[Side note: _Movere_]

What is the main weapon of the orator? Demosthenes answers--
"Action." Mr. Gladstone--"Earnestness." But St. Francis Borgia
probably explains what both mean when he advises us to preach
with an evidence of conviction that makes it clear to the
audience you are prepared to lay down your life at the foot of
the pulpit stairs for the truth of what you say.

Without this deep-seated conviction and the enthusiasm that flows
from it, your fire is but painted fire, your thunder the thunder
of the stage. This living earnestness is the spark that illumines
and vitalizes all. Without it the best built sermon is but a
painted corpse; but when the soul gleams forth in the flashing
eye and quivering lip, waves of unseen fire are issuing with
every sentence, and arrows of light silently piercing every
heart. The most stubborn prejudices are forced to melt and the
most depraved wills are swept on the crest of the grand tidal
wave, slowly gathering from the start; but when the preacher
forgets himself and his surroundings, flings self-consciousness
away, goes outside himself, pouring the hot tide from his own
glowing heart, till every flash of his eye and every wave of his
hand becomes a palpitating thought, then his audience surrender;
their hearts are in the hollow of his hand, wax to receive any
impression; their wills can be braced and lifted to the sublimest
heights of heroism--this is triumph.

[Side note: O'Connell]

It is said that the great mastery O'Connell exercised over the