THE LAW OF SYMPATHY.

Mr. Beecher, who leads the American pulpit, was requested some time. since to meet a number of distinguished clergymen of different denominations from various parts of the country, and give his views on preaching. In complying with this request he enumerated three things as essential to effective and successful preaching: Conviction, earnestness, and sympathy. Sympathy, aside from having reference to our love for men in a state of sin and wretchedness, he explained also as including the conditions under which the preacher is to express his sympathy when large masses of men are brought within his reach.

Practically, if not scientifically, wherever public speaking has been a marked element in civilization, this correspondence between the speaker and his hearers, the adjustment of the two to the laws of sympathy and harmony, has been enforced. It was true in the Greek agora, the Roman forum, is true at the English hustings, and on the American stump. Take this latter. For example, the people are to be addressed upon men and measures of the day; in the Southern and Western States this is usually done in the open air, the speaker occupya platform of sufficient height to give him an easy view of his hearers, and they of him. Behind him, as a background,

ing

sit the more prominent men of the occasion, below him is a sea of human faces sweeping close home to the stand, the spontaneous way in which an audience adjusts itself when left to its own momentum. The individual units tend together by natural impulse.

When now it becomes necessary to enclose audiences within walls, the chief aim, if possible, should be to preserve the conditions of this spontaneous arrangement. Accordingly, audience chambers should be so constructed as to bring the speaker and hearer into immediate possession of each other. In certain kinds of halls this has generally been secured, theaters leading the way, and furnishing the model halls, bringing every part of the audience into direct and near relation

with the stage, by projecting the audience upward in easy tiers, and not outward upon a single plain, and this is a necessity imposed not more to accommodate the greater number, than to hold that greater number by a law which binds the actor and hearer together. For what interest can be maintained in a speaker who can not be heard. But the theater, which the chronic belief of many good people considers the devil's preaching place, falls into no such mistakes. For there is not a theater in this broad land that is not a magnificently superb place to speak and hear in. "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

Now, then, let us take a glance at our churches, more numerous than theaters, and which should have a correspondingly wide influence. They are places to worship God in, but in that worship is one part which depends singularly upon circumstances for its best success and effectiveness. This is the sermon addressed to men on the highest interests of life. In a matter so vital, no principle should be violated which plays a conspicuous part in facilitating the preacher's power and effectiveness, and giving him easy control over his hearers. What are the facts? Are our churches, as a general thing, model halls to speak and to hear in? And should not places which are used fifty-two days in the year for public addresses be model halls? As a rule, they are defective in this respect, sometimes from want of knowledge, sometimes from the demands of a vicious church architecture. A people, for example, build a church. Their ideas are extravagant, and not in the best taste. They demand a strikingly showy church edifice, one that will dazzle and bewilder the eye, and in their intense vanity and love of ostentation, little or no attention is paid to its suitableness as a place to speak in. Such are multitudes of churches, as scores of noble men can testify who are called to preach in them, sometimes to suffer cruel martyrdom in them. Our cities and populous towns are filled with stately and imposing edifices, which are singularly ill-fitted for purposes of public address.

We make no account of the acoustic defects of our churches,

since these are generally found in connection with the evils already pointed out. A hall which distributes its audience upon the principles suggested in the early part of this essay, will be quite likely to meet the demands of good acoustics.

PULPIT AND PLATFORM.

We pass now to another defect in our churches, against which the preacher must contend, viz., that awful dock called the pulpit. It is not known who the author of this part of church architecture was, but there can be no little doubt that the devil has long since canonized him as one of the favorite patron saints of Pandemonium. And it would hardly be too much to say that if a church building committee were to invite his satanic majesty to construct for them a place in a church from which the preacher should utter to men the words of eternal life, he would model after nine-tenths of the pulpits in our churches.

It is a little singular that in all other places where audiences are to be addressed, no such monstrosities are to be found. A platform of ample scope with a stand to lay books and notes upon are the simple and natural machinery to work with, the audience sweeping close up to the speaker. If a man is ever to gather fire and inspiration from the presence of others, it would most likely be under such circumstances; and as a fact in popular address our most successful speakers have won their greatest triumphs here. A close study of the ministry will conduct us to the fact that the most earnest and impressive preachers have either the platform arrangement or some modification of it. Numerous examples could be adduced where a change from the pulpit to the platform has been an entire revolution in the preacher's effectiveness, and men have marveled at the sudden and hitherto unknown power of their minister. Perhaps the most notable case is that of Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, whose masterly hold on popular audiences in the Academy of Music has been the weekly comment of the New York press. How he exchanged the ornate and elaborate style, so characteristic of the man, for the intense and

Saxon directness! How Sabbath after Sabbath he surpassed himself, rising higher and higher on each occasion, until the learned divine stood forth the acknowledged peer of the best platform speakers! After such an experience it was to be expected that in the Church of the Pilgrims remodeled, the abomination of the old pulpit would be discarded. Pity that the gown should ever again mar his manly form!

Large numbers of ministers rarely inspire their hearers by their preaching, though the fault is not from want of the most painstaking preparation. Men call them dull and heavy; so they are. They read in a tame and monotonous manner when they ought to speak. They are like a sea in a calm — dull, glassy, lifeless. They merely lack animation to make them effective and welcome preachers. Yet their inefficiency comes mainly from false culture and unfortunate surroundings. On other occasions, in our State conventions and conferences, when discussing some vital question, or free from the bondage of the pulpit, they display wonderful power and fertility of resources. We have seen these men become eloquent in the highest sense of that term. They grow terribly in earnest; they make themselves felt, and people go away ejaculating their astonishment at such unexpected mastery of speech and thought. The late Dr. Dwight, of Portland, was a man of unquestioned ability, and stood amongst the foremost preachers of Maine; he certainly led the ministry in point of intellectual pre-eminence, but it may be questioned whether he ever did himself full justice in the pulpit. But on the platform, Dr. Dwight was a magnificent man; his fine, noble, manly bearing, his clear ringing voice, his lofty sentiments and transparent speech, placed him in the fore-front of platform speakers. We have heard him when he was truly masterly, when he lifted his audience up by his grand and inspiring eloquence, when men wept and applauded in turn.

Mr. Beecher, in his views before referred to, remarked that he knew of clergymen who began their ministry as pastors over mission churches with wonderful success, gaining a deep and firm hold upon their congregations. Mission churches

usually worship in halls or chapels, a fact to be remembered. But in the course of time the mission church aspires to a more pretentious edifice, with a stately pulpit in it, and a change of place has often been almost synchronous with a change of pastor; the break-down springing from a want of sympathetic connection between the warm-hearted preacher of the chapel, who worked splendidly when he could touch people by magnetic contact, and the cold arm's-length distance at which the necessities of a false church architecture compelled him to toil.

SELF-POSSESSION.

The preacher should be specially disciplined to habits of ready speech and of easy control over his resources. It is not enough that he be a learned man; he must also have the power to command that learning, and mould it with ease and skill into popular forins of address. Mastery of himself becomes a prime condition of efficiency. Yet many of the best platform speakers are constitutionally diffident, who have been disciplined into their wonderful self-control by the bracing contact of earnest and wide-awake audiences. Speakers gather force and inspiration from such a presence; it acts like a tonic. It cuts a man loose from all false supports, and after a moment's flurry, every nerve and power is calmly held in hand; only the tremor of a start, like the quivering of a ship whose unfurled sails are first laid to the wind, thenceforth proudly plows the deep. On the other hand, many ministers shrink from the ordeal of speaking outside the pulpit, simply because they have hid so long behind that impreg nable barrier, holding on to it with convulsive grasp, that they are at a loss to know what to do with themselves when the support is taken from them. In this way the pulpit, by its false discipline, deprives the preacher of one of his greatest elements of power and success. An audience withdraws its favor from a speaker who lacks self-possession; for they expect of him mastery of position, and when he betrays a want of such mastery, their expectation becomes paralyzed, and their interest is no longer sustained.