CONTINUATION CLASSES FOR CLERGYMEN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 15

CONTINUATION CLASSES FOR CLERGYMEN

Whether the Nottingham experiment in church opera is based on a broad understanding of public taste, or on a realisation of pulpit inadequacy, it is lamentably true that the stage is far ahead of the pulpit in appeal to the human heart, says a writer in an English Paper. fa

As a sermon taster, I have been amazed at the slipshod ,and uninspired delivery" of some of our best preachers. Most of them profess to have studied elocution at college after a fashion, but some lack the vocal equipment, and more forget to keep up th'ir practice. '. r

There is still no power greater than tnat ot live human speech, and there are otherwise great prechers who just miss the mark by failing to culitivate tneir elocutionary powers. Maunerisms grow on a preacher because, unlike other artists, he is not subject to open criticism. Actors are always exposed to attack—not always with the happiest results, for has not an elocutionist declared that Irving was "the best actor and thu worst speaker on the English stage"? . Where may one go to-day to be thrilled by the inrpassioned pleading of a Silvester Home or the musical magic of a Henry Ward Beecher ? . A ministerial friend of mine who had travelled much in pre-war Russia told me that- the greatest impression he had brought back was the- reading of a Russian priest in one of the great churches in Moscow—a Chaliapine in holy orders. Give us fine music in our worship, by all means, but not at the cost of fine prophetic utterance. Dean Ing's dictum that the best preachers are not always the most popular, needs the corollary, "but they might be, and ought to be." How? By continuing their elocutionary studios, by submitting—privately—to expert criticism, both of manner and matter; by exercising remorseless vigilance over their mannerisms, and givin" as much hoed to tautology as to theoP

ISot long ago I heard a clergyman recite pieces. His art so thrilled me that I went out of my way soon after to hear him preach. His preaching was just passable, so little above mediocrity that if I had heard him preach first, I should not have gone to his recital. Why was it? Is there something in a pulpit that ties a man's tongue ?