“We can now easily understand why some preachers care too much for embellishment. They take a wrong view of their office, or at any rate are influenced by a wrong motive. They aim too much at entertaining, at gratifying the audience. They do not feel the seriousness of their work, the solemnity of their position. …
Let It Ebb and Flow
“Another serious and very common mistake is in the effort to maintain uniform energy throughout a discourse . . . In highly passionate speaking there must be variety, alteration” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 378).
Make the Spirit Come by Waving Your Arms
“Some speakers imagine that they must be energetic in style and manner even when it does not suit the subject, or does not accord with their actual feelings” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 377).
Needing a Good Set of Brakes
“Metaphors present to the orator an inexhaustible source of energetic expression. It is imagination that must produce them, and good taste that must regulate their use” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 374).
Cascading Copiousness
“While diffuseness is unfavorable to energy, there may be a profuseness . . . which is highly energetic. The former spreads sluggishly over a wide expanse, the latter pours onward in a rushing torrent” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 372).
Don’t Trail Off
“No syllable ought to end in a large number of unaccented syllables, as ‘comparable,’ ‘exquisitely,’ ‘agreeableness.’ It is best to end with a word which accents the last syllable, or any any rate to have the accent only one syllable from the end. In like matter, we must not close the sentence with a large …
Keeping It Punchy
“Anglo-Saxon words are often more forcible than the corresponding words of Latin origin. In some cases they are more specific, the Latin having furnished the general term. In other cases they have the power of association, having been connected in our minds from childhood with real objects and actions, while the Latin term represents only …
The Preacher’s Tachometer
“If a man has not force of character, a passionate soul, he will never be really eloquent” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 358).
A Preacher’s Task
“It is not enough for a speaker to say what the hearer may understand if he attends; the point is to arouse him, to put life into him, to make attention easy and pleasant, and inattention difficult” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 357).
Mental Markers
“In . . . extemporaneous speaking, it is practically better, though amounting to the same thing, to fix the mind on points, rather than on paragraphs” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 351).