Sacred Rhetoric or a Course of Lectures on Preaching

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1870. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... LECTURE II. TSE PREACHER'S COMMISSION. SACRED .RHETORIC is one branch of eloquence. It is of prime importance that the student should apprehend, first, what eloquence truly is, and, second, what is the difference between the secular department of it and ours. Eloquence is often named as one of the fine arts, but, as I have already forewarned you, there is an essential distinction made by the ends of the two. Music and the imitative arts are designed, primarily, to gratify the taste. Their immediate aim is at the sentimental affections of the soul. But the immediate end of eloquence is to produce in the hearer some practical volition. Its design is to evoke an act. When this is said, you will not understand me as indicating by the word action only the movement of the body and its members. I speak of the actions of the soul, of those matured determinations of the will in which man's rational and responsible activity consummates itself. And, I repeat, that wherever there is no direct purpose in the speaker to educe action of will in his hearers there is no proper oration.1 True, the oration 1 For instance, Aristotle (b. I., ch. 3) incorrectly classes orations under three genera: of the Statesman, of the Advocate, and of the Eulogist. The object of the first is A! ways to cause,the election or rejection of a given course of action. That of the second is to pro SO may, while it determines the soul to action, produce as a collateral effect much excitement of taste. But if it elevates this subordinate result into the place of its chief design, it has degenerated into a spurious poem without metre. So, a poem, and especially a lyric like the Marseillaise Hymn, may be addressed to the will, but in this it ceases to be mere poetry, and becomes a true metrical oration. The...