their endeavor to avoid the dramatic and sensational, they have refined
and subdued many of their most natural and effective means of
expression. The function of preaching is not only to impart, but to
persuade; and persuasion demands something more than an easy
conversational style, an intellectual statement of facts, or the reading
of a written message. The speaker must show in face, in eye, in arm, in
the whole animated man, that he, himself, is moved, before he can hope
successfully to persuade and inspire others.

The modified movements of ordinary conversation do not fulfil all the
requirements of the preacher. These are necessary and adequate for the
groundwork of the sermon, but for the supreme heights of passionate
appeal, when the soul of the preacher would, as it were, leap from its
body in the endeavor to reach men, there must be intensified life and
action--dramatic action.

It is difficult to conceive of a greater tribute to a public advocate
than that paid to Wendell Phillips by George William Curtis:

"The divine energy of his conviction utterly possest him, and his

'Pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say his body thought.'"

Poise is power, and reserve and repression are parts of the dignified
office of the preacher, but carried too far may degenerate into weak and
unproductive effort. Perfection of English style, rhetorical floridness,
and profundity of thought will never wholly make up for lack of
appropriate action in the work of persuading men.