APPENDIX.

THE

DELIVERY OF SERMONS,

BY DR. ADOLPHE MONOD.* *

ALTHOUGH the art of recitation depends more on practice than on theory, it nevertheless has certain rules, which must be presented to the mind before you can address yourselves with profit to the exercises which are demanded, and which form the object of this course. In commencing the lectures of the year, I think it my duty to lay these rules before you, or rather to recall them to your memory. In so doing, I limit myself to such general views as may be comprised in a single discourse, and, at the same time, are of universal application.

GENERAL VIEWS OF THE ART OF RECITATION-ITS IMPORTANCE-ITS DIFFICULTY -ITS NATURE-INVESTIGATION OF A QUESTION.

It is scarcely necessary for me to call your attention to the IMPORTANCE of a good delivery. Among all human means, there is no one which contributes more to fix the attention of men, and to move their hearts. The discourse which, delivered with forced emphasis or with monotony, leaves the hearer cold and seems to court inattention, would have attracted, convinced, and melted, if it had been pronounced with the accent of the soul, and the intonations which nature communicates to sentiment and reason. It is vain to say

*This Lecture was delivered by Dr. Monod, to several classes of Theological students at Montauban. A translation of it by Dr. James W. Alexander, appeared in the Princeton Review, some fifteen years ago, and at the time excited remarks of a very commendatory nature. The wish has been expressed that it might be had in a more available form, and read, especially by young ministers, generally. Dr. Monod, as the most accomplished orator of our day, in France, if not in Europe, certainly deserves to be heard with the respect due to a master in the department of sacred eloquence. For vivid originality and native truth, there are few compositions on the subject to compare with this Lecture. The very accurate rendering referred to above, is here, in the main retained; a few changes, mostly at the kind suggestion of Dr. Alexander, having been made.

that this is an affair of mere form, about which the Christian orator should not much concern himself. Even if delivery were a secondary thing with the orator, which indeed it is not-inasmuch as the state of the mind has more to do with it than is commonly thought-it must always have a commanding interest for the hearer, from its powerful influence on his thoughts and inclinations. Hearken to two men, who ought to be at home in this matter-Demosthenes and Massillon. The greater the difference between the kinds of eloquence in which they respectively excelled, the more forcible is the testimony which they both bear to the power of delivery and oratorical action. Demosthenes was asked what was the first quality of the orator? "It is action," and the second? "Action," and the third? "Action." Massillon expressed the same judgment, when he replied, on a certain occasion, to one who asked him which he thought his best sermon, "That one which I know best." Why so, unless that which he knew the best was that which he could best deliver? We may be allowed to believe that these two great masters of the art exaggerated their opinion in order to make it more striking: but its foundation is perfectly true. It is not merely a true opinion; it is an experimental fact, which cannot be contested.

our race.

There is nothing in what we have been saying which should startle a pious soul. True piety does not forbid the use of the natural faculties which God has allotted to us; but commands us to use these for His glory, and for the good of What Bossuet so well said of God's imspired servants, applies with greater reason to all others: "True wisdom avails itself of all, and it is not the will of God that those whom he inspires should neglect human means, which also in some sort proceed from Him." The motto of the mystic morals is abstain; that of evangelic morals is consecrate. And surely the latter is above the former for to abstain, it is enough to distrust; but to consecrate, we must believe. Exercise yourselves, then, gentlemen, without scruple in the art of elocution and delivery; but let it be in a Christian spirit. Let the art of recitation be with you, not an end, but a means. If in your application to this exercise you have no higher aim than recitation itself, and those praises which the world lavishes on such as speak well, you are no longer a preacher; you are no longer even an orator; you are an actor. But if you cultivate elocution as a means of glorifying God and doing good to man, you fulfill an obligation; and the greater the zeal and labor which you bring to the task, the more may you implore with confidence that grace without which the most eloquent is but "a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal."

This labor is the more necessary, moreover, because the DIFFICULTY of the art which occupies our attention is equal to its importance. This is proved by experience those who recite well are few. There is, however, a distinction to be observed between the recitation of the actor, and that of the orator. The former is much more difficult than the latter; and good orators are not commonly great actors, at least in tragedy. Scarcely one appears in an age. For the actor has two things to do, of which the orator has but one. To the latter, it suffices to express the sentiments which he actually experiences; but the former must express the sentiments of another. Now, to express these, he must first make them his own; and this necessity which has no existence in

the case of the orator, demands of the actor a study altogether peculiar, and apparently constitutes the most difficult portion of his art. To transform one's self into a person altogether foreign; to become invested with his manners, character, passions, and language; and, nevertheless, to remain master of himself and with the mind free, since it would be a weakness in the actor to confound himself with his part, so far as to forget himself and his acting; this demands a prodigious faculty, and one which seems to depend on certain natural dispositions which are altogether peculiar.* It seems as if there were a separate organ for the dramatic art; and it has been remarked that illustrious actors have not always been men of commanding intellect. So that we may make the same distinction between the orator and the actor, which Cicero makes between the orator and the poet: nascuntur poetæ, fiunt oratores. We may thank God that we depend less on organization, and that this power of imagination is not indispensable to us: our task is, at the same time, more noble and less complicated. To communicate our thoughts and feelings in a suitable, just, and expressive manner, is all that we demand.

But how does it happen, then, that speakers, whose delivery is good, exist in no greater numbers? Leaving out of view forensic and parliamentary orators, how comes it that there are Christian preachers who sometimes pronounce their discourses without action, and even without just inflection, and this when neither the sincerity of their belief nor their interest in the subject can be called in question? There is the greater reason to be astonished at this, because the same men often manifest in animated conversation many of the very qualities which we miss in their pulpit exercises, so that they need nothing in order to make them excellent speakers, but to be themselves. It is a difficult question; but let us attempt its solution.

It must be borne in mind, in the first place, that there is a wide distinction between preaching and conversation, however grave, interesting, or animated. A discourse, in which it is attempted to develop one or more propositions, one person being sole speaker for an hour, before a numerous audience, has, and ought to have, something of continuity and elevation which does not belong to mere conversation. We are no longer in the sphere of simple nature. There must be some calculation of measures, management of voice, and strengthening of intonations; in a word, there must be self-observation; and where this begins, the speaker is no longer in that pure simplicity where nature displays and acts itself forth unreservedly. Preaching likewise demands certain powers, both physical and moral, which are not possessed by every one, and which are not required in conversation. The two cases, therefore, are not parallel; and this may suffice to show how the same persons may succeed in one and fail in the other.

This first difference, which is in the nature of things, produces another which pertains to the orator. In attempting to rise above the tone of conver

*Some curiosity will be felt, perhaps, to know in what great actors themselves have made their talent to consist. "What they call my talent," Talma somewhere says, "is perhaps nothing but an extreme facility in raising myself to sentiments which are not my own, but which I appropriate in imagination. During some hours I am able to live the life of others, and if it is not granted to me to resuscitate the personages of history with their earthly dress, I at least force their passions to rise and murmur within me."

sation, most preachers depart from it too much. They inflate their delivery, and declaim instead of speaking; and when the pompous enters, the natural departs. We must not, indeed, expect too much; but whether it be the influence of example, or traditionary bad taste, or the ease of a method in which capacity of lungs goes for labor of reflection and energy of sentiment, the fact is that there is scarcely one among us, who does not betray some leaven of declamation, or who preaches with perfect simplicity.

We may read, recite, or speak extempore. If we read, it is almost impossible to assume a tone entirely natural; either because the art of reading well is perhaps more difficult than that of speaking well, or because the preacher who reads, when he is supposed to be speaking, places himself thereby in a kind of false position, of which he must undergo the penalty. It will be better to rehearse after having committed to memory; the preacher speaks throughout after his manuscript, it is true, but he speaks, nevertheless. Where the speaker has prepared his thoughts and even his words, it is a matter which the auditor need not know, and which a good delivery can ordinarily conceal from those who are not themselves in the habit of speaking in public. The mind, the voice, the attitude, all are more free, and the delivery is far more natural. But can it be completely so? I do not know. Art may go very far, but it is art still; and there is a certain tone of semi-declamation, from which there is scarcely any escape; a tax, as it were, which must be paid to method; to that method which we are, however, far from condemning, and which seems to have been practised by some of the servants of God, in whom He has been most glorified. Finally, will it be possible to avoid the inconveniences just mentioned, and shall we certainly attain a simple delivery, by abandoning ourselves to extempore speaking? I believe, indeed, that this is the method in which one may hope for the best delivery; provided, always, that the speaker has so great a facility, or so complete a preparation, or, what is better, both at once, as to be freed from the necessity of a painful search for thoughts and words. Without this, it is the worst of all methods, for matter as well as for form. But even where one has received from nature, or acquired by practice a genuine facility, and has premeditated, with care, the concatenation and order of his ideas, and has even been aided by the pen (which is almost indispensable, in order to speak well), there will nevertheless always remain something of that constraint which arises from the research of what is to be said: and while the solicitude about mere words absorbs much of the mind's forces, the orator will hardly preserve freedom enough to secure, in all cases, the tones of nature. In this way simplicity will be injured by causes different from those which affect one who recites from memory, but scarcely less in degree. It is a fact, that with men who abandon themselves to extempore speaking, false and exaggerated intonations are not rare, at those moments when they are not perfectly free, and completely masters of their diction.

I have mentioned freedom of mind. It is this, more than all the rest, which brings the preacher into the natural position,.and, consequently, into the true intonation. If he could be perfectly at his ease, the greatest hindrance of a just and natural elocution would be removed. But it is this which is chiefly wanting, both in those who speak extemporaneously what has been meditate