06.14. Chapter 14: The Delivery Of A Sermon
Chapter 14 THE DELIVERY OF A SERMON IN PREVIOUS lectures we have spoken to you both on the preparation of sermons and the construction of a sermon; but when the sermon has been carefully prepared even to the last word, it remains only a manuscript. When it is fitly spoken, then, and only then, it becomes a discourse or sermon. Preparation, therefore, is important, but delivery no less so. A house may be completed to the last possible department, but until it is occupied it is not a home. So a sermon may be prepared meticulously, but it must be lodged in the hearts of the people to have value. You may have thoughts of the highest and most important character but, until they find expression, they are non-effective. I would say, therefore, that the effectual delivery of a sermon is no less important than its careful preparation. On this matter we must consider four points, each of which is too vital to be overlooked—THE METHOD, THE VOICE, THE GESTURES, and THE TERMINATION. THE METHOD
It is commonly supposed that there are three methods of delivery: (1) Reading, (2) Recitation, and (3) Extemporary; but we add a fourth, Composite.
Concerning the method of Reading: We do not favor it, and consider that it is without defense. However, it must not be forgotten that we do favor written sermons, and in our lecture on “The Construction of a Sermon” we have given the reasons.
Some ministers imagine that if a sermon is to be written in full, then in order to retain the value of careful thinking and exact expression, one must read it. But not sol You have already received full value on those points in the very act of their practice. When you come to the delivery, it will be improved by your previous thought and verbal expression.
Writing has much in its favor. Reading, from the pulpit, has little. On the contrary, there are serious objections to reading—the first of which is that it ties the eyes of the preacher too strictly to the manuscript. The psychological effect of preaching is, to no small extent, due to the preacher’s direct look at his audience in sermon delivery.
Again, reading lacks the warmth of free delivery, and it is liable to fall into monotony of tone, and become somnolent.
Still further, habitual reading makes a man afraid to undertake discourse without a manuscript, as some people are loathe to sing without both the words and notes before them; hence it unfits a man for sudden calls or important exigencies. There have been and still remain some effective preachers who read their sermons, but their number is limited; and such is the likelihood of failure that, for the average man, the risk is too great to be dared. The second method has been named Recitation, or repeating from memory the words of the manuscript. This method is rarely employed, and in our extensive acquaintance we have never known a pastor who remained for many years in one pulpit to use it. It can only be used, as a rule, by peripatetics. I heard recently a sermon that impressed me, at least, as being a perfect recitation. The language was so ornate and the quotations so well committed, and every sentence so perfectly polished, that it reminded one of the declamations of college days. The speaker was a college professor, and being connected with a school of importance and looked to as its chief advertiser, in all probability he would deliver that sermon fifty times in a year from as many different pulpits, and could afford, on that account, to commit it to memory, word for word. That process would be extremely burdensome for the pastor who is under the necessity of delivering two new sermons every week. The human memory, while a miracle of arrangement, is only in the rarest possible case competent to such a task. The evangelist may preach a sermon often enough for it to become a recitation; but he has this decided advantage—when he has mastered its last word, not by his first, but by his fortieth delivery, he has consequently reached a point where no mental effort is required to recall the exact phraseology. It comes by mere repetition; in other words, it amounts to an unconscious habit of intellect and so is freely spoken and makes no impression of declamation. The third method suggested, Extemporaneous, requires definition. The word itself would convey the impression that one was doing his thinking and his speech at the same time. In fact, we often hear it spoken of as “thinking on his feet,” vocalizing his thought; but, as a matter of fact, the average homiletician does not mean that at all. He means, as Dr. Broadus in his volume, The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, contends, “careful mental preparation, even to the point of thinking through every idea and even mentally phrasing it; but leaving the exact language which shall be voiced until the hour and place of delivery.”
There is very much to be said in favor of this method. It does habituate the minister to ready expression, and also gives him an opportunity to voice any new thought that should strike him, as he moves along in his discourse.
It requires of him less time, pain, and preparation than writing or dictation. Its deficiencies we have already referred to in discussing the construction of a sermon. We may, therefore, pass the matter with brief remarks.
It uniformly lacks in meticulous care of expression, such as characterizes writing or dictation. It leaves a man at the end of every sermon possessed only of what his memory retains; no manuscript deposit. It has little tendency to make for authorship.
Consequently, the extemporaneous preacher may be the most popular of pulpit orators, but his memory will seldom be immortal. It cannot be truthfully written of him as of the man who writes or dictates, ‘though dead, he yet speaketh.’ Our fourth suggestion is named by some homileticians the Composite method. It consists of careful writing or dictating the entire manuscript to its last word. Then the author reads over what he has said from three to six or eight times before he appears in the pulpit, and when the hour of preaching comes, he leaves the manuscript behind, and trusts to memory. In our judgment, this is the model method! It has all the advantages that the reader has, without the disadvantage of reading. It has all the advantages of the extemporaneous speaker, without the disadvantages of the extemporaneous speech, and consequently it becomes the homiletician’s best path to popularity and permanence. Hybrid com has become the rage in Minnesota and other states. This composite method might be regarded as hybrid. On one side it has its apparent careful preparation; and on the other, free delivery: and its product is a sermonic full measure! Harwood Pattison, in The Making of a Sermon (pages 33-78), has an excellent treatise on this method. But the delivery of a sermon is not a matter of method only. It involves other points of equal import. Chief among those is THE VOICE
Here men are not equally favored. Some by nature have a voice peculiarly adapted to public address; for instance, Chrysostom was called “The Golden-Mouthed.” Whitefield’s eloquence was ever the basis of complimentary remarks, and Charles Spurgeon’s tones were such that one author contends that is why his church could prosper with little music; they had music in abundance in the pastor’s tones. The human voice is one of God’s wonders. It is unlike anything known to bird or beast. The average animal is limited in range, and the average bird in note. The mocking bird has long been admired because he can imitate the sounds of his feathered fellows. Man’s peculiarity is that he can imitate any sound and is perfectly capable of producing notes unknown to the lower creation. This very fact, however, of variety in tone, while so wonderful, carries with it also certain perils. There are men who seem never to have passed through that stage of boy life that is called “change of voice,” which commonly comes with puberty. In other words, they carry into manhood the high key common to childhood, and it is a question whether that is a necessity or the result of indifference. I have in mind at the moment of this writing a young man, physically normal, preparing himself for the ministry, who, in public speech has yet a child-tone; but when he sings (being a musician), his voice is masculine—a clear indication that by an act of will power he could bring his speaking tones down and render them normal to his age. And I have in mind another man whose speaking voice is on too low a key, but who, when he sings, does so normally. I am fully convinced by the same act of will, he could, with practice, bring his voice up.
We are not contending at all that one cannot be an effective minister in spite of these faults. Robert Hall was well-nigh matchless, yet he is reputed to have had a weak voice. My companion in labor forty years ago, Dr. A. J. Frost, had a deep, guttural voice, and yet he was an effective minister. What we are advocating is that one should attempt to cultivate normal tones, so that his delivery be not detracted from by a peculiarity of intonation.
Modulation is quite essential! In the South where I grew up, a minister of fifty or sixty years ago, reaching the point of marked emotion in his address, would scream or howl at you. In the North where my lot was finally cast and most of my life has been spent, there is too great a tendency to modulation often approaching monotony.
It would be an excellent thing, now that it is possible, for every minister to listen to his own voice as reproduced on a phonograph. He would be very much surprised, as I was, to discover that he never has heard his voice as other people hear it. The tones are not as he supposed they were at all. That is because his tones are carried to him largely by the bones and nerves of the mouth and head, whereas they reach others by the tympanum. William Jennings Bryan’s voice on the phonograph is perfectly natural to me as I listened to it; but it was not so to him, if I may judge by my own experience, and also by the testimony of physicians who understand the scientific reason for this apparent difference. Consequently the deficiencies of a voice would be more easily apprehended, possibly more readily corrected, if one heard himself as others hear him, just as one’s conduct is improved when one sees himself ‘as others see him.’
Beyond question, voice-exercise, like the exercise of the muscles, tends to strengthen. I once inquired of Homer Hammontree the explanation of Tennessee’s contribution to great singers. I cited the fact that Charlie Alexander, Homer Hammontree, Homer Rodeheaver, Charlie Butler, and others of our most famous singers had come out of the mountains of Tennessee; and I expressed the thought that possibly it was the mountain spring-water, or something of that sort, that had contributed to their musical tones.
He laughingly said, “No, I have another, and I believe the correct explanation.”
I said, “What is it?”
He said, “It is hog-calling. Nearly every boy in the mountains has to call the hogs in for their feed, and it is a vocal exercise sufficiently regular and sufficiently extensive to strengthen the vocal chords, and I candidly believe that it has to do with the music for which Tennessee is famed.” In this connection it might be well to remember that in the Annual Hog-calling Contest held in Tennessee, it was reported in the public newspapers that where states corner on Tennessee, one man was reputed to have been heard in seven states. The explanation at which we smile is none the less scientifically suggestive! Vocal chords are unquestionably strengthened by constant exercise. I heard Caruso but once, and I watched the muscles in his throat and face, with fear that he would break a blood vessel; but I realized also the tremendous training through which those vocal chords had been put in order to make possible the marvelous and effective music. Such a strain on seldom-employed vocal chords would have meant a break in tone, and, possibly the bursting of blood vessels, but not so with those inured! The thing in which the musician surpasses is the thing in which the public speaker is compelled to be interested, because each of them has as his objective the conveying of thought in the most impressive manner.
Inflection is close akin to modulation!
Modulation looks to conscious control of the voice, while inflection is concerned with making it at once impressive, and yet restful. The peril of sermon-delivery is monotony. This occurs in consequence of two or three somewhat different things. One is an even tone. Scientifically it can be proved that if you are put in a strange place where there is a sound which has no variations, but is continuous, it will cause drowsiness and sleep. People often ask me how I manage to be well and sleep on trains as often as I do. To this I can answer, with utter truthfulness, “I sleep more soundly on a train than almost anywhere else. The motions and sounds of a train have in them little variety, and they lull me to sleep.” So does a monotonous preacher! But there is also another kind of monotony. It is the monotony of measured sentences —a declaration that requires a tone that rises and flies like quail for certain short distances, and then drops, to be followed by another of similar length and kindred termination! A speech made up after that manner is also inducive to drowsiness. It is a great thing to be able to whisper like a zephyr in one sentence and shake the mountains with thunderous tones in another; and the man who can do it, because the ideas expressed fit the method employed, is the orator about whom crowds gather!
Remember, then, to study inflection: but even inflection, apart from pronunciation, will fail. Let no man imagine that he can mouth his words, and at the same time hold the interest of the audience. There is not more than one singer in a thousand, if so large a proportion, that is famously effective; and if they are studied, it will be discovered that here is the chief fault in both solo and choral work; namely, the lack of clear enunciation and pronunciation. The average song rendered by the average singer is a vocal exercise, and little more! There are not enough words pronounced clearly to convert the music into a message. At this point Carlton Booth of Providence, R. I., and his brother Clayton of Northwestern Schools, are among America’s most unique soloists and instructors, because they add to good tone practically perfect pronunciation and enunciation. The failure among preachers to enunciate and pronounce every syllable involved in a word is not so signal, but it is altogether too common. It is simply too bad when one has gone to the pains of preparing a discourse, well worthy of delivery, not to deliver it so as to impress its every word upon the mind and heart of the auditor.
There is a further matter of first concern; namely, the reach of the voice. Where possible it should be to the last person present, e’en though he be a back-seat lover. Too many ministers disregard this matter and speak in the same tone whether in a small room with a hundred people or a large room with three thousand. Such is commonly fatal to desirable effects when the greater crowd is faced. If the speaker carefully and intelligently observes, he can very shortly tell whether everybody is getting what he says or not. To drum away for an hour, and have half a great audience hearing little or nothing, is worse than pathetic—it is pitiful and ruinous to one’s reputation. I never appear in a pulpit where a great audience must be addressed without studying carefully the reach of the first few sentences; and if I am not assured that it is to the remotest auditor, I lift the voice, both in tone and volume. ‘How shall they be saved except they hear?’ THE GESTURE
It is no sine qua non! There are preachers who do not need the gesture, and there are other preachers who will need it in youth, but will not require it in advanced years. However, in both cases, these are the exceptions and not the rule. If a man’s ideas are sufficiently good, his phraseology adequately felicitous, the sparkle of his eyes and the shine of his face illuminating, he can preach an entire sermon and aside from his lips, be almost motionless, and yet profoundly influence and attract great audiences. Such is preaching at its best. There is not more than one man in a hundred, if so great a proportion, who is equal to the gestureless sermon! With the average preacher, gestures are profitably employed. The same thought that is expressed in words may be emphasized by a proper gesture. For instance, when one is declaiming and employs a phrase like “wide as the ocean,” a straight out reach of both arms and hands emphasizes the thought. When one speaks of God’s thoughts above ours, as “heaven is high above the earth,” an upward point is appropriate; or when one refers to the depths of the sea, to point a finger downward is both natural and effective. Recently I quoted the last words of the great and godly missionary, Cookman: “Hallelujah, I’m sweeping through the gates.” The language itself would almost be tame without a gesture; the sweeping of the hand upward to indicate his soul’s translation.
There is such a thing, however, as monotony in gestures. Some people always employ the same ones; for instance, an uplifted finger to emphasize every point or a finger pointed straight out at the audience. That, as a monotonous tone, becomes a bore in the course of time.
Gestures, when employed, should be like the striking of a hammer on the head of a nail. It should drive the thought in, and while it is commonly exercised almost unconsciously to the speaker, it is too bad when it creates another impression than that naturally meant by the words. Our friend Homer Rodeheaver illustrates that as it affects singing and time beats, by telling the story of the fellow who was leading the congregation on “When the Roll is Called up Yonder,” and on the final sentence, “I’ll be there,” ended on the downward beat!
I heard recently a story of trouble between the rector and his choir. It had reached the stage where the choir solemnly filed into the loft, but when the time for singing came, they were as mute as oysters. Instantly the pastor, sensing their motive, stood up and announced the hymn for the moment, “Let Those Refuse to Sing, Who Never Knew our God,” with a gesture to the choir loft; and then, facing the audience with a sweep of his arm, said, “But children of the heavenly King may speak their joys abroad!”
It is true, as an author contends, that there are certain thoughts expressed better by gestures than by words. For instance, the fingers on the closed lips is more effective than, “Don’t speak.” Toward a child, outstretched arms mean more than, “Come here,” and the finger pointed to the door better says, “Leave this room,” than language could express. So in preaching; one must study whether speech or action best voices it, and when the two should be combined. The gesture is a natural accompaniment of energy! Vehement speakers commonly employ gestures. What Billy Sunday lacked in homiletical training, he made up by personal action. There is a section of every audience that demands action. Children love it; youth commonly admire it; and even men and women of advanced years are kept on the qui vive by its employment. Too bad when the preacher becomes a mere actor. It is not best when he is no actor at all. There are times when one can afford to race about the pulpit; but there are only exceptional instances in which a point being presented justifies and even calls for such motion. To employ gesture as mere appeals to athletic fans and as a possible pew-filler is hardly becoming the dignity of the office. The author remembers the story told by the late Dr. P. S. Henson, long pastor of the First Baptist Church of Chicago. In his early life, he was pastor in Philadelphia. In his vicinity was a liberal Congregational church, the preacher of which, expatiating on geology on Sunday nights, attracted a crowd by calling attention to Nature’s variety of rocks and infinity of thought. The congregation at the Baptist Church was none too good, and one of the officers complained to Dr. Henson, and asked if he could not get up something “that would equal or surpass the geology survey.” Whereupon Dr. Henson said, “Yes, I can beat him at it! In my boyhood in Virginia I stood on my head for fifteen minutes at a time without wavering. According to modern conception, that is a sufficient length for a sermon. You do the advertising and inform the public that I will preach a sermon for fifteen minutes, standing on my head, and I will do the rest, and the place will be packed.” The officer was sensible enough to see the point, and said, “Oh, Dr. Henson, I’m off! Go on and preach the gospel, and if the people do not come in crowds, many will continue to come long after the geological show across the way has faded.”
Certainly physical stunts in the pulpit should at least be kept to sacred uses, and should comport with their sacred purposes. THE TERMINATION The introduction to a sermon is important. Vastly more so is its termination! In previous chapters we have emphasized the idea that a sermon should end with the use of its most effective illustration, or the quotation from a fit poem and in a climax of interest. However, at this time I am speaking particularly of the way of terminating a sermon.
It should not be dubious or long drawn out. Too often preachers, accustomed to excessive length of sermon, become concerned lest their audience should not stay with them all the way; and so they falsely encourage hope of continued interest by saying, “I come now to my last point,” which not infrequently tends to revive interest and excite expectation of a speedy end! But disappointment may await the lingering five minutes more, and the same preacher, with identically the same motive, says, “And now brethren, permit me a further remark . . . etc., etc.”!
Those who think this will be the last one are somewhat amused when three minutes later the minister adds, “And in conclusion this thought. . . .” That ought to mean that the end is near—immediate; it often signifies only that it is imminent, likely to appear at any time, but possibly still remote. And there are instances where even after all these semi-promises, a preacher dares to say, “If you will but indulge me a few minutes more, I must get before you this idea,” by which time the audience has lost hope, and the preacher has also lost his audience. The termination of his sermon should be sudden; all the better if unexpected, without promise or even a hint that you are coming to the end; but always at the climax of interest.
It is far better to have your audience mentally say, “Oh, I wish he had gone on!” and there are few compliments that exceed that received when people stream down to the front and say they could gladly have listened to you another half hour. When you are through, quit!
Note: If one wishes to pursue the subject of delivery more fully, few men have so completely and sanely presented it as Dr. Harwood Pattison in his The Making of a Sermon. See pages 289-350.