accurately and readily as his attempt to give it expression in his own
language. It is this spiritual power, developed principally through the
intuitions and emotions, that gives psychic force to speaking, and which
more than logic, rhetoric, or learning itself enables the speaker to
influence and persuade men.

The minister as an interpreter of the highest spiritual truth should
bring to his work a thoroughly trained emotional nature and a cultivated
speaking voice. It is not sufficient that he state the truth with
clearness and force; he must proclaim it with such passionate enthusiasm
as powerfully to move his hearers. To express adequately the infinite
shades of spiritual truth, he must have the ability to play upon his
voice as upon a great cathedral organ, from "the soft lute of love" to
"the loud trumpet of war."

To assume that the study of the art of speaking will necessarily produce
consciousness of its principles while in the act of speaking in public,
is as unwarranted as to say that a knowledge of the rules of grammar,
rhetoric, or logic lead to artificiality and self-consciousness in the
teacher, writer, and thinker. There is a "mechanical expertness
preceding all art," as Goethe says, and this applies to the orator no
less than to the musician, the artist, the actor, and the litterateur.

Let the minister stand up for even five minutes each day, with chest and
abdomen well expanded, and pronounce aloud the long vowel sounds of the
English language, in various shades of force and feeling, and shortly he
will observe his voice developing in flexibility, resonance, and power.
For it should be remembered that the voice grows through use. Let the
minister cultivate, too, the habit of breathing exclusively through his
nose while in repose, fully and deeply from the abdomen, and he will