THE WORDS WE USE
Most of us write and speak quite differently; most of those who write out lectures use an altogether different style from when they write letters. And this is as it should be. Letters ought to be phrased in a conversational style which allows itself considerable liberty of construction: " I've " instead of " I have," sometimes, for example, as though the one who wrote were speaking to the one who reads. (Business letters are a case apart, using, until recently, a language which was all their own and was surely not English. Any business man who aspires to lecturing must leave his jargon at the office). Manuscripts intended for reading as essays, on the other hand, need a certain precision of grammatical form, and restrained elegance of phrasing, which would seem strained and artificial when spoken. Broadly, however we write out our material, we should be prepared to speak it as something less formal than an essay, something less familiar than a letter or the companionable chatter it replaces. There is no single path, and only experience and friendly criticism can point out the one most suited to one's self. So much depends on circumstances also; the size of the hall and of the audience (the bigger the more formal, as a general rule), and the composition of the latter.

We can be much more definite about our vocabulary. Generally speaking, any word which we need to look up in a dictionary, or which we suspect the audience would have to look up so as to understand it, should be regarded with the greatest suspicion. The best and highest we have to say may sometimes be difficult for the mind unaccustomed to it to grasp, but we can materially ease the difficulty by saying it in words that all can comprehend. The task we have, to bring assurance and conviction to the minds of our hearers can be most surely done with the simplest of language.14

We will, for example, say "God" rather than "The Deity," for the former carries a common meaning, and the latter is pedantic jargon. There are, of course, titles of the Creator of which "God'" in our Old Testament normally stands for only one, 15 but the titles of God can be discussed in their proper place without making them a reason for exchanging a common English word for an uncouth Latinized form of a Greek one.

In other respects, too, we will call a spade a spade unless there is sound reason not to. We live on the earth, not the " habitable "; the Proverbs concern Solomon, not " the wise man" ; a hungry man suffers from hunger, not " alimentiveness." We will be on the watch for well-worn phrases which too easily infect our speech, such as " the earth and man upon it " (when " the earth " will do all we ask), and too ready repetitions of " hearing ears and understanding hearts," or " in Whom we live and move and have our being, Whom no man hath seen nor can see and live," which are well-enough based in Scripture, but are generally employed t6 pad our speech, and fill in uncomfortable gaps while we think.

We will, in fine, be as natural as possible in the words we use, employing, not perhaps the looseness of our ordinary speech, but its naturalness and its ease of understanding. We will not try to be different people on the platform. We will not pose for admiration. True, our reading and the high matters we show forth may bring about an elegance and beauty of expression which will surprise ourselves, but these are not attained by taking thought. They grow, we know not how. Spiritual and cultural growth are alike in this. They come from being in the right soil, from drinking in the true rain from above; and they are unconscious. Conscious efforts to be above our audience by being for the moment above our natural selves will be as preposterous as the burlesque graces of the nou eaux riches, and as revealing (to our discomfiture) as the misplaced aspirates of the conventional society butler.

Sometimes it will hurt to adopt this discipline. There are " purple passages'" in the manuscript of our lectures which we burn to declaim, and it was hard counsel of the tutor who said to his pupil, " Read through your essay, pick out the passage which seems to you to be the best, and rewrite with that omitted." But the discipline is necessary. Merely " ornamental and pretty things "16 are superfluous; telling phrases are right in a telling setting, and if we can wed powerful words to searching truth we have done good service to the latter. Aphorisms are right in their right place, but we should see a clear and sufficient purpose before we use them.

With such a purpose we need not hesitate. Jesus's " whited sepulchres "17 compressed a world of biting truth into a single vivid metaphor of hidden corruption ; Milton's " blind mouths"18 did something to delineate the predatory leaders who devoured but would not shepherd. Paul's " clanging cymbal " spoke incomparably the hollow reverberations of a loveless eloquence.19 These pregnant passages are the spice to a message which is right in itself, but they spring unbidden to the pen which writes the message; they must not be conceived as literature and use the Gospel as a background for their display.

"In America, men are put to death by elocution."20 Thus is unconsciously summarized one of the greatest dangers of self-conscious speakers. Certainly we must wish to enunciate as plainly as we may, and convey our message with as few defects of speech as possible, but our self-consciousness can be the ruin of us. We have met speakers from time to time, whose endeavours to live down their dialect, or their natural diffidence in speech, have led them astray, and in whom elocution lessons have wrought havoc. We must then have admired with a great sorrow the laboured precision of their utterance, the artificial emphasis of their word-endings, the unlovely mouthings as their carefully sculptured phrases are turned out; and the pitiful lapses when something goes unaccountably wrong with the delicate machinery.

This is not to decry attempts to make the best of our abilities, and it is no necessary condemnation of elocution as such. It is possible, no doubt, for a speaker with a. proper sense of what he is about, to take lessons from people qualified to teach, and emerge refined from the process. It would be improper, therefore, for this book to condemn the practice out of hand. Nevertheless, the dangers are such that we must in duty express our view that more harm than good is likely to result from any general resort to this method of training.

In the first place, unless we are very clear as to which things come first, we are continually exposed to the sin of wishing to impress by how we speak, rather than with the substance of what we say. It is terribly tempting to be an orator first and a preacher afterwards. There may, indeed (and a warning against this was issued in Chapter II), be a temptation to exploit the sensitiveness of our audience to eloquence, in order to cover our defects of fact, or to bring conviction where we are not ourselves convinced. The speech of Mark Anthony21 is an example to follow, in its simplicity of wording and its effective use of refrain; but it is an example of what to avoid in the insincerity of its methods.

In the second, there is nothing to be ash med of in our native manner of speech. We are, however, always in danger of one of the opposing extremes, of being as broad as we may {from fear of seeming mincing}; and being as nicely refined as we can fashion (from distaste of being rustic). Each of these is unwise. Our audience will resent, properly, an assumption of airs we are not qualified to carry, and laugh at us when we lapse into our natural brogue; but it will appreciate a sane accuracy within the limits of our normal inflexions. It does not greatly matter if a Yorkshireman reveals his nativity with his characteristic pronunciation of (say), bucket but it matters a good deal if he shows his |; ignorance of standard pronunciation by speaking of " ball " " and " bash " for " bull " and " bush."

We will therefore speak naturally, without either aggressive broadness or mincing refinement. We will not imitate I; the mannerisms of other speakers consciously, or even their natural idiom (which would become a mannerism for us if we I did). Good reading, careful but not introspective listening, and the power and sweetness of the Word we have to preach, ill be allowed to form our speech.

Natural though we must be, however, we must not be slipshod. One of the biggest defects of our ordinary speech that we do not do justice to our vowels. There is an un-printable sound (nearest, perhaps, to that given to " a " in *' a book," " a pencil" and the like) which takes the place of most of the fuller vowels in our words. Denote it by * for convenience, and then think of the number of speakers and [readers who say J*roos*l*m (or, worse even, Jrooslm) when ' they mean Je-wo-sa-lem, with the " e " as in " egg," the " a " as in " glad," and the second " e " as strong as the first. (Imagine yourself singing the word in Anthem 4, " Pray for the peace of Jrooslm," as most of us say it, and the nature of the offence will become clearer. Indeed, our practice in singing is a good guide to how we ought to say a word, for it is usually impossible to ignore the value of vowels in hymn-singing as we do too readily in speech.

The warnings which have been issued were needful. But it is obvious that we can hope to benefit from sound advice, as well in this as in other aspects of our preaching. While, therefore, we deprecate the resort to elocution classes organized without the brotherhood, it is no doubt possible for us to benefit from the teaching of brethren qualified to instruct us. We are likely, in the main, to gain more from listening, and unconsciously adopting those things of which we approve, than we shall from undergoing deliberate training; but there must be many brethren whose matter is good, but whose presentation they know to be faulty, who may be bettered by wise instruction.

Brethren who have a bent in the direction of such teaching can do a useful work. Let the warnings against uniformity be continually with them as they teach, and let those who are taught by them exercise more than ordinary caution as they learn. Shun artificiality; be clear and deliberate in your utterance, but never adopt a manner of speech or gesture unless it comes naturally to you, and has been made a part of yourself.

One other matter closely concerns the way we use our voices-the " clergyman's throat " which too often cripples public speakers and school-teachers. No doubt there are people who are constitutionally more disposed to this affection than others, but it seems to be generally agreed by writers on public speaking that those who suffer have generally themselves to thank. The great speakers and preachers seem to have avoided it altogether, and that without the use of chemical preparations, lotions, pastilles, pellets and the like, which they condemn with one accord. This is no place to detail the remedies they do approve, but they all hinge on acquiring the ability to breathe deeply and fully; on speaking to the front of the mouth rather than in the throat; and on leaving the throat naturally loose as in ordinary conversation, rather than purposefully clenched so that the voice is forced out against unnecessary opposition. Water-drinking during an address is not approved of. And once again the verdict is that the most fitting use of the voice comes, not from cultivating it but from forgetting it: " The voice must be used as instinctively as a thrush uses his, and he knows nothing about his larynx and pharynx; he sings with ' the sweet strains of unpremeditated art '."21 This is true of trained and untrained voices. Training which leaves its scars will not do. Experience which enters into us is acceptable, but mere superficial graces are bad. If we preach with the purpose of preaching, letting ourselves be used as the vehicle of the message and thinking as little about ourselves as we may, the problem will become less on its own.