The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1905-05-14
os ANGELES. Cal. May in this /

7 Os ANGELES. Cal, May In TINS
sermon the preacher, while appre-
IL cating at their true value the
higher flights of oratory and the famous
triumphs of great speakers. shows how
even the humblest may be effective in
the eloquence of Christian conversation
and example. The text is John vii 49,
Never man spake like this man."
What is true oratory? Mere conjura-
tion, bewitchery. enehantment. mysti-
cism, mesmerism or animal magnetism
mere transitory magic spell with which
great public speaker is able to hypno-
tie an audience for an evening or for a
night alone? Is it a few poetic garlands
made up of pretty wax flowers which
never grew in a garden, which never
! caught the incense laden breath of the
SOIL which cannot stand the light OF the
day and which, like the moon flowers,
melt away as soon as the morning sun
has touched their painted cheeks? Is 1t
a mere galvanic shock which can make a
human corpse tremble for a little while
and even lift a hand or shake a head and
yet a current which can never bring the
dead body back to life? Is it mere mag
netic needle which will momentarily
move an iron heart, as many magnetic
needles can make nails and screws stand
upon their heads for a few seconds and
then fall back cold, motionless screws
and nails as soon as their lifting touch
is taken away? Oh, no: true oratory is
more than that.
e. Of nOtP0t
gifts if not the most potent gift. with
which God has endowed man. 1t is mighty
for good or mighty for evil. 1t is So
cial factor which creates and molds and
upbuilds or it is social factor which
undermnes and destroys and wrecks
If it were possible for me to believe in
the doctrine of the transmigration OF
souls, then | would believe in this doc
trine in reference to oratory. With mere
words skilful orator can have his spirit
incarnated in the minds and the hearts
of his hearers With mere words not only
can the true orator compel his fellow
countrymen to think as he thinks, but to
do as he would have them do and as he
himself wants to do.
The gift of true oratory is second in
power to no other human gift An over
statement is this? I think not. Andrew
Fletcher, the great English dramatist and
poet once said: II believe II a man were
permitted to make all the ballads of a
country he need not care who should
make its laws" A true orator has all
the power of the sweet singer of the
fields. He has more than that. In his
own realm he has the power of personal
touch. He has the influence of the flash
ing eye, of the quivering lip, of the power
which comes from a soul on fire. which
reaches forth and as a whirlwind drives
opposition before him or consumes them
as in a mighty conflagration. If the pen
be mghtier than the sword. then the
orators scepter is greater than that OF
the warriors or the writer's. The De-
mosthenean tongue compelled mems ears
to hear what his pen could not compel
his auditors eyes to read. Great Is the
eloquent tongue of silver speech.
Beecher"s Services as Orator.
Great, if not the greatest of all gifts
with which God has endowed man is or
atory Who but one like Henry Ward
Beecher could have conquered England
during the dark days of 1863? Then the
British factories had their cotton supply
cut off by northern ships blockading the
southern ports. British capitalists were
calling out. "The American war must
stop or British employees must starve and
the British merchants will have no goods
to SELL Not only that, but the peerage
or the landowners almost to man hated
our republican form of government. They
believed the American Congress was
perpetual menace to British interests.
Beeeher accomplished with his tongue
what an invading army of 100000 men
could not have accomplished with bay
onets. Alone he faced audience after au-
dience, bitter in their hatred toward him
and his people He faced enemies. He
left friends. He faced his countrys CEN
sors. He left behind him his country's
applauders. Henry Ward Beecher won
this victory for his country by the tongue,
and the tongue alone.
Great is the power Of oratory and ora
tors But if it is great in the present age
how much greater must 1t have been in
the times of the ancientsi Then the
modern printing press had not yet been
born, and the human mind could only
appeal to the human mind through the
influence of the human tongue. But,
though the generations preceding Christ
sat at the feet of some of the greatest
orators who ever lived, though Pericles
and Lysias and Lycurgus and Eschines
had won their marvellous triumphs in old
Athens, though the mighty Roman ora
tors had lived and, like Marcus Tullius
Cicero, had hurled their verbal thunder
bolts yet when Jesus began to speak
every one of his auditors intuitively felt
that a new power of oratory had been
DofH lie WOFuS VI my text pioNe II.
With one accord Christ's hearers said,
Never man spake like this man."
SubImest Form of Oratory.
Why is gospel oratory the sublmest
form of oratory? Why does gospel speech
offer to man the greatest opportunities
for the development of the true and no.
Bile orators gifts? The true gospel ora
tors message is the mightiest of all
messages. 1t furnishes the speaker with
the mightiest of all themes. 1t cradles its
thoughts, not like Moses upon the waters
of river Nile, but by the shores of the
great moaning seas of the enternitles. AS
a charioteer 1t harnesses to it's verbal
chariots chargers which have eyes all
seeing ears all hearing, hoofs so swift
that their speed is swift as thought. 1t
deals with infinitesmals only as they are
essential parts of great nfnties. 1t halts
not Time at the grave. 1t makes Time.
as a Eugene Sues Wandering Jew, move
on and on and on and never die It's
trumpet Is the voice of the eternities.
God, heaven, Immortality. resurrection,
ascension. heaven, hell, eternity, redemp-
ton, salvation, eternal coronation eternal
suffering, are its mighty subjects. Like
the meanings of the mighty deep, it's
voice comes reverberating down the halls
of the past ages Like the echoes which
are tossed from hillside to hillside up
among the Alpine crags,. its hopes go
echoing down the centuries upon CEN
turtles and the millenniums upon millen-
NUNS to come. Its themes are the might
lest of all themes. No subject in all the
realm of thought is as great as that which