Lectures to My Students, Volume 1 — First Series · Lecture 8 — Charles H. Spurgeon
OUR first rule with regard to the voice would be — do not think too much about it, for recollect the sweetest voice is nothing without something to say, and however well it may be managed, it will be like a well-driven cart with nothing in it, unless you convey by it important and seasonable truths to your people. Demosthenes was doubtless right, in giving a first, second, and third place to a good delivery; but of what value will that be if a man has nothing to deliver? A man with a surpassingly excellent voice who is destitute of a well-informed head, and an earnest heart, will be “a voice crying in the wilderness;” or, to use Plutarch’s expression, “Vox et praeterea nihil.” Such a man may shine in the choir, but he is useless in the pulpit. Whitfield’s voice, without his heart-power, would have left no more lasting effects upon his hearers than Paganini’s fiddle. You are not singers but preachers: your voice is but a secondary matter; do not be fops with it, or puling invalids over it, as so many are. A trumpet need not be made of silver, a ram’s-horn will suffice; but it must be able to endure rough usage, for trumpets are for war’s conflicts, not for the drawing-rooms of fashion. On the other hand, do not think too little of your voice, for its excellence may greatly conduce to the result which you hope to produce. Plato, in confessing the power of eloquence, mentions the tone of the speaker. “So strongly,” says he, “does the speech and the tone of the orator ring in my ears, that scarcely in the third or fourth day, do I recollect myself, and perceive where on the earth I am; and for awhile I am willing to believe myself living in the isles of the blessed.” Exceedingly precious truths may be greatly matted by being delivered in monotonous tones. I once heard a most esteemed minister, who mumbled sadly, compared to “a humble bee in a pitcher,” a vulgar metaphor no doubt, but so exactly descriptive, that it brings to my mind the droning sound at this instant most distinctly, and reminds me of the parody upon Gray’s Elegy: — “Now fades the glimmering subject from the sight, And all the air a sleepy stillness holds, Save where the parson hums his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the slumb’ring folds.” What a pity that a man who from his heart delivered doctrines of undoubted value, in language the most appropriate, should commit ministerial suicide by harping on one string, when the Lord had given him an instrument of many strings to play upon! Alas! alas! for that dreary voice, it hummed and hummed like a mill-wheel to the same unmusical turn, whether its owner spake of heaven or hell, eternal life or everlasting wrath. It might be, by accident, a little louder or softer, according to the length of the sentence, but its tone was still the same, a dreary waste of sound, a howling wilderness of speech in which there was no possible relief, no variety, no music, nothing but horrible sameness. When the wind blows through the AEolian harp, it swells through all the chords, but the heavenly wind, passing through some men, spends itself upon one string, and that, for the most part, the most out of tune of the whole. Grace alone could enable hearers to edify under the drum — drum — drum of some divines. I think an impartial jury would bring in a verdict of justifiable slumbering in many cases where the sound emanating from the preacher lulls to sleep by its reiterated note. Dr. Guthrie charitably traces the slumbers of a certain Scotch congregation, to
bad ventilation in the meeting-house; this has something to do with it, but a bad condition of the valves of the preacher’s throat might be a still more potent cause. Brethren, in the name of everything that is sacred, ring the whole chime in your steeple, and do, not dun your people with the ding-dong of one poor cracked bell. When you do pay attention to the voice, take care not to fall into the habitual and common affectations of the present day. Scarcely one man in a dozen in the pulpit talks like a man. This affectation is not confined to Protestants, for the Abbe Mullois remarks, “Everywhere else, men speak: they speak at the bar and the tribune; but they no longer speak in the pulpit, for there we only meet with a factitious and artificial language, and a false tone. This style of speaking is only tolerated in the church, because, unfortunately, it is so general there; elsewhere it would not be endured. What would be thought of a man who should converse in a similar way in a drawing-room? He would certainly provoke many a smile. Some time ago there was a warder at the Pantheon — a good sort of fellow in his way — who, in enumerating the beauties of the monument, adopted precisely the tone of many of our preachers, and never failed thereby to excite the hilarity of the visitors, who were as much amused with his style of address as with the objects of interest which be pointed out to them. A man who has not a natural and true delivery, should not be allowed to occupy the pulpit; from thence, at least, everything that is false should be summarily banished … In these days of mistrust everything that is false should be set aside; and the best way of correcting one’s self in that respect, as regards preaching, is frequently to listen to certain monotonous and vehement preachers. We shall come away in such disgust, and with such a horror of their delivery, that we shall prefer condemning ourselves to silence rather than imitate them. The instant you abandon the natural and the true, you forego the right to be believed, as well as the right of being listened to.” You may go all round, to church and chapel alike, and you will find that by far the larger majority of our preachers have a holy tone for Sundays. They have one voice for the parlor and the bedroom, and quite another tone for the pulpit; so that, if not double-tongued sinfully, they certainly are so literally. The moment some men shut the pulpit door, they leave their own personal manhood behind them, and become as official as the parish beadle. There they might almost boast with the Pharisee, that they are not as other men are, although it would be blasphemy to thank God for it. No longer are they carnal and speak as men, but a whine, a broken hum-haw, an ore rotundo, or some other graceless mode of noise-making, is adopted, to prevent all suspicion of being natural and speaking out of the abundance of the heart. When that gown is once on, how often does it prove to be the shroud of the man’s true self, and the effeminate emblem of officialism! There are two or three modes of speech which I dare say you will recognize as having frequently heard. That dignified, doctoral, inflated, bombastic style, which I just now called the ore rotundo, is not quite so common now as it used to be, but it is still admired by some. (Unfortunately, the Lecturer could not here be reported by any known form of letter-press, as he proceeded to read a hymn with a round, rolling, swelling voice.) When a reverend gentleman was once blowing off steam in this way, a man in the aisle said he thought the preacher “had swallowed a dumpling,” but another whispered, “No, Jack, he ain’t swaller’d un; he’s got un in his mouth a-wobblin.” I