[Side note:  Movere]

What is the main weapon of the orator?  Demosthenes answers—­ “Action.”  Mr. Gladstone—­“Earnestness.”  But St. Francis Borgia probably explains what both mean when he advises us to preach with an evidence of conviction that makes it clear to the audience you are prepared to lay down your life at the foot of the pulpit stairs for the truth of what you say.

Without this deep-seated conviction and the enthusiasm that flows from it, your fire is but painted fire, your thunder the thunder of the stage.  This living earnestness is the spark that illumines and vitalizes all.  Without it the best built sermon is but a painted corpse; but when the soul gleams forth in the flashing eye and quivering lip, waves of unseen fire are issuing with every sentence, and arrows of light silently piercing every heart.  The most stubborn prejudices are forced to melt and the most depraved wills are swept on the crest of the grand tidal wave, slowly gathering from the start; but when the preacher forgets himself and his surroundings, flings self-consciousness away, goes outside himself, pouring the hot tide from his own glowing heart, till every flash of his eye and every wave of his hand becomes a palpitating thought, then his audience surrender; their hearts are in the hollow of his hand, wax to receive any impression; their wills can be braced and lifted to the sublimest heights of heroism—­this is triumph.

[Side note:  O’Connell]

It is said that the great mastery O’Connell exercised over the people mainly sprang from the passionate earnestness of his conviction.  The nation’s heart seemed merged into his own.  He stood forth her living, breathing symbol.  When he spoke it was Ireland spoke.  Her passions rocked his soul; her humour flashed from his eye; her scorn gleamed in his glances, and her sobs choked his utterance.  Ah! if preachers were as filled with the Spirit of Christ as this man was with the spirit of patriotism, what a revolution we might witness!

You ask—­“How then do actors move people since there can be no enthusiasm when men know they simulate unreal people and unreal passions?” I answer, that the first step towards becoming a great actor is to fling aside that knowledge and hand yourself over the willing victim of a delusion.  You must not act but live your part:  persuade yourself that you are the character you personate:  surrender your heart to be torn by real passions and wrung by real sorrows.

The answer is well known which a celebrated actor once gave to a divine:—­“How is it that you so move people by fiction and our preachers fail to move them by truth?” “Sir, we speak fiction as if it were fact, and your preachers speak truth as if it were fiction.”

Here we leave our preacher facing his audience and filled with but one idea:  I have a great message to deliver and I will lay hold of every means to send that message home; voice, passion, style, gesture, these are my arms, and with these I hope to conquer.