ORATORY

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

Oratory has this test and mark of divine providence, that God, when he makes things perfect, signifies that he is done, by throwing over them the robe of beauty; for beauty is the divine thought of excellence. All growing things, in their earlier stages, are rude. All of them are in vigorous strength, it may be; but not until the blossom comes, and the fruit hangs pendant, has the vine evinced for what it was made. God is a God of beauty; and beauty is everywhere the final process. When things have come to that, they have touched their limit.

A living force that brings to itself all the resources of imagination, all the inspirations of feeling, all that is influential in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the whole animated man, is in strict analogy with the divine thought and the divine arrangement; and there is no misconstruction more utterly untrue and fatal than this: that oratory is an artificial thing, which deals with baubles and trifles, for the sake of making bubbles of pleasure for transient effect on mercurial audiences. So far from that, it is the consecration of the whole man to the noblest purposes to which one can address himself-the education and inspiration of his fellow men by all that there is in learning, by all that there is in thought, by all that there is in feeling, by all that there is in all of them, sent home through the channels of taste and of beauty. And so regarded, oratory should take its place among the highest departments of education.

But oratory is disregarded largely; and one of the fruits of this disregard is, that men fill all the places of power

with force misdirected; with energy not half so fruitful as it might be; with sincerity that knows not how to spread its wings and fly. If you were to trace and to analyze the methods which prevail in all the departments of society, you would find in no other such contempt of culture, and in no other such punishment of this contempt.

How much squandering there is of the voice! How little is there of the advantage that may come from conversational tones! How seldom does a man dare to acquit himself with pathos and fervor! And the men are themselves mechanical and methodical in the bad way, who are most afraid of the artificial training that is given in the schools, and who so often show by the fruit of their labor that the want of oratory is the want of education.

How remarkable is sweetness of voice in the mother, in the father, in the household! The music of no chorded instruments brought together is, for sweetness, like the music of familiar affection when spoken by brother and sister, or by father and mother.

Conversation itself belongs to oratory. How many men there are who are weighty in argument, who have abundant resources, and who are almost boundless in their power at other times and in other places, but who, when in company among their kind, are exceedingly unapt in their methods. Having none of the secret instruments by which the elements of nature may be touched, having no skill and no power in this direction, they stand as machines before living, sensitive men. A man may be as a master before an instrument; only the instrument is dead; and he has the living hand; and out of that dead instrument what wondrous harmony springs forth at his touch! And if you can electrify an audience by the power of a living man on

dead things, how much more should that audience be electrified when the chords are living and the man is alive, and he knows how to touch them with divine inspiration!

I advocate, therefore, in its full extent, and for every reason of humanity, of patriotism, and of religion, a more thorough culture of oratory.

First, in the orator, is the man. Let no man who is a sneak try to be an orator. A man who is to be an orator must have something to say. He must have something that in his very soul he feels to be worth saying. He must have in his nature that kindly sympathy which connects him with his fellow men, and which so makes him a part of the audience which he moves that his smile is their smile, that his tear is their tear, and that the throb of his heart becomes the throb of the hearts of the whole assembly. A man that is humane, a lover of his kind, full of all earnest and sweet sympathy for their welfare, has in him the original element, the substance, of oratory, which is truth; but in this world truth needs nursing and helping; it needs every advantage; for the underflow of life is animal, and the channels of human society have been taken possession of by lower influences beforehand. The devil squatted on human territory before the angel came to dispossess him. Pride and intolerance, arrogance and its cruelty, selfishness and its greed, all the lower appetites and passions, swarm, and hold in thrall the under-man that each one of us yet carries the man of flesh, on which the spirit-man seeks to ride and by which too often he is thrown and trampled under foot. The truth, in its attempt to wean the better from the worse, needs every auxiliary and every adjuvant.

The first work, therefore, is to teach a man's body to serve his soul; and in this work, the education of the bod

ily presence is the very first step. What power there is in posture and in gesture! By it, how many discriminations are made; how many smooth things are rolled off; how many complex things men are made to comprehend!

Among other things, the voice-perhaps the most important of all, and the least cultured-should not be forgotten. The human voice is like an orchestra. It ranges high up, and can shriek betimes like the scream of an eagle or it is low as a lion's tone; and at every intermediate point is some peculiar quality. It has in it the mother's whisper and the father's command. It has in it warning and alarm. It has in it sweetness. It is full of mirth and full of gaiety. It glitters, tho it is not seen with all its sparkling fancies. It ranges high, intermediate, or low, in obedience to the will, unconsciously to him who uses it; and men listen through the long hour, wondering that it is so short, and quite unaware that they have been bewitched out of their weariness by the charm of a voice, not artificial, not prearranged in the man's thought, but by assiduous training made to be his highest nature. Such a voice answers to the soul, and is its beating.

"But," it is said, "does not the voice come by nature?" Yes; but is there anything that comes by nature which stays as it comes, if it is worthily handled? We receive one talent that we may make it five; and we receive five talents that we make them ten. There is no one thing in man that he has in perfection till he has it by culture. We know that in respect to everything but the voice. Is not the ear trained to acute hearing? Is not the eye trained in science? Do men not school the eye, and make it quick-seeing by patient use? Is a man, because he has learned a trade, and was not born to it, thought to be less a man? Because we

have made discoveries of science, and adapted them to manufacture; because we have developed knowledge by training, are we thought to be unmanly? Shall we, because we have unfolded our powers by the use of ourselves for that noblest of purposes, the inspiration and elevation of mankind, be less esteemed? Is the school of human training to be disdained, when by it we are rendered more useful to our fellow men?

If you go from our land to other lands; if you go to the land which has been irradiated by parliamentary eloquence; if you go to the people of Great Britain; if you go to the great men in ancient times who lived in the intellect; if you go to the illustrious names that every one recalls-Demosthenes and Cicero-they represent a life

of work.

Not until Michael Angelo had been the servant and the slave of matter, did he learn to control matter; and not until he had drilled and drilled and drilled himself were his touches free and easy as the breath of summer, and full of color as the summer itself. Not until Raphael had subdued himself by color, was he the crowning artist of beauty. You shall not find one great sculptor, nor one great architect, nor one great painter, nor one eminent man in any department of art, nor one great scholar, nor one great statesman, nor one divine of universal gifts, whose greatness, if you inquire, you will not find to be the fruit of study, and of the evolution that comes from study.

Great is the advance of civilization; mighty are the engines of force, but man is greater than that which he produces. Vast is that machine which stands in the dark, unconsciously lifting, lifting-the only humane slave-the iron slave-the Corliss engine; but he that made the engine