, atmosphere, size and temper of the audience, and the speaker's own mental and physical condition. Many a good sermon has been killed by a poor s.e.xton. Many a grand thought has perished in foul air.

Charles Spurgeon was preaching to a large audience in a mission church in London, when want of ventilation affected speaker and audience. Mr.

Spurgeon said to a member of the church: "Brother, lift that window near you."

"It won't lift," replied the brother.

"Then smash the gla.s.s and I'll pay the bill to-morrow," said Spurgeon.

Suppose the great horse Uhlan should be announced to trot against his record; suppose at the appointed time, with the grandstand crowded and every condition favorable, as the great trotting wonder reached the first quarter pole, some one were to run across the track just ahead of the horse, then another and another; what kind of a record would be made?

What management would allow a horse to be thus handicapped? Where is the man who would be so inconsiderate as to thus hinder a horse? Yet when a minister has worked while the world slept, that he not only might sustain his record but gather souls into the kingdom; when the opening exercises have given sufficient time for all to be present; when the text is announced and the preacher is reaching out after the attention and sympathy of his audience some one enters the door, walks nearly the full length of the aisle; then another and then two more, each one crossing the track of the preacher and yet he is expected to keep up his record and make good. If you are a friend of your pastor be present when he announces his text; give him your attention and thus cheer him on as you would your favorite horse.

An eminent minister said: "There, I had a good thought for you, but the creaking of the new boots of that brother coming down the aisle knocked it quite out of my head."

One who had heard me many times said: "Why do you do better at Ocean Grove than anywhere else I hear you?" My answer was: "Because of conditions. The great auditorium seats ten thousand, the atmosphere is invigorated by salt sea breezes; a choir of five hundred sing the audience into a receptive mood and the speaker is borne from climax to climax on wings of applause."

I would not have you infer from this that a large audience is always necessary to success. Indeed the most successful and satisfactory address I ever made was to an audience of one. If I can make as favorable an impression upon you as I did upon that young lady I shall be gratified.

In Pauling, New York, Chauncey M. Depew by his attention and applause inspired me more than the whole audience beside; while time and again have I been helped to do my best by the presence of that matchless queen of the platform, Frances E. Willard.

The very opposite of greatness has had the same effect upon me. At the Pontiac, Illinois, Chautauqua after lecturing to a great audience, I was invited by the superintendent of the State Reformatory to address the inmates of the prison. At the close of a thirty minutes' talk the superintendent said: "Your address to my boys exceeded the one you gave at the Chautauqua."

Why was it better? At the Chautauqua I was trying to entertain and instruct an intelligent audience. Within the grey walls of that prison I was reaching down to the very depths, endeavoring to lift up human beings, marred and scarred by sin and crime, but dear to the mothers who bore them and the Savior who died for them.

If I were a preacher in New York City and were announced to preach a sermon on home missionary work I would not go to the church by way of the mansions of the rich where children, shod in satin slippers dance and play over velvet tapestry, but by way of the slums where I would meet the children of misery, where,

"To stand at night 'mid the city's throng, And scan the faces that pa.s.s along, Is to read a book whose every leaf Is a history of woe and want and grief.

As in tears of sorrow and sin and shame, You read a story of blight and blame, Your heart goes further than hand can reach And you feel a sermon you cannot preach."

Whoever would prove worthy of the platform must have a message and give to it the devotion of mind, heart and conscience, no matter whether his purpose is to convince by reasoning, convert by appeal, delight by rhetoric, or cure melancholy by humor. Each has its useful influence on the platform.

Some persons have an impression that the student deals in logic, while the orator simply starts his tongue to running, and goes off and leaves it to work automatically.

Bishop Robert McIntyre was one of the greatest pulpit orators of his age, yet I dare say this gifted man gave as much time and thought to his famous word painting of the Chicago fire, as Joseph Cook ever gave to mining any treasure of thought he laid upon the altar of education.

I know many teachers of oratory say: "Study your subject, a.n.a.lyze it well, and leave words to the inspiration of the occasion." But suppose when the occasion comes, instead of inspiration one has indigestion, then what?

While a speaker should not be so confined to composition that he cannot reach out after, and cage any pa.s.sing bird of thought, yet as the leaf of the mulberry tree must go through the stomach of a silk-worm, before it can become silk, so climaxes should be warped and woofed into language before they can be forceful and beautiful.

At the Lincoln, Nebraska, a.s.sembly some years ago a noted humorist gave an address on the "Philosophy of Wit." He called oratory a lost art, and to prove his contention he quoted from William Jennings Bryan's famous Chicago convention speech. He said: "What would a young woman think of her lover who would say 'My darling, the crown of thorns shall never be pressed down upon your fair brow?'" The humorist expected applause but it failed to materialize, for Mr. Bryan is highly respected in his state and his oratory is a charm wherever he is heard.

The speaker not only exhibited poor taste, but his wit was pointless, for when a man can go before a convention of fourteen hundred delegates and by one burst of eloquence capture the convention, secure the nomination for the presidency, and then with the press and the leaders of his party against him go up and down the country, and from the rear of a railroad train, almost capture the White House, the day of oratory is not gone by.

Schriner, the great animal painter, painted the picture of a bony mule eating a tuft of hay. That picture sold in Petersburg, Russia, for fifteen thousand dollars, while the original mule sold for one dollar and thirty cents. If the painting of Schriner made in the price of that mule, a difference of fourteen thousand, nine hundred, ninety-eight dollars and seventy cents why is not word painting worth something?

Listen, while I give you a short extract from the address of James G.

Blaine at the memorial service of our martyr President Garfield. With the audience wrought up to the greatest sympathy by his tribute he said:

"Surely if happiness can come from robust health, ideal domestic life and honors of the world James A. Garfield was a happy man that July morning. One moment strong, erect with promise of peaceful, useful years of life before him: The next moment wounded, bleeding, helpless.