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sincere benevolence and compassion , because he considered it the only language which could gain over the lovers of pleasure , while menaces would disgust therri , or drive them to distraction . His own sermons furnished admirable models to the young men , and were a beautiful exemplification of his own precepts . Reinhard thus speaks of the manner in which he supplied the deficiencies of his own education for the ministry # : —
4 I never made a study of pulpit eloquence , or took part in the exercises of the preaching-societies . This may be discovered in my sermons , which exhibit many instances of transgression against rules in their division and arrangement . But if , independently of rules , I have been able to succeed as a preacher , I owe it to my assiduous study of the ancient rhetoricians and orators , and my no less assiduous application to philosophy . lam persuaded this course of reading proved more profitable to me than lectures on sacred rhetoric would have been . '
The earliest object of his admiration had been Cicero , to whom , however , he subsequently preferred Demosthenes . Of the latter he thus speaks : — ' The more I read this orator , the more clearly I perceived that true eloquence is quite a different thing from the art of dressing up fine phrases ; that nothing is more unlike it than that glittering display of antitheses and subtleties , which Kant forcibly designated prose run
mad ; that torrent of sonorous terms and phrases which the multitude admire without comprehending a single word that is said . And this was the inference which I drew for my own guidance . If , thought I , I could speak from the pulpit in such a manner , that each of my discourses should form a well-arranged whole , closely connected in all its parts , and developing itself in the most natural order ; if I could always select a subject interesting to my hearers , adapted to their
circumstances and their most important relations , and fruitful in the most valuable practical suggestions ; if I could always clothe my thoughts in words which set them forth with the greatest precision and strength ; if I could always seize those expressions which were the most perspicuous for instruction , and the most picturesque for description , for exhortation the most forcible , for reproof the most pathetic , and for consolation the best fitted to carry peace and tranquillity into the heart ; if I could adopt a language that would , as it were , render visible all the
modifications of thought , shades of sentiment , and degrees of passion , and touch just those cords of the heart which it was desirable to move ; if , finally , by a style that was easy and natural , full without redundance , and smooth without a studied harmony , I could at once gratify the ear and win the heart , —that would be the eloquence which is suitable to the pulpit ; then would my discourses enlighten the understanding * , imprint themselves on the memory , and kindle sentiment ; then should I speak of religion with that noble simplicity , that majestic dignity , and that benevolent ardour which it always ought to inspire . * In estimating the justness of Reinhard ' s conception of
pulpit-* Lettre vi ., p . 45 , et sfcq .
Untitled Article
740 On the Studies and Public Ministry
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 740, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/20/
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