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 passions: 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]

God 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