1.F 02. Various Vocal Elements

Various Vocal Elements.

If a man can be taught in the beginning of his ministry something about suppleness of voice and the method of using it, it is very much to his advantage. For example, I have known scores of preachers who had not the slightest knowledge of the explosive tones of the voice. Now and then a man falls into it “by nature,” as it is said; that is, he stumbles into it accidentally. But the acquired power of raising the voice at will in its ordinary range, then explosively, and again in its higher keys, and the knowledge of its possibilities under these different phases, will be very helpful. It will help the preacher to spare both himself and his people. It will help him to accomplish results almost unconsciously, when it has become a habit, that could not be gained in any other way.

There are a great many effects in public speaking that you must fall into the conversational tone to make. Every man ought to know the charm there is in that tone, and especially when using the vernacular or idiomatic English phrases. I have known a great many most admirable preachers who lost almost all real sympathetic hold upon their congregations because they were too literary, too periphrastic, and too scholastic in their diction. They always preferred to use large language, rather than good Saxon English. But let me tell you, there is a subtle charm in the use of plain language that pleases people, they scarcely know why. It gives bell-notes which ring out suggestions to the popular heart. There are words that men have heard when boys at home, around the hearth and the table, words that are full of father and of mother, and full of common and domestic life. Those are the words that afterward, when brought into your discourse, will produce a strong influence on your auditors, giving an element of success; words which will have an effect that your hearers themselves cannot understand. For, after all, simple language is loaded down and stained through with the best testimonies and memories of life. Now, being sure that your theme is one of interest, and worked out with thought, if you take language of that kind, and use it in colloquial or familiar phrases, you must adapt to it a quiet and natural inflection of voice, for almost all the sympathetic part of the voice is in the lower tones and in a conversational strain, and you will evoke a power that is triumphant in reaching the heart, and in making your labours successful among the multitudes. But there is a great deal besides that. Where you are not enforcing anything, but are persuading or encouraging men, you will find your work very difficult if you speak in a loud tone of voice. You may fire an audience with a loud voice, but if you wish to draw them into sympathy and to win them by persuasion, and are near enough for them to feel your magnetism and see your eye, so that you need not have to strain your voice, you must talk to them as a father would talk to his child. You will draw them, and will gain their assent to your propositions, when you could do it in no other way, and certainly not by shouting. On the other hand, where you arc in eager exhortation, or speaking on public topics, where your theme calls you to denunciation, to invective, or anything of that kind, the sharp and ringing tones that belong to the upper register are sometimes well nigh omnipotent. There are cases in which, by a single explosive tone, a man will drive home a thought as a hammer drives a nail; and there is no escape from it. I recollect, on one occasion, to have heard Dr. Humphrey, President of Amherst College, who certainly was not a rhetorician, speaking in respect to the treatment of the Indians. He used one of the most provincial of provincialisms, yet it came with an explosive tone that fastened it in my memory; and not only that, but it gave an impulse to my whole life, I might say, and affected me in my whole course and labour as a reformer.

It was the effect of but a single word. He had been describing the shameful manner in which our government had broken treaties with the Indians in Florida and Georgia, under the influence of Southern statesmanship. He went on saying what was just and what was right, and came to the discussion of some critical point of policy which had been proposed, when he suddenly ceased his argument, and exclaimed, “ The voice of the people will be lifted up, and they shall say to the government, YOU SHAN’T!” Now, “ shan’t” is not very good English, but it is provincial, colloquial, and very familiar to every boy. It carried a home feeling with it, and we all knew what it meant. He let it out like a bullet, and the whole chapel was hushed for the moment; and then the rustle followed which showed that the shot had struck. It has remained in my memory ever since.