"Select with a quick and confident instinct, from among the methods available to you, the method of the day; which may not be the most solid, but which, considering the disposition of men's minds, the nature of the matter in hand, and the peculiarity of concomitant circumstances, is the best adapted for making an impression upon your audience. "Take strong hold of their attention. Stir up their pity or indignation, their sympathies or their antipathies, or their pride. Appear to be animated by their breath, all the while that you are communicating yours to them. When you have, in some degree, detached their souls from their bodies, and they come and group themselves of their own accord at the foot of the pulpit, riveted beneath the influence of your glance, then do not dally with them, for they are yours; your soul having, as may be truly said, passed into theirs. Look now how they follow its ebb and flow! how they will as you will! how they act as you act! But persist, give no rest; press your discourse home, and you will soon see all bosoms panting because yours pants; all eyes kindling because yours emit flame, or filling with tears because you grow tender. You will see all the hearers hanging on your lips through the attractions of persuasion; or, rather, you will see nothing, for you yourself will be under the spell of your own emotion; you will bend, you will succumb, under your own genius, and you will be the more eloquent the less effort you make to appear so. {242} "Be clear, exact, concise, impartial. "Do not attempt to say everything, but what you do say, say well." {243} Chapter IX. The Power and Accent of Conviction. The Divine Word has always been the first Power in the World. The Gospel still the first of Books. There can be no Christian Eloquence without the Accent of Personal Conviction. Hitherto, we may be said to have treated merely of human instrumentality; we must now consider our subject in a higher point of view. Reason, imagination, and sentiment are necessary qualifications to success in our vacation; but we require besides these the power of God, because our aim is to lay hold of and to direct the souls of men. Now, as that mighty genius Bossuet has remarked:--"There is nothing so indomitable as the heart of man. When I see it subdued, I adore." And why? Because he recognized in such submission a superhuman agency. This power we possess in the Word, which is the power of God; before which every head must bow, and every knee bend, whether on earth, in heaven, or in hell. Armed with the Divine word, our power is immense; only, in order to wield it, we must ourselves be thoroughly penetrated thereby, and, above all, be able to convince others that we are so. It must be felt, seen, and acknowledged that God is with us. {244}