The first thing, therefore, is to know the subject.  One should know his subject so well that a question will aid rather than embarrass him.  A question from the audience annoys one only when the speaker is unable to answer it or does not want to answer it.  Many a speaker has been brought into ridicule by a question that revealed his lack of information on the subject; and a speaker has sometimes been routed by a question that revealed something he intended to conceal.  Before discussing a subject one should go all around it and view it from every standpoint, asking and answering all the questions likely to be put by his opponents.  Nothing strengthens a speaker more than to be able to answer every question put to him.  His argument is made much more forcible because the question focuses attention on the particular point; a ready answer makes a deeper impression than the speaker could make by the use of the same language without the benefit of the question to excite interest in the proposition.

But knowledge is of little use to the speaker without earnestness.  Persuasive speech is from heart to heart, not from mind to mind.  It is difficult for a speaker to deceive his audience as to his own feelings; it takes a trained actor to make an imaginary thing seem real.  Nearly two thousand years ago one of the Latin poets expressed this thought when he said, “If you would draw tears from others’ eyes, yourself the signs of grief must show.”

If one is master of an important subject and feels that he has a message that must be delivered he will not lack a hearing.  As there are always important subjects before the country for settlement there will always be oratory.  In order to speak eloquently on one subject a man need not be well informed on a large number of subjects, although information on all subjects is of value.  One who can in a general way discuss a large number of subjects may be entirely outclassed by one who knows but one subject but knows it well and feels it.

The pulpit has developed many great orators because it furnishes the largest subject with which one can deal.  The preacher who knows the Bible and feels that every human being needs the message that the Bible contains cannot fail to reach the hearts of his hearers.  Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, once the President of Brown University and later Chancellor of Nebraska University, told me of a sermon that he heard Jasper, the coloured preacher of Richmond, deliver late in life on an anniversary occasion.  Jasper claimed nothing for himself but attributed his long pastorate and whatever influence he had to the fact that he preached from only one book—­the Bible.