



Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









                                ORATORY
                          SACRED AND SECULAR:
                                OR, THE
                        Extemporaneous Speaker,
                                  WITH
           SKETCHES OF THE MOST EMINENT SPEAKERS OF ALL AGES


                          BY WILLIAM PITTENGER,
                    Author of “Daring and Suffering.”

                 _INTRODUCTION BY HON. JOHN A. BINGHAM_,
                                   AND
                                _APPENDIX_
 CONTAINING A “CHAIRMAN’S GUIDE” FOR CONDUCTING PUBLIC MEETINGS ACCORDING
                    TO THE BEST PARLIAMENTARY MODELS.

                                New York:
                SAMUEL R. WELLS, PUBLISHER, 389 BROADWAY.
                                  1869.




        Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868,
                          By SAMUEL R. WELLS.
 In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for
                   the Southern District of New York.


      EDWARD O. JENKINS,
   PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER,
   20 North William Street.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                PREFACE.


When we first began to speak in public, we felt the need of a manual
that would point out the hindrances likely to be met with, and serve as
a guide to self-improvement. Such help would have prevented many
difficult and painful experiences, and have rendered our progress in the
delightful art of coining thought into words more easy and rapid. In the
following pages we give the result of thought and observations in this
field, and trust it will benefit those who are now in the position we
were then.

We have freely availed ourself of the labor of others, and would
especially acknowledge the valuable assistance derived from the writings
of Bautain, Stevens and Holyoake. Yet the following work, with whatever
merit or demerit it may possess, is original in both thought and
arrangement.

We have treated general preparation with more than ordinary fullness,
for although often neglected, it is the necessary basis upon which all
special preparation rests.

As the numerous varieties of speech differ in comparatively few
particulars, we have treated one of the most common—that of preaching—in
detail, with only such brief notices of other forms as will direct the
student in applying general principles to the branch of oratory that
engages his attention.

We are not vain enough to believe that the modes of culture and
preparation pointed out in the following pages are invariably the best,
but they are such as we have found useful, and to the thoughtful mind
may suggest others still more valuable.




                               CONTENTS.


 PREFACE.—Objects of the Work stated                                   3

 INTRODUCTION—By Hon. JOHN A. BINGHAM, Member of Congress              7


                    =PART I.=—_GENERAL PREPARATIONS._


                               CHAPTER I.

 THE WRITTEN AND EXTEMPORE DISCOURSE COMPARED—Illustrative Examples   13


                               CHAPTER II.

 PREREQUISITES—Intellectual Competency; Strength of Body; Command of
   Language; Courage; Firmness; Self-reliance                         18


                              CHAPTER III.

 BASIS OF SPEECH—Thought and Emotion; Heart Cultivation; Earnestness  27


                               CHAPTER IV.

 ACQUIREMENTS—General Knowledge; of Bible; of Theology; of Men;
   Method by which such Knowledge may be obtained                     35


                               CHAPTER V.

 CULTIVATION—Imagination; Language; Voice; Gesture; Confidence;
   References to Distinguished Orators and Writers.                   42


                         =PART II.=—_A SERMON._


                               CHAPTER I.

 THE FOUNDATION FOR A PREACHER—Subject; Object; Text; Hints to Young
   Preachers                                                          69


                               CHAPTER II.

 THE PLAN—Gathering Thought; Arranging; Committing; Practical
   Suggestions; Use of Notes                                          80


                              CHAPTER III.

 PRELIMINARIES FOR PREACHING—Fear; Vigor; Opening Exercises;
   Requisites for a Successful Discourse                              96


                               CHAPTER IV.

 THE DIVISIONS—Introduction, Difficulties in Opening; Discussion,
   Simplicity and Directness; Conclusion                             104


                               CHAPTER V.

 AFTER CONSIDERATIONS—Success; Rest; Improvement; Practical
   Suggestions                                                       115


                     =PART III.=—_SECULAR ORATORY._


                               CHAPTER I.

 INSTRUCTIVE ADDRESS—Fields of Oratory; Oral Teaching; Lecturing     123


                               CHAPTER II.

 MISCELLANEOUS ADDRESS—Deliberative; Legal; Popular; Controversial;
   the Statesman; the Lawyer; the Lecturer; the Orator               127


                               =PART IV.=

 EMINENT SPEAKERS DESCRIBED—St. Augustine; Luther; Lord Chatham;
   William Pitt; Edmund Burke; Mirabeau; Patrick Henry; George
   Whitefield; John Wesley; Sidney Smith; F. W. Robertson; Henry
   Clay; Henry B. Bascom; John Summerfield; C. H. Spurgeon; Henry
   Ward Beecher; Anna E. Dickinson; John A. Bingham; William E.
   Gladstone; Matthew Simpson; Wendell Phillips; John P. Durbin;
   Newman Hall, and others                                           133


                               =APPENDIX.=

 THE CHAIRMAN’S GUIDE—How to Organize and Conduct Public Meetings
   and Debating Clubs in Parliamentary style                         199

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          INTRODUCTORY LETTER.


 REV. WM. PITTENGER:                       CADIZ, O., _19th Nov., 1867_.

DEAR SIR,—I thank you for calling my attention to your forthcoming work
on Extemporaneous Speaking. Unwritten speech is, in my judgment, the
more efficient method of public speaking, because it is the natural
method. The written essay, says an eminent critic of antiquity, “is not
a speech, unless you choose to call epistles speeches.” A cultivated
man, fully possessed of all the facts which relate to the subject of
which he would speak, who cannot clearly express himself without first
memorizing word for word his written preparation, can scarcely be called
a public speaker, whatever may be his capacity as a writer or reader.
The speaker who clothes his thoughts at the moment of utterance, and in
the presence of his hearers, will illustrate by his speech the admirable
saying of Seneca: “Fit words better than fine ones.”

It is not my purpose to enter upon any inquiry touching the gifts,
culture and practice necessary to make a powerful and successful
speaker. It is conceded that in the art of public speaking, as in all
other arts, there is no excellence without great labor. Neither is it
the intent of the writer to suggest the possibility of speaking
efficiently without the careful culture of voice and manner, of
intellect and heart, an exact knowledge of the subject, and a careful
arrangement, with or without writing, of all the facts and statements
involved in the discussion. Lord Brougham has said that a speech written
before delivery is regarded as something almost ridiculous; may we not
add, that a speech made without previous reflection or an accurate
knowledge of the subject, would be regarded as a mere tinkling cymbal. I
intend no depreciation of the elaborate written essay read for the
instruction or amusement of an assembly; but claim that the essay, read,
or recited from memory, is not speech, nor can it supply the place of
natural effective speech. The essay delivered is but the echo of the
dead past, the speech is the utterance of the living present. The
delivery of the essay is the formal act of memory, the delivery of the
unwritten speech the living act of intellect and heart. The difference
between the two is known and felt of all men. To all this it may be
answered that the ancient speakers, whose fame still survives, carefully
elaborated their speeches before delivery. The fact is admitted with the
further statement, that many of the speeches of the ancient orators
never were delivered at all. Five of the seven orations of Cicero
against Verres were never spoken, neither was the second Philippic
against Mark Antony, nor the reported defence of Milo. We admit that the
ancient speakers wrote much and practised much, and we would commend
their example, in all, save a formal recital of written preparations.
There is nothing in all that has come to us concerning ancient oratory,
which by any means proves that to be effective in speech, what is to be
said should be first written and memorized; there is much that shows,
that to enable one to express his own thoughts clearly and forcibly,
reflection, culture and practice are essential.

Lord Brougham, remarking on the habit of writing speeches, says: “That a
speech written before delivery is something anomalous, and a speech
intended to have been spoken is a kind of byword for something laughable
in itself, as describing an incongruous existence.” This distinguished
man, in his careful consideration of this subject, says: “We can hardly
assign any limits to the effects of great practise in giving a power of
extempore composition,” and notices that it is recorded of Demosthenes,
that when, upon some rare occasions, he trusted to the feeling of the
hour, and spoke off-hand, “his eloquence was more spirited and bold, and
he seemed sometimes to speak from a supernatural impulse.” If this be
true of the great Athenian who notoriously would not, if he could avoid
it, trust to the inspiration of the moment, and who for want of a
prepared speech, we are told by Æschines, failed before Philip,—might it
not be inferred that one practised in speaking, would utter his thoughts
with more spirit and power when not restrained by a written preparation
and fettered by its formal recital?

Did not Fox often, in the Parliament, achieve the highest results of
speech without previous written preparation; and is it not a fact never
to be questioned, that the wonderful speech of Webster, in reply to
Hayne, was unwritten?

In his admirable lecture on Eloquence, Mr. Emerson says: “Eloquence that
so astonishes, is only the exaggeration of a talent that is universal.
All men are competitors in this art. * * A man of this talent finds
himself cold in private company, and proves himself a heavy companion;
but give him a commanding occasion, and the inspiration of a great
multitude, and he surprises us by new and unlooked for powers.” * *

Indeed, there is in this lecture of Mr. Emerson, in few words, much to
sustain your theory. He says, “the word eloquence strictly means
out-speaking; the main power, sentiment—the essential fact is heat, the
heat which comes of sincerity. Speak what you know and believe, and are
personally answerable for. This goes by weight and measure, like
everything else in the universe. A man to be eloquent must have faith in
his subject, and must have accurate knowledge of that subject. * * The
author of power—he is the great man who always makes a divine
impression, a sentiment more powerful in the heart than love of country,
and gives perceptions and feelings far beyond the limits of thought.
Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into a language perfectly
intelligible to the person to whom you speak. Such a practical
conversion of truth, written in God’s language, is one of the most
beautiful weapons forged in the shop of the Divine Artificer. God and
Nature are altogether sincere, and art should be as sincere.” How can
sincerity be fully attained in the great art of public speech, if every
word to be uttered must be previously written down in the closet, and
memorized and recited? Was not Lord Brougham right in saying a speech
written before delivery is inconsistent with the inspiration of the
moment, and the feelings under which the orator is always supposed to
speak? What feelings? The felt-conviction of the truth of what he has to
say. What inspiration? The inspiration which, at the moment, clothes and
expresses the honest thought in appropriate words.

Surely the living voice, rightly cultivated, and rightly employed, is a
power in the world, and to condemn you for calling attention to what you
believe to the most efficient method of human speech, would be one of
those decisions of ignorant arrogance which it costs no labor and needs
no intellect to pronounce.

Is not the man who well and truthfully speaks his own thoughts, as
Shakspeare and Bacon wrote, in some sense their peer? Is not the mere
reciter of their words, but their shadow?

It is said of Plato, that he poured forth the flood of his eloquence as
by inspiration, and that, had the Father of the gods spoken in Greek, he
would have used none other language than Plato’s; and yet this master of
language takes pains, in reporting the apology of Socrates on trial for
his life, to represent him as saying that it would not become him to
speak “studied terms and expressions, but only the truth expressed in
the plainest language.” I quote the words of Socrates as given by Plato:

“Among the false statements which my accusers made, there was one at
which I especially marveled, namely when they warned you to take care
not to be led astray by me, inasmuch as I was a powerful speaker. It did
appear to me supremely audacious in them to make such an assertion,
Which must immediately afterwards be disproved by the fact; for you will
see that I have no skill in speaking, unless they call a man a powerful
speaker because he says what is true. If they mean this, I certainly
must allow that I am a speaker of a very different kind from them; for
they, as I have said, have not spoken a word of truth; from me you shall
hear the whole truth; and that not clothed in ornate sentences with
studied terms and expressions; you will have from me plain facts
expressed in the plainest language. Indeed, Athenians, it would ill
become me at my age to come before you with a studied discourse like a
boy. And there is one thing, O Athenians, which I must beg and entreat
of you: if I use, in my defense, the same terms which I have been
accustomed to use in the market-place and in the shops where most of you
have heard me talking, do not wonder at that, nor take offence. For this
is the fact, I now enter a court of justice for the first time, though I
am more than seventy years old; I am, therefore, altogether strange to
the kind of language used here; and therefore excuse me, as if I really
were a stranger, if I speak to you in that tone and in that manner in
which I have been brought up. I ask you a thing which is, I think,
reasonable, that you take no account of the manner of my address to
you—it might be better, it might be worse, perhaps—but to consider this,
to attend to this, whether I say what is right or not, for that is the
virtue of the judge, as to speak truly is the virtue of the advocate.”

No matter if the speech be not clothed in ornate sentences with studied
terms, it is the virtue of the judge to consider whether the speech is
right, as to speak truly is the virtue of the advocate.

It is only, it seems to me, when men speak wisely, truly and naturally,
that the full significance of Quintillian’s words can be realized: “May
I perish, if the all-powerful Creator of nature and the Architect of
this world has impressed man with any character which so eminently
distinguishes him as the faculty of speech.” Let him who would use this
faculty effectively, and attain to that great power which rules the
minds of men, and moves the passions and affections of the soul, see to
it, that he speaks what he knows and believes, plainly and directly from
the heart to the heart.

                                              Very truly your friend,
                                                        JOHN A. BINGHAM.




                                PART I.
                          GENERAL PREPARATION.




                               CHAPTER I.
             THE WRITTEN AND EXTEMPORE DISCOURSE COMPARED.


The special object of the following pages is to show the manner and
requirements of extempore preaching. But as this differs from other
methods of speech in its objects rather than in its external qualities,
many of the thoughts we present will apply as well to the bar and forum
as to the sacred desk.

There is need that this subject should be enforced, particularly on the
ministry. A growing desire is manifested to give up plain, direct
speech, and indulge in the ease and certainty of written sermons. Young
men find themselves in places where it requires unwearied exertion to
sustain their reputation, and satisfy the demands of a cultivated
