A preacher may spend too much time in study and solitude. If he does he
will soon realize a distinct loss through lack of social intercourse
with his fellow men. The faculties most needed in pulpit preaching are
those very powers that are so largely exercised in ordinary
conversation. The ability to think quickly, to marshal facts and
arguments, to introduce a vivid story or illustration, to parry and
thrust as is sometimes needed to hold one's own ground, and the general
mental activity aroused in conversation, all tend to produce an
interesting, vivacious, and forceful style in public speaking.
We should not underestimate the value of meditation and silence to the
public speaker. These are necessary for original and profound thinking,
for the cultivation of the imagination, and for the accumulation of
thought. But conversation offers an immediate outlet for this stored-up
knowledge, testing it as a finished product in expression, and
projecting it into life and reality by all the resources of voice and
feeling. This exercise is as necessary to the mind as physical exercise
is to the body. Indeed, a full mind demands this relief in expression,
lest the strain become too great.
The daily newspaper and the magazines should not be allowed to usurp the
place of conversation. If the art of talking is rapidly dying out, as
some assert, we should do our share to revive it. We may not again have
the wit and repartee, the brilliant intellectual combats of those other
days, but we can at least each have a cultivated speaking-voice, an
interesting manner of expressing our ideas in conversation, and a
refined pronunciation of our mother tongue.
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