The Young Priest's Keepsake Part 6

What I do mean is _preach_ your sermons and do not _declaim_ them. How is this accomplished?

For the first year bend all your powers to capturing the intellects of your auditors, holding in reserve, for the time being, the elocutionary forces. Then, when you have acquired the habit of convincing the intelligence, let the elegancies of finished declamation insinuate themselves gradually into your delivery. Thus art will so engraft itself on nature, the rhetorical graces so entwining and dovetailing into your convictions and pa.s.sions that they will appear as growing out of and not added on to them. Here is perfection--

_Ars artium celare artem_.

Reverse this: make declamation your first concern, and let us even suppose the artificiality is not detected, which is supposing a great deal. What is the result? Your sermon is declamation and nothing else. This means failure, for no matter how the pa.s.sions are aroused, if they are not upheld by the pillars of conviction, your finest effort is a fire of chips: a blaze for a moment, then ashes.

Though elocutionary powers are of so much importance as to be almost indispensable, yet they are subordinate to the sermon: they are the aids and auxiliaries to drive it home. A graceful gesture or musical inflection of voice will not convince the intellect or move the pa.s.sions: they are not the arrows: they lend wings of fire, however, to send the arrows to the mark.

I know no more fatal blunder, or one that militates more strongly against a speaker, than the adoption of an artificial accent.

[Side note: The Irish gift of oratory]

G.o.d has not only given our race a special mission--the apostolate of the English-speaking world--but he has singularly endowed us with those gifts that go to make successful preachers of His Word--logical minds, imagination and sensibility.

[Side note: Logical minds]

That we possess this in an eminent degree is evident from a striking fact. There are three avocations to which the faculty of close reasoning is a first essential--law, politics and theology--and in each of these our countrymen excel.

[Side note: Law]

We are as essentially a race of lawyers as the Jews are a race of moneylenders.

For eleven years I watched the sons of Irish parents going from an Australian college to professional careers. Ninety-eight per cent., following the natural bent of their minds, turned to the lawyer's office.

From the year 1858 to the present hour the robes of Victoria's Chief Justice have been uninterruptedly worn by Irishmen. From 1873 the Chief Justiceship of New South Wales has been exclusively held by sons of the green isle. But, above all, turn to the lawyers' streets in the new worlds of America and Australia and see the amazing number of bra.s.s plates adorned with O's and Mac's.

[Side note: Politics]

The political organisations in the labour world of England to-day are mainly captained by Irishmen. Two of them have been sent to Parliament, and two more will probably join them in the next Parliament.

The rapidity with which the Irish emigrant, following the law of natural selection, plunges into politics has pa.s.sed into a proverb in America and furnished a humorous parody on a well-known stanza:--

"There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin, The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill, The ship that had brought him scarce from harbour was steerin', When Senator Mike was presenting a Bill."

[Side note: Theology]

The great Cardinal Franzelin said to one of his most distinguished pupils[2]--"As a professor of theology at Rome for many years I had every day opportunities of studying the character and mental equipment of various nations, and, though in favour of the Germans, I give it as my opinion that the Irish, as a race, have the most theological minds of any people." Judgment from such an authority is conclusive.

[2] Dr. Croke, late Archbishop of Cashel.

The first essential for a preacher is the power of lucid reasoning. That this faculty is ours is now abundantly established. The next talent requisite is imagination. That we have imagination, often teeming in tropical luxuriance, but shared in great or less degree by all, has never been questioned.

One more requisite and the oratorical outfit is complete.

[Side note: Sensibility]

On this score it is sufficient to say that we are Celts, endowed with the ardent nervous temperaments. But suffering has given to ours an acute refinement that nothing else could impart.

"Never soul could know its powers Until sorrow swept its chords."

"We give preference to Jews and Irishmen on our staff," said the proprietor of a leading journal. "Both have suffered, and a man with a grievance writes pa.s.sionately. He dips the pen into his own heart and electric energy thrills his sentences; hence the crisp pungency and compressed fire of our columns."

What gift that goes to make an orator has G.o.d denied us? Reason, fancy, pa.s.sion, a pathos and humour where the smile trembles on the borderland of tears.

Why then this barrenness? Mainly because of the criminal neglect of colleges in the past to cultivate the abundant material placed at their disposal; other contributory causes are cynical criticism and want of courageous ambition.

Colleges are now bestirring themselves--it is high time--but criticism has not died. Refined natures have heartstrings like the chords of Aeolian harps, sensitive to the faintest touch, responsive to the gentlest whisper of the evening breeze; such shrink in terror from the icy breath of the scoffer: the purpose is frozen dead within their souls. O criticism! what crimes have been committed in your name! How many n.o.ble careers have you blasted?

[Side note: The world's greatest orators]

The man without ambition is not worth his salt. Some of the world's greatest orators have been spurred on to triumph despite difficulties before which timid men would stand aghast.

The story of Demosthenes is too familiar to bear repet.i.tion.

A good voice and commanding presence are powerful auxiliaries towards oratorical success; but Curran's appearance was so mean that he was once taken for a s...o...b..ack. His stammering, blunders, and collapses in early life earned for him the nickname of "Orator Mum." Yet to what a lofty eminence did not his sleepless endeavours lift him!

If Sheil's portraits speak truly he must have closely resembled a starved sweep on a wet day, while Disraeli declares his voice was as unmusical as the sound of a broken tin whistle. Of him Lecky writes:--"Richard Lalor Shiel forms one of the many examples history presents of splendid oratorical powers clogged by insuperable natural defects. His person was diminutive and wholly devoid of dignity. His voice shrill, harsh, and often rising to a positive shriek. His action, when most natural, violent, without gracefulness, and eccentric even to absurdity."[3]

[3] Lecky--"Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," p. 194.

In spite of these defects, and at a period when the nation's ear was pampered to fastidiousness by the eloquence of Grattan, Flood and O'Connell, he began his upward struggle towards eminence. He not only succeeded in winning a foremost place, but in wreathing himself with deathless fame when laurels shaded the brows of giants alone.

In face of these encouraging examples who could lose heart when the trumpet of ambition blows--"struggle, struggle, struggle."

"Scorn delights and live laborious days."

CHAPTER SIXTH

THE ART OF ELOCUTION

The subject of preaching would be incomplete without a chapter on the important and graceful art of elocution.

[Side note: What books should we read?]

If asked what works would a student read on the subject, the wisest answer would be, every book he can lay hold of. The number of works dealing with rhetoric are few, but if a man can get half-a-dozen new ideas from any one of them his labour is more than repaid. Even should he meet the same thought repeated, the fact that it is clothed in different language and set in a new light invests it with a freshness that is sure to fix it permanently in his mind.

If, however, the question be narrowed down to which are the three best books on this subject? without pretending to give a decisive answer to this difficult question we have no hesitation in saying that, for the ecclesiastical student, "Potter's Sacred Eloquence," "The Making of an Orator," by Mr. John O'Connor Power, and Mr. McHardy Flint's little work, "Natural Elocution,"

will be found most useful.

Some of the thoughts in this chapter are borrowed from the last two authors.

With this general acknowledgment both gentlemen will, we are sure, be content when we spare the reader repeated references to either t.i.tles or pages of their works.

[Side note: What is rhetoric?]

[Side note: Cicero]