Chapter VI: Preface (6)

Take at least one excellent legal periodical. There are four or five "law" magazines published in America, some of them very good indeed. Do not pay any attention to the digests of cases with which some of these periodicals burden their pages, except to see if there is a recent decision on some case you are trying. You cannot remember them, and the effort to do so will only confuse. But you will usually find in each number one serious and profitable article, and possibly more, on matters of real interest to the profession. Read such articles very carefully.

The methods of scientific scholarship are now invading the law, and many of these legal essays are superb pieces of work. Now and then you will find a monograph of monumental worth. Such is the remarkable introduction to Stephens' admirable work on "Pleading," to which I have already called your attention.

That author's demonstration of the value of forms, and his comparison of the Roman civil law with the English common law, is the most carefully thought out and learned piece of legal writing I can think of at this moment. It is as great as it is brief.

Take part in politics. I know that it is an ordinary saying that a lawyer should leave politics alone. It is not true. What right have you, a member of the great profession which, more than all other forces combined, has established and defended liberty, to withdraw yourself from active participation in the sacred function of self-government? You have no such right.

Of course you should not make politics your profession. That is fatal to your success in the profession of the law. It is one profession or the other, one love or the other. But take part in your party's primaries. Make yourself so wise and useful that you will be an indispensable party counselor. By all means be a "factor" in your party.

As you value life itself, do not permit yourself ever to be made a lobbyist under the guise of general employment by a corporation or any other interest concerned in legislation. It is no doubt proper for a lawyer to make a legal argument before a legislative committee in behalf of clients. Nevertheless, I advise you not to do it. It is the first step toward the disreputable form of lobbying. There is, of course, perfectly proper and even necessary lobbying. But then _you_ are a lawyer, are you not?

We all know instances of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any corporation, person, or "interest" which really does not want your active service, but in that manner is purchasing your silence.

Accept no employment except real, genuine employment for actual, tangible, and honest work. Money obtained from any other kind of employment is a loss to you in every way, even financially.

Think daily of the nobility and dignity of your profession. Remember the great men that have adorned it and established the pillars of its glory. They were gentlemen, men of learning, of breeding, of honor as delicate as a woman's blush. Be you such, or leave the profession.

Keep in mind the lords of the bar. Resolve each morning when you awake that, to the utmost of your efforts, you will strive to be one of them--in learning full and thorough, in courtesy delicate, in courage fearless, in character spotless, in all things and at all seasons the true knight of Justice.

Finally, preserve your health, preserve your health, preserve your health. Work, work, work. Cling to the loftiest ideals of your profession which your mind can conceive. Do these; keep up your nerve; never despair; and success is certain, distinction probable, and greatness possible, according to your natural abilities.

VI

PUBLIC SPEAKING

"And the common people heard him gladly," for "he taught them as one having authority." These sentences reveal the very heart of effective speaking. Considered from the human view-point alone, the Son of Mary was the prince of speakers. He alone has delivered a perfect address--the Sermon on the Mount.

The two other speeches that approach it are Paul's appeal to the Athenians on Mars Hill, and the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. These have no tricks, no devices, no tinsel gilt. They do not attempt to "split the ears of the groundlings," and yet they are addressed to the commonest of the world's common people.

Imagination, reason, and that peculiar human quality in speech which defies analysis as much as the perfume of the rose, but which touches the heart and reaches the mind, are blended in each of these utterances in perfect proportion.

But, above all, each of these model speeches which the world has thus far produced teaches. They instruct. And, in doing this, they assert. The men who spoke them did not weaken them by suggesting a doubt of what they said. This is common to all great speeches.

Not one immortal utterance can be produced which contains such expressions as, "I may be wrong," or, "In my humble opinion," or, "In my judgment." The great speakers, in their highest moments, have always been so charged with aggressive conviction that they have announced their conclusions as ultimate truths. They have spoken as persons "having authority," and therefore "the common people have heard them gladly."

All of this means that the two indispensable requisites of speaking are, first, to have something to say, and, second, to say it as though you mean it. Of course one cannot have something really to say--a lesson to teach, a message to deliver--every fifteen minutes. Very well, then; until one does have something to say, let one hold one's peace.

Carlyle's idea is correct. He thought that no man has the right to speak until what he has to say is so ripe with meaning, and the season for his saying it is so compelling, that what he says will result in a deed--a thing accomplished now or afterwhile. In the prophetic old Scotchman's iron philosophy there was no room for anything but deeds.

If such instruction is needed; if a great movement requires the forming and constructive word to interpret it and give it direction; if a movement in a wrong direction needs halting and turning to its proper course; if a cause needs pleading; if a law needs interpretation; if anything really _needs to be said_--the occasion for the orator, in the large sense of that word, has arrived. Therefore when he speaks "the common people will hear him gladly"; they will hear him because he teaches, and does it "as one having authority."

Whenever a speaker fails to make his audience forget voice, gesture, and even the speaker himself; whenever he fails to make the listeners conscious only of the living truth he utters, he has failed in his speech itself, which then has no other reason for having been delivered than a play or any other form of entertainment.

Very few of the great orators have had loud voices, or, if they did have them, they did not employ them. I am told that Wendell Phillips always spoke in a conversational tone, and yet he was able to make an audience of many thousands hear distinctly; and Phillips was one of the greatest speakers America has produced.

It is probable that no man ever lived who had a more sensuous effect upon his hearers than Ingersoll. In a literal and a physical sense he charmed them. I never heard him talk in a loud voice. There was no "bell-like" quality. It was not an "organ-like" voice.

The greatest feat of modern speech, in its immediate effect, was Henry Ward Beecher's speech to the Liverpool mob. A gentleman who heard that speech told me that, notwithstanding the pandemonium that reigned around him, Beecher did not shout, nor speak at the top of his voice, a single time during that terrible four hours.

It is true that Æschines spoke of Demosthenes' delivery of his "Oration on the Crown" as having the ferocity of a wild beast. I do not see how that can be, however, because Demosthenes selected Isæus as his teacher for the reason that Isæus was "business-like" in method.

This, however, is common to the voices of nearly all great speakers; they have a peculiar power of penetration that carries them much farther than the shout and halloo of the loudest-voiced person. They have, too, a singularly touching and tender quality, which, in a sensuous way, captivates and holds the hearers. James Whitcomb Riley has this quality in his voice when reciting. Edwin Booth had it. All great actors have it. Every true orator has it. It touches you strangely, thrills you, affects you much as music does.

It is a remarkable thing that there _is neither wit nor humor in any of the immortal speeches_ that have fallen from the lips of man. To find a joke in Webster would be an offense. The only things which Ingersoll wrote that will live are his oration at his brother's grave and his famous "The Past Rises before Me like a Dream." But in neither of these productions of this genius of jesters is there a single trace of wit.

There is not a funny sally in all Burke's speeches. Lincoln's Gettysburg address, his first and second inaugurals, his speech beginning the Douglas campaign, and his Cooper Union address in New York, are perhaps the only utterances of his that will endure.

Yet this greatest of story-tellers since Æsop did not deface one of these great deliverances with story or any form of humor.

The reason for this is found in the whole tendency of human thought and feeling--in the whole melancholy history of the race--where tears and grief, the hard seriousness of life and the terrible and speedy certainty of our common fate of suffering and of death, make somber the master-cord of existence. And the great orator must reflect the deeper soul of his hearers.

So all the immortal things are serious, even sad.

It is so with speech--I mean the speech that affects the convictions and understanding of men. I am excluding now that form of speech which belongs to the same class, though not of so high an order, as the theatrical exhibition.

Excepting only Lincoln, the Middle West has produced no greater man than Oliver P. Morton; and few men in our history have had greater power upon an audience both in the immediate and permanent effect of his speeches than did Indiana's great Senator. It is related of him that while a very young man he made a speech so rich in humor and scintillant of wit that it attracted the attention of the whole commonwealth.

Morton, however, was not pleased or flattered. He was alarmed. He feared that what he knew to be his weighty abilities would be held lightly by his fellow citizens. From that time on this Cromwell of the forum never "told a story" or attempted to amuse his hearers in any way.

Of course, if your mental armory is naturally heavily stocked with the various forms of fun, you are not to be blamed for employing the weapons with which Nature has equipped you and which Nature has peculiarly fitted you to use--although Morton deliberately let them rust. But, generally speaking, it is a distinct descent from the high plane of your address to excite the laughter of your audience. When you do so, you confess that you are not able to hold the attention of your hearers by the sustained and unbroken strength of your argument. You admit that you are either so dull in your thought or indifferent in your convictions that you know you are wearying your auditors and must rest them by some mental diversion.

Where there is an earnestness of thought (and earnestness is only another name for seriousness) there will always be the same quality in manner--an impressiveness in bearing and delivery. This is inconsistent with merriment of delivery, which robs speech of a certain weight and intrinsic worth. It is also inconsistent with the voice of storm and the hurricane manner.

And men in deadly earnest do not talk loudly. It has been my fortune to see men angry and aroused to the point of killing; they were intense, but quiet. I have also seen that bravado and drunken boisterousness which thought it imitated, and meant to imitate, genuine rage; it was always strident and violent, never dangerous, never sincere. The same thing is true in speech.

There have only been two or three roarers in effective oratory--Mirabeau, by all accounts (though anything can be forgiven a man who can make such speeches as the great Frenchman made), and Demosthenes, if Æschines is to be believed, which I think he is not to be in this particular. He was only excusing his own defeat, and he had to attribute it to delivery. (I think any unprejudiced mind will agree that Æschines made the better argument.) All the other great speakers have, even in their most intense passages, and in situations where life and death were involved, been comparatively quiet so far as mere volume of sound is concerned.

I remember, as if it were yesterday, the first great speaker I ever heard. It was Robert G. Ingersoll, delivering a lecture in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1884. He had an audience which would have inspired eloquence in almost any breast. He came on the stage alone, and was very carefully, even elegantly attired, to the smallest item of his grooming.

His address was in manuscript, and imperfectly committed to memory. He laid it down on a little table at the back of the stage (returning to it occasionally to refresh his memory), and then, in a very natural and matter-of-fact way, walked to the footlights, and, looking the audience frankly in the eyes, began without an instant's hesitation, and in a voice precisely as if he were talking to a friend.

But he was as dramatic at his climaxes as Edwin Booth ever was in Hamlet. His face paled, or seemed to pale; his hands clinched with a desperate energy, and the whole attitude of the man was that of one in awful wrath. Yet his voice was not raised above the common current of the evening's address--if anything, it was lower. While the mature mind cannot endure Ingersoll's rhetoric, it must be acknowledged that his manner of delivery (except when his levity made him coarse) was nearly equal to that of Wendell Phillips. Still, in his intense passages Ingersoll was almost fiercely earnest. And Plutarch tells us that Cicero's friends feared he would kill himself by bursting a blood-vessel, with such intense energy did he speak.

Both of these men had that instinctive taste of the great speaker which Shakespeare has described better than any one else in literature, when he makes Hamlet tell the players not to "mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much--your hand thus: but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it."

When I was a very young boy I saw a fist-fight which impressed me as powerfully as any lesson I ever learned at school. An overtall and powerful man, about forty years old, had become angry at a medium-sized but very compact man of about the same age. As his passion increased his violence grew, until finally he was shouting his denunciations. The little man stood quietly alert.

Finally, with a great volume of sound, the big man rushed upon the little one with arms swinging in the air, and I looked with interest and curiosity to see the smaller man either run or be demolished. He did neither. His fists were raised quickly but intensely before him, and when the big man was almost upon him, it seemed to me that his right hand did not shoot out farther than ten or twelve inches; but it did shoot out, and the result was as if the big man had been shot, sure enough.

He fell like a slaughtered ox, but rose and came on again, only again to be knocked down. This continued for three or four times, for the giant was "game"; but finally he was "thrashed to a standstill," as the expression has it.

It was a great lesson in life and a great lesson in speaking, which is only a phase of life. The victor came to the point. He did not dissipate his energies. It is so in the manner of speaking. The greatest contrast to the perfect method of Ingersoll which I ever beheld in a man of equal eminence was in the delivery of a lecture by Joseph Cook.

He came on the stage with ostentatious impressiveness. He sat some time before he was introduced, seeming vast and overpowering--a very Matterhorn of consequence. After introduction he stood with one hand thrust in the breast of his tightly buttoned frock coat, and looked tremendously all over the audience for perhaps an entire minute. Everybody was awed; he looked so great. We all said to ourselves, "What a mighty man this is!"

And when that effect had been produced upon us, the first and great point of effectiveness had been destroyed: the speaker had made us think about himself, his manner, his appearance, his personality. All the evening we had to wade through that slough, trying to follow his thought. And this reminds me of a saying of one of the most astute politicians and most capable public men of recent development:

"The surest sign that a man is not great is that he strives to look great."

I think that the best speech I ever heard for obedience to the rules of art was an address of about ten minutes by a young Salvation Army officer on the streets of Chicago. I listened with amazement. He was perhaps twenty-three years of age, with delicate, clear-cut features, sensitive mouth, and marvelously intelligent eyes. I was just passing the group as he stepped into the circle that always surrounds these noisy but sincere enthusiasts.

He took off his cap, and in a low, perfectly natural, and very sweet voice, speaking exactly as though he were having a conversation with his most confidential friend, he began: "You will admit, my friends, that human happiness is the problem of human life." And from this striking sentence he went on to another equally moving, showing, of course, that happiness could not be secured by traveling any of the usual roads, but only the straight and narrow path which the Master has marked out.

It was as simple as it was sincere. And it was as conversational as it was quiet. Before he had finished, his audience had gathered into itself every pedestrian who passed during his discourse--business man, professional man, working man, or what not.

The fight above described suggests the key to the matter as well as the manner of speaking. The American audience properly demands, above everything else, that the speaker get to the point. Our lives are so rapid; the telephone, telegraph, and all the instantaneous agencies of our neurotically swift civilization have made us so quick in seeing through propositions; a hundred years of universal education have produced a mentality so electric in its rapidity, that effective oratory has been revolutionized within a decade.

Burke would not be tolerated now. It is doubtful, even, if Webster would. The public has already tired of the lilt of Ingersoll's redundant rhetoric, pleasing as was its music. The effective speech to-day is a statement of conclusions.

The listeners, with a celerity inconceivable, sum up the argument on either side of the proposition you announce, and accept or reject it by a process of unconscious mental cerebration.

The most successful speech of to-day would be one of Emerson's essays rearranged in logical order--if such a thing were possible. Therefore, in matter, the statement is the form of address now most effective. Recall the opinion of Senator McDonald--the greatest natural lawyer I ever knew--that the best argument in a case always is the statement of the case.

In form, the sentences should be short; in language, the words should be as largely as possible Anglo-Saxon. These are the words of the people you address, therefore they are most influential with them. Also, therefore, your best method of getting Anglo-Saxon is to mingle with and talk with the common people. The next best method is to read the Bible, the King James translation of which is undoubtedly the purest fountain of English that flows in all the world of our literature.

What nonsense the repeated statement that public speaking has had its day, that the newspaper has taken its place, and all the rest of that kind of talk. Public speaking will never decline until men cease to have ears to hear. How hard it is to read a speech; how delightful to listen!

Speaking is Nature's choicest method of instruction.

It begins with mother to child; it continues with teacher to pupil; it continues still in lecturer or professor to his student (for the universities are all going back to the old oral method of instruction); and it still continues in all the forms of effective human communication.

The newspapers are a marvelous influence, but they are not everything, and they do not supply everything. For example, it is commonly supposed that they, absolutely and exclusively, mold and control public opinion. But they do not. When all has been said, the most powerful public opinion, after all, is that from-mouth-to-mouth public opinion--that living, moving opinion--which spreads from neighbor to neighbor, and has fused into it the vitality of the personality of nearly every man--yes, and woman; don't forget that--in the whole community.

And the philosophy which underlies this is what makes public speaking immortal. The Master understood this very well, and that is why He chose to speak by word of mouth rather than by writing epistles. The Saviour never wrote a single epistle--no, not even a single word. He _spoke_ His message.

Think of a gospel announced to the world in cold type! Absurd, is it not? It may be repeated in that form, but its initial power must come from the spoken word and vital personality of its author. But Christ's addresses were not "extemporaneous." All His life He had been preparing His few sermons--lessons.

The great speakers to whom I have listened have confirmed certain conclusions upon the subject of speaking at which I arrived while in college. It seemed to me that the college method of speaking was wrong because it was irrational--that the studied gestures, the "cultivated" voice, the staccato impressiveness, were all artificial devices to attract the attention of an audience to these things, instead of to the thought of the address.

Analysis of the problem convinced me that an audience is only a larger person--a great collective individuality--and therefore that whatever, in manner and matter, will please, persuade, and convince a person, will have the same effect upon an audience. Hence one readily deduces that a simple, quiet, but direct, earnest address; a straightforward, unartificial honest manner, without tricks of oratory, is the most effective method of lodging truth in the minds of one's hearers.

Any affectation, any mannerism, detracts from the thought because it calls the attention of the listener to the mannerism or affectation, when his whole attention should be monopolized by the thought. Read Herbert Spencer on the "Philosophy of Style," and apply his reasoning to the delivery of an address, and you have the rationale of the art of speaking, as well as of speech, put with that wonderful thinker's unerringness.

The method commonly employed in preparing speeches is incorrect. That method is, to read all the books one can get on the subject, take all the opinions that can be procured, make exhaustive notes, and then write the speech.

Such a speech is nothing but a compilation. It is merely an arrangement of second-hand thoughts and observations and of other people's ideas. It never has the power of living and original thinking.

The true way is to take the elements of the problem in hand, and, without consulting a book or an opinion, reason out from these very elements of the problem itself your solution of it, and then prepare your speech.

After this, read, read, read--read comprehensively, omnivorously, in order to see whether your solution was not exploded a hundred years ago--aye, a thousand--and, if it was not, to fortify and make accurate your own thought. Read Matthew Arnold on "Literature and Dogma," and you will discover why it is necessary for you to read exhaustively on any subject about which you would think or write or speak.

But, as you value your independence of mind--yes, even your vigor of mind--do not read other men's opinions upon the subject before you have clearly thought out your own conclusions from the premises of the elemental facts.

As to style, seek only to be clear. Nothing else is important. Never try to be elegant or striking.

Consider the method of the Saviour in His addresses to the people. Next to Him, those perfect specimens of the art of putting things are the speeches and epistles of St. Paul. I know of nothing in literature so clear, convincing, and logical.

The words of the Master astonish one with their absolute unity with all the rules of effective address.

Especially His method of driving home a truth by repeating it, and that, too, in exactly the same words, is noticeable and very effective. He did not fear that He would be tiresome; He was concerned only in being clear. Take the following examples--Matthew vii:

24. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his
house upon a rock:

25. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it
was founded upon a rock.

26. And every one that _heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them_ not, shall be _likened unto a_ foolish _man, which
built his house upon_ the sand:

27. _And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell:_ and great
was the fall of it.

Or study this--Matthew v:

29. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it
from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy
members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be
cast into hell.

30. _And if thy right_ hand _offend thee_, cut _it_ off, _and
cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of
thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should
be cast into hell_.

Or this--Matthew xxv:

34. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come,
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world:

35. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty,
and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36. Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I
was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when
saw we _thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave
thee drink_?

38. When saw we thee _a stranger, and took thee in? or naked,
and clothed thee_?

39. Or when saw we thee _sick, or in prison, and came unto
thee_?

40. And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say
unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels:

42. For _I was an hungered, and ye gave me_ no _meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave me_ no _drink_:

43. _I was a stranger, and ye took me_ not _in: naked, and ye
clothed me_ not: _sick, and in prison, and ye visited me_ not.

44. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we
thee _an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or
sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?_

45. _Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye did it_ not _to one of the least of these, ye
did it_ not _to me_.

_Observe the exact repetition of entire sentences._ Consider Antony's funeral oration over the dead body of Cæsar, and note the same mastery of the art of repetition.

But, like all powerful weapons, it is dangerous to one who is not a natural speaker. It might easily be fatal, for remember that we are advised to "use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking."

Do not be epigrammatic. Never "coin a phrase." Never make a sentence for the purpose of having the newspaper quote it next day. Usually such sentences are not quoted. Even if they are, these artificial arrangements of words never live. The reason is that they _are_ artificial--they do not have the vitality of sincerity. Let your striking expressions come naturally as the climax and flowering of your thought. Then they will live. They will live because they will be truthful--natural. Nothing but the sincere endures.

In political speaking, seldom be harsh, seldom denounce, seldom "pour hot shot into the enemy" as our newspaper head-liners put it. Men in other parties are not your enemies or the country's--they are fellow Americans to whom you are trying to show the truth as you see it. I like to believe that all Americans are patriots, inspired by sincere concern for the common good and the welfare of the Republic.

There is nothing in denunciation--nothing in abuse--nothing but bad taste. "There is no particular argument in slander," exclaimed Ingersoll in one of our fervid campaigns. The man who "pours hot shot into the enemy" is using an obsolete method. Don't you use it, young man. _You_ be reasonable, considerate, earnest only to show your hearer that you are in the right. This rule is unvarying except, of course, when great crises occur, when treason is afoot, the Nation's honor in danger, and the like. But such seasons of peril are rare.

In all speaking be moderate in statement. Over statement is very dangerous; under statement subtly powerful. Moderation! I know but two words so potent--honor and industry. Honor, industry, moderation! What can prevail against this trinity! And in young men moderation is peculiarly beautiful.

I doubt if any man can be a great speaker who does not have in him the religious element. I do not mean that he shall be good (one may be good and not religious, or religious and not be good, as any professor of mental and moral philosophy will tell you), but that he shall have in him that mysticism, that elemental and instinctive conviction of the higher power and its providence, which makes him in sympathy with the great mass of humanity. I think Ingersoll had this element in him, notwithstanding his attacks upon religion.

Emerson has pointed out that the great speaker--yes, and the great man--is he who best interprets the common feeling and tendency of the masses.

Very well; the profoundest feeling among the masses, the most influential element in their character, is the religious element. It is as instinctive and elemental as the law of self-preservation. It informs the whole intellect and personality of the people.

Therefore he who would greatly influence the people by uttering their unformed thought must have this great invisible and unanalyzable bond of sympathy with them. I will let your preacher work this out more elaborately for you.

One word more; and to this word listen and hearken and bind it on the tablets of your understanding.

Insincerity cuts the heart out of all oratory.

You may marshal your arguments and concoct your pretty devices of words, and work yourself into a great heat in the speaking of them; but if you do not believe what you say you are only a play-actor after all--a poor mummer reciting your own lines.

You had far better be a professional actor; that will, at least, insure you excellent lines to declaim. The dramatic profession is devoted to the interpretation of art in one of its highest forms. A true actor is a true artist--painter and sculptor no more so.

If Polus stands on a lower pedestal than Praxiteles in mankind's esteem it is because his genius was not so brilliant and not because the art of acting is less noble than that of sculpture. Talma was more eminent than David. Bernhardt is as noted and notable as Millet, Irving as distinguished as Millais; while in our own country not more than two men in painting and sculpture deserve places beside Booth and Forrest as high priests of Art.

That your audience applauds you is nothing. The same audience would applaud Paderewski or a great prestidigitator. You see, your audience may applaud you because you have put your thought cleverly, or juggled your words attractively, or thrown over them that magnetic spell which all great personalities have. It may clap its hands because you have entertained it.

But what has all this to do with the truth? And why are you speaking at all, unless it is that you, knowing the truth, are trying to show the truth to others? So do not seek to arouse applause for its own sake. If it comes naturally, spontaneously, it is a pleasant tribute to your cause. But if you win it by your art, it is merely a tribute to your powers. And you are not speaking for yourself--you are speaking for your cause.

The wife of one of the most effective of American speakers is reported to have said to him: "I wish you would deliver a speech which no one can possibly applaud." Of course what she meant was that she would like to see him devote himself to getting the truth before the people without resorting to any of the tricks of oratory.

No matter how much a wizard of words Nature may have made him; no matter that he has the dark art of making the worse appear the better reason; no matter that his golden voice is like music, and his very appearance pleasantly thrills you with the strange and subtle magnetism of the man: if he have not sincerity, all these are nothing.

And he cannot affect sincerity and fool the people very long. He may fool them in one speech or in one campaign if he be a political speaker, but ultimately the people will sense his moral quality and he will be discredited.

This very thing happened to a celebrated American speaker who may be said to have been endowed with genius. There was no resisting the man while he was speaking. But he never was honestly in earnest. He never really cared for his cause. There was never a moment when he could not have spoken as effectively for the other side.

Finally this got through the consciousness of the people, and his power over their convictions speedily dissolved.

Many years ago a business friend of mine heard this man speak on a notable occasion. His address was on a subject in which the people were deeply interested, and was a masterpiece of mingled argument and pathos; and his audience belonged to him. It had no mind but his, no will but his.

Afterward my friend said to me: "That man will not last; he is not honest. At one climax so pure, so exalted, so tender, that I found tears in my own eyes, I saw him wink at some intimate friends who were sitting in a stage-box at his right. I was between them. They were watching him as they would have watched a friend who was an actor. He, on his part, was showing them what he could do. That wink said: 'See how I did that. Now observe me closely! I will throw still another ball of emotion into the air and juggle with it, too.'"

And sure enough, he did not last. His tropical mind lasted, his chameleon imagination lasted, his compelling personality, his grace, charm, witchery of words--all these lasted; but all these were nothing without that honesty which would make him die rather than speak for a cause in which he did not believe, or be silent when a cause in which he believed was at issue and in peril.

The people went to hear him even after they had ceased to believe in him. They applauded, laughed, or were silent as he pleased. But they were being entertained--nothing more. His art was still perfect, but his power over the minds and souls of men which made men believe and do was gone forever.

Believe what you say, therefore. Say what you believe. Say it simply, earnestly, as though you were pleading for all that is dearest to you on earth. For, after all, that is what you are speaking for--truth. And if the truth for which you are speaking is not dear to you, go about your other business and remain silent.

Let your brother who has "the call" utter that message which your faith is not strong enough to voice; for he, having "the call," will "speak as one having authority," and therefore "the common people will hear him gladly."

To effect anything; to achieve a result; to make your words deeds, as the old Scotch thinker declared they should be or else not be uttered, you must teach. And in your teaching you must teach "as one having authority."

To the Master we must go, after all, even for our methods of utterance, and at His feet learn that oratory is the utterance of the truth by one who knows it to be the truth. And so will your words be words of fire, and your speech have weight among your fellow men.

VII

THE YOUNG MAN AND THE PULPIT

All who do their best, and in doing their best do a good piece of work, deserve equal credit whether the work be little or big. The architect who builds a house has wrought for humanity as truly as the statesman who builds a government. One man can make bricks well and another lead armies to victory; yet each one has fulfilled his destiny if his achievement was what he was fitted for and if he has done his best.

From one point of view all occupations that help one's fellow men are important. Who shall say that the hod-carrier has not done as much for humanity as orator or poet. The cook is as necessary as the philosopher. Compare the blacksmith and the sculptor. The point is, that all useful labor is equally noble. It all has its place. Each of the workers of the world is required in the human cosmos.

It may not be that the worker himself sees that he is essential. It may not be that he understands the outcome of his striving. For that matter we are each and all toiling as blindly as the coral insect, and yet our labor is as much a part of a symmetrical structure as is the life and perishing of that polyp.

We are all pouring out our energies day by day without understanding what effect our spent lives will have in the general result of human effort. And some of us get heart-sick, no doubt, and weary; and discouragement whispers, "What's the use," and many another wily phrase of Satan.

Very well; let every man, however humble or conspicuous his place among men, understand that his work _does_ count and will become a part of an harmonious whole. "All things work together for good."

No matter that _we_ do not know what we are here for. _We_ may not understand how our lives are to be woven into the great design of the world's work any more than a single thread of some wonderful and beautiful rug understands the pattern of which it is a part.

No matter, I say. The Master-Weaver understands what we are here for and what we are doing, and that is enough. He has uses for every sound thread and doubtless one is as important as another. Vaunt not yourself O thread of purple, over your fellow-thread of white!

Asserting then that the man who quarries stone has served humanity as well as he who writes a book, if quarrying stone is what he can do best; asserting the equal value of all things done well and the equal dignity of all sincere and honest work of hand and brain, I shall not be misunderstood when I say that the present day has developed three careers of usefulness which, while not more important, are more continuously prominent than any others.

These are statesmanship, journalism, and the pulpit.

The Pulpit deals with faith. It has to do with religion. Religion makes moral ideals vital. Moral ideals make individual life sweet and satisfying, national life strong and pure. "Righteousness exalteth a nation." The young man and the pulpit are therefore preeminent in conspicuity.

The American people at heart are a religious people. They are practical and fearless, too. If you will listen to the chance conversations of the ordinary American you will find that the laymen of the Nation have some very decided views upon the Pulpit, the man who fills it, and the work he ought to do.

In the breast of the millions there is not only a great need but a great yearning for certain things of the soul which it is for the Pulpit to supply. This paper is an attempt to talk as one of these millions to the young man who is about to mount to this sacred station.

"I have just come from church," said a friend one day, "and I am tired and disappointed. I went to hear a sermon and I listened to a lecture.

"I went to worship and I was merely entertained.

"The preacher was a brilliant man and his address was an intellectual treat; but I did not go to church to hear a professional lecturer. When I want merely to be entertained I will go to the theater.

"But I do not like to hear a preacher principally try to be either orator or artist. I am pleased if he is both; but before everything else I want him to bear _me_ the Master's message. I want the minister to preach Christ and Him crucified."

The man who said this was a journalist of ripe years, highly educated, widely experienced, acquainted with men and life. He was world-weary with that weariness which comes of the journalist's incessant contact with every phase of human activity, good and bad, great and small.

For no man touches life at so many points and is both so rich in and worn by human experiences as the newspaper man in daily service. And I have found that this expression of the wise old man of the press whom I have quoted fairly reflects a general feeling among men of all other classes.

First, then, young man aspiring to the Pulpit, the world expects you to be above all other things a minister of the Gospel. It does not expect you to be, primarily, a brilliant man, or a learned man, or witty, or eloquent, or any other thing that would put your name on the tongues of men. The world will be glad if you are all of these, of course; but it wants you to be a preacher of the Word before anything else. It expects that all your talents will be consecrated to your sacred calling.

It expects you to speak to the heart, as well as to the understanding, of men and women, of the high things of faith, of the deep things of life and death. The great world of worn and weary humanity wants from the Pulpit that word of helpfulness and power and peace which is spoken only by him who has utterly forgotten all things except his holy mission. Therefore merge all of your striking qualities into the divine purpose of which you are the agent. Lose consciousness of yourself in the burning consciousness of your cause.

Very well; but if you do that you must be very sure of your own belief. Any man who assumes to teach the Christian faith, who in his own secret heart questions that faith himself, commits a sacrilege every time he enters the pulpit.

Can it be that the lack of living interest in certain church services is caused by a sort of subconscious knowledge of the people, that the minister himself is speaking from the head rather than from the heart; that what he says comes from his intellect and not as the "spirit gives him utterance"; and, to put it bluntly, that he himself "no more than half believes what he says."

"The man spoke as if he were bored with endless repetition of sermons," said a close observer of a weary parson.

Certain it is that even in political speaking the man who believes what he says has power over his audience out of all comparison with a far more eloquent man whom his hearers know to be speaking perfunctorily.

No matter how much the latter kind of speaker polishes his periods, no matter how fruitful in thought his address, no matter how perfect the art of his delivery, he fails in the ultimate effect wrought by a much inferior speaker whose words are charged with conviction.

He is like the chemist's grain of wheat, perfect in all its constituent elements except the mysterious spark of life, without which the wheat grain will not grow.

If then you do not believe what you say and believe it with all your soul, believe it in your heart of hearts, do not try to get other men to believe it. You will not be honest if you do. The world expects you to be sure of yourself. How do you expect to make other people sure of themselves if you are not sure of yourself?

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

"Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote
out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of
thy brother's eye."

The world is hungry for faith. Do not doubt this for a moment. More men and women to-day would rather believe in the few fundamentals of the Christian religion than have any other gift that lavish fortune could bestow upon them.

But these millions want to _believe_; they do not want to argue or be argued at.

They want to believe so utterly that their faith amounts to knowledge. Doubtings are disquieting; pros and cons are monotonous. We want certainty, we laymen.

For years I have made it a point to get the opinion of the ablest and most widely experienced men and women I met on the subject of immortality. In all cases I found that the subject in which they were more deeply interested than in all other subjects put together.

"I would rather be sure that when a man dies he will live again with his conscious identity, than to have all the wealth of the United States, or to occupy any position of honor or power the world could possibly give," said a man whose name is known to the railroad world as one of the ablest transportation men in the United States.

"Do you know when I am by myself I think about a lot of strange things. Is the soul immortal and what is the soul anyhow?" It is a politician who is talking now, and a ward politician at that, a man whom few would suspect of thinking upon these subjects at all.

So you see, young man, you who are being measured for the Cloth, that all manner and conditions of men are thinking about the great problems of which you are the expounder, and longing for the answer to those problems which it is your business to give them. That is the condition of the mind of the millions.

Very well! What is the condition of the mind of the young minister? A few years ago a certain man, with good opportunities for the investigation and a probability of sincere answers, asked every young preacher whom he met during a summer vacation these questions:

"First, Yes or no, do you believe in God, the Father; God a person, God a definite and tangible intelligence--not a congeries of laws floating like a fog through the universe; but God a person in whose image you were made? Don't argue; don't explain; but is your mind in a condition where you can answer yes or no?"

Not a man answered "Yes." Each man wanted to explain that the Deity might be a definite intelligence or might not; that the "latest thought" was much confused upon the matter, and so forth and so on.

"Second, Yes or no, do you believe that Christ was the son of the living God, sent by Him to save the world? I am not asking whether you believe that He was inspired in the sense that the great moral teachers are inspired--nobody has any difficulty about that. But do you believe that Christ was God's very Son, with a divinely appointed and definite mission, dying on the cross and raised from the dead--yes or no?"

Again not a single answer with an unequivocal, earnest "Yes." But again explanations were offered and in at least half the instances the sum of most of the answers was that Christ was the most perfect man that the world had seen and humanity's greatest moral teacher.

"Third, Do you believe that when you die you will live again as a conscious intelligence, knowing who you are and who other people are?"

Again, not one answer was unconditionally affirmative. "Of course they were not sure as a matter of knowledge." "Of course that could not be _known_ positively." "On the whole, they were inclined to think so, but there were very stubborn, objections," and so forth and so on.

The men to whom these questions were put were particularly high-grade ministers. One of them had already won a distinguished reputation in New York and the New England states for his eloquence and piety. Every one of them had had unusual successes with fashionable congregations.

But every one of them had noted an absence of real influence upon the _hearts_ of their hearers and all thought that this same condition is spreading throughout the modern pulpit.

Yet not one of them suspected that the profound cause of what they called "the decay of faith" was, not in the world of men and women, but in themselves. How could such priests of ice warm the souls of men? How could such apostles of interrogation convert a world?

These were not examples, however; they were exceptions. Most preachers believe that they actually know the truths they teach. By and large, the twentieth century Christian ministry is sound and sure. The missionary fire still burns in consecrated breasts.

And that is a lucky thing for the Christian world. We Westerners--we of America and Europe--would go all to pieces otherwise. You see we Occidentals have not eons of fatalistic paganism to fall back on as have the sons of the East. They endure without our religion. But we--what would happen to us if Christianity did not unite, purify, and exalt us.

From the view-point of the layman then, yes and even far more from your own view-point, be sure of your faith, preparer for the pulpit. Faith is only another word for power.

We see it in the small things of life. Note the influence on his fellow citizens of a man who asserts something positively and heartily believes what he asserts, even though that thing be untrue and unwise.