We may learn something from this. There is one mode of address for books
and for classical readers, and another for the mass of men, who judge by
the eye and ear, by the fancy and feelings, and know little of rules of
art or of an educated taste. Hence it is that many of those preachers
who have become the classics of a country, have been unattractive to the
multitude, who have deserted their polished and careful composition, for
the more unrestrained and rousing declamation of another class. The
singular success of Chalmers, seems to be in a considerable measure
owing to his attention to this fact. He has abandoned the pure and
measured style, and adopted a heterogeneous mixture of the gaudy,
pompous, and colloquial, offensive indeed to the ears of literary men,
but highly acceptable to those who are less biassed by the authority of
a standard taste and established models. We need not go to the extreme
of Chalmers,--for there is no necessity for inaccuracy, bombast, or
false taste--but we should doubtless gain by adopting his principle. The
object is to address men according to their actual character, and in
that mode in which their habits of mind may render them most accessible.
As but few are thinkers or readers, a congregation is not to be
addressed as such; but, their modes of life being remembered, constant
regard must be had to their need of external attraction. This is most
easily done by the familiarity and directness of extemporaneous address;
for which reason this mode of preaching has peculiar advantages, in its
adaptation to their situation and wants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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