ever was an age calling loudly upon the preacher of the Gospel to put on strength, and to hurl the thunderbolts of divine truth with a mighty arm, that age is the present. If there ever was a country calling, as with a herald's trump, for champions to stand forth from the timid crowd, and lift up their voice for her honor and integrity, that country is America. Any suggestion, therefore, though it be merely the reiteration of forgotten truth or the finger-post to a neglected model, contributing to inspire the Christian ministry with boldness and persistence in defense of the truth, or to panoply and nerve our young men for a successful and glorious career in the sacred office, is worthy of their regard. It is the purpose of this paper to direct the attention of those who would magnify the high vocation, toward that peerless model of eloquence, the nearest human approach to perfection, the undisputed master of the Athenian bema, Demosthenes. We purpose to show that his elements of oratorical power are broad as humanity, and especially applicable to the modern pulpit. It is true that Demosthenes was a secular orator, discoursing of topics of transient interest. But the almost superhuman manner in which he touches human themes; the saintly high-mindedness with which he walks among his fellowmen in an age of moral degeneracy; the quenchless ardor of his patriotism; his unconquerable advocacy of freedom, the Grecian Abdiel, "among innumerable false, unmoved;" his irresistible appeals to right, his vehement torrent of passion, always under the perfect mastery of reason; the simplicity of his style, making his thoughts pervade the soul, as electricity pervades the air; the perfect harmony between the style and the sense; the wonderful immediate effect of his orations, and their unchallenged right to the world's highest admiration after the lapse of twenty-two centuries; all these high qualities proclaim him the unrivaled master of the art of persuasion. To say that he was a politician in the American sense of the term would be the utterance of a foul slander. Such a character, in his definition of ovkopávτηs, Demosthenes has photographed, by the light of his own genius, in indelible colors upon the pages of his immortal argument against Eschines. Then he damned his illustrious rival to everlasting fame by writing his name beneath the portrait. Demosthenes was the pure-minded statesman, whose noble lineaments he has traced in his delineation of the oúußovλos, which this great limner of character painted for a likeness of himself, to be hung up in the gallery of history as a pendant to the demagogue.* It is the misfortune of some of the world's greatest minds to be abundantly eulogized, but sparingly studied. It is much easier to glorify Bacon than to fathom his philosophy. It requires less labor to crown Newton with our praises than to follow him patiently through his Principia. Multitudes are lavish of compliments to "The blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle," who are quite content to pass through life without ever reading a verse of the Iliad. The peerless Athenian is no exception to this declaration. Many Many are profuse in vague encomiums who have never read one of his thrilling periods in the glowing Attic words which set on fire the souls of the Athenian demos. It is to be feared that many public speakers, having collegiate diplomas in their drawers, have never formed an intimate and pleasing acquaintance with this chaste exemplar of manly eloquence. In the curriculum of academic study they hastily ran through one or two Philippics, satisfied with some insight into the grammatical relations of the words, while blind to the ravishing rhetorical beauties which unfold themselves only beneath a long and earnest scrutiny. Since they pronounced their orations on commencement day-on which occasion Demosthenes and Cicero were spoken of in very flattering phrase those distinguished gentlemen of antiquity have been quite forgotten, or remembered only as the authors of much vexation and disquietude to the halcyon days of university life. We are aware that there exists a strong prejudice in many minds against the earnest study of a master orator, grounded on the fear lest there would be more lost in originality than would be gained in other excellences. But why should the orator fear, rather than the painter and the sculptor, who from all civilized lands make pilgrimages to Italy, that shrine of the arts, and spend years in the study of the immortal productions of Titian and Michael Angelo? It is said that the orator should take lessons of the great teacher, * Oratio De Corona, sec. 189. Champlin's edition. nature. As well might you send the artist to nature for his studies, locking him out of the repositories of art in the Vatican, as to send the student of eloquence to nature, shutting him out from the contemplation of those great monarchs of the human soul, whose words have come down to us through twenty centuries enkindling the hearts of all the intervening generations. If man's noblest study is man, his best textbook is the great orator, who has trodden the mysterious avenues to millions of hearts. The successful speaker must be erudite in the knowledge of human nature. The sources of this knowledge are first of all the word of God, which is the discerner and the revealer of men's hearts; secondly, self-scrutiny; and lastly, observation upon our fellow-men. This, we contend, is wonderfully simplified and facilitated by the study of the drama, or the speech which has the power to move men; just as we may often arrive at a more accurate knowledge of the structure of a lock by inspecting the key which unlocks it, than by trying to pry into the lock itself. But he is not to be decried as an oratorical picklock, who has acquired, by the patient study of some great patterns, the high art of turning back the bolts of prejudice and passion in human souls, and of opening them to the ingress of truth. The prolonged and thorough study of the words which swept the souls of the hearers, and which thrill with intense emotion the bosoms of the readers ages afterward, is necessary to complete the rhetorical studies of the schools. In school rhetoric we have the disjecta membra of anatomized writers and speakers, thrown together as illustrations of the various principles of the art, as detached bones are arranged in the cabinet of a college of surgery. With the contemplation of these dry bones the school rhetoric ends. If the student ever see bone come to his bone, and the sinews and flesh come upon them, and if he ever see them stand upon their feet as mailed and victorious warriors, he must give his days and his nights to the study of those acknowledged standards of eloquence from which the rhetorician collects his paradigms. It is fortunate for the world that the highest of these standards, the speeches of the great Paanian, have descended to the present time in the very syllables in which they flowed from his pen and fell from his lips. For these productions were most industriously elaborated in the closet; they are not the fragments of impromptu utterances, caught up by some Attic reporter in the Pnyx, and amplified by some Athenian Grubstreet. They all bear unmistakable internal evidence of their genuineness. The brief, simple, modest, and sometimes prayerful exordium, the lucid statement, the rapid, crystal stream of logic, the stirring appeal, the impressive peroration, all indicate the ad unguem factum oratorem as surely as the lion is known by his claw. We have said that the elements of power in Demosthenes are adapted to influence universal man; that the thoughts and sentiments packed into his periods, uttered in his impetuous manner in any age, to any people, would produce substantially the same effects. Hence we argue his fitness for a model for the Christian ministry whose commission contemplates the exertion of suasive influence upon every creature, even to the end of the world. There is one historical testimony to this characteristic of Demosthenes which it is instructive to contemplate. From his age to the present philanthropists, patriots, and statesmen remarkable for generous impulses and elevated moral sentiments, who have stood forth as champions of the right, and as swift witnesses against every form of tyranny and wrong, have been instinctively attracted to Demosthenes, and have lingered with delight over his pages, and have imbibed his spirit and imitated his style. The patriot Cicero, the advocate of outraged Sicily, and the successful pilot of the Roman Republic through the perils of civil commotion and dark treason; the philanthropic Brougham, whose youthful, fiery denunciations struck the fetters from eight hundred thousand slaves in the British colonies, and banished forever from English law "the wild and guilty fantasy of property in man;" and our own heroic Sumner, who rises from the floor of the American Senate crimsoned with his own blood, and before the vulture eyes of slavemasters pale with rage, hurls his resistless thunders at the baneful system which they love better than the Union cemented in their fathers' blood; these, and many other illustrious names which the world will not willingly let die, all confessedly drew inspiration from the orations of the enemy of the ambitious Macedonian and the devoted friend of Athens. If the preacher of Christ's Gospel is set, not for the utterance of mere theological dogmas, but to show to men their sins; if it is his office, like his Master, to move among men an incarnate conscience, unmasking hypocrisy, and denouncing the woes of God upon every form of iniquity; if the world has a right to expect the pulpit to be the organ of a higher and clearer sense of right, and the fountain of a purer and warmer philanthropy than the legislative hall, then should the divinely appointed expounder and defender of human rights not only be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his high office, but he should be perfectly familiar with the best models for the expression of that spirit. We now call attention to some of the prominent characteristics of Demosthenes, which if reproduced in the pulpit would greatly enhance its power. 1. Demosthenes never attempts to move his hearers till he has laid down a foundation of massive, sterling thought. It is supposed by many that his success resulted chiefly from his manner; that, in his own language, action is the first, second, and third quality of a victorious orator. But his enemies, when they intimated that his speeches were redolent of the lamp, more sagely divined the secret strength of that young Samson who had suddenly mounted the bema with a power to sway Attica and to shake the Hellenic States at his will, and to foil the perfidious Philip by a half-hour's speech. They could not, however, have asserted this from any appearance of art and severe labor in the structure of his orations, for every thought appears to spring up easily and spontaneously from the occasion. He had learned the perfection of all learning and labor, the Ars celare artem. So un artificial do his speeches appear, that the reader is constantly deluded with the thought that it is a thing perfectly practicable for himself to give expression to his thoughts in a style equally felicitous. Thus Horace's test of literary excellence is satisfied three centuries before the Venusian poet penned the Ars Poetica. Ex noto fictum carmen sequar, ut sibi quivis Speret idem, sudet multum frustraque laboret His enemies judged that he had consumed the midnight hours in the preparation of his orations because they felt the unusual weight of thought with which they were laden, as gold |