Sixty years ago the Reverend William Russell emphasized the importance of visible expression.  He said of the preacher: 

“His outward manner, in attitude and action, will be as various as his voice:  he will evince the inspiration of appropriate feeling in the very posture of his frame; in uttering the language of adoration, the slow-moving, uplifted hand will bespeak the awe and solemnity which pervade his soul; in addressing his fellow men in the spirit of an ambassador of Christ, the gentle yet earnest spirit of persuasive action will be evinced in the pleading hand and aspect; he will know, also, how to pass to the stern and authoritative mien of the reproved of sin; he will, on due occasions, indicate, in his kindling look, the rousing gesture, the mood of him who is empowered and commanded to summon forth all the energies of the human soul; his subdued and chastened address will carry the sympathy of his spirit into the bosom of the mourner; his moistening eye and his gentle action will manifest his tenderness for the suffering:  his whole soul will, in a word, become legible in his features, in his attitude, in the expressive eloquence of his hand; his whole style will be felt to be that of heart communing with heart.”

Dramatic action gives picturesqueness to the spoken word.  It makes things vivid to slow imaginations, and by contrast invests the speaker’s message with new meaning and vitality.  It discloses, too, the speaker’s sympathy and identification with his subject.  His thought and feeling, communicating themselves to voice and face, to hand and arm, to posture and walk, satisfy and impress the hearer by a sense of adequacy and completeness.

Henry Ward Beecher, a conspicuous example of the dramatic style in preaching, was drilled for three years, while at college, in voice-culture, gesture, and action.  His daily practise in the woods, during which he exploded all the vowels from the bottom to the top of his voice, gave him not only a wonderfully responsive and flexible instrument, but a freedom of bodily movement that made him one of the most vigorous and virile of American preachers.  He was in the highest sense a persuasive pulpit orator.

A sensible preacher will avoid the grotesque and the extremes of mere animal vivacity.  Incessant gesture and action, undue emphasizing with hand and head, and all suggestion of self-sufficiency in attitude or manner should be guarded against.  All the various instruments of expression should be made ready and responsive for immediate use, but are to be employed with that taste and tact that characterize the well-balanced man.  Too much action and long-continued emotional effort lose force, and unless the law of action and reaction is applied to the preaching of the sermon the attention of the congregation may snap and the desired effect be utterly destroyed.

The face as the mirror of the emotions is an important part of expression.  The lips will betray determination, grief, sympathy, affection, or other feeling on the part of the speaker.  The eyes, the most direct medium of psychic power, will flash in indignation, glisten in joy, or grow dim in sorrow.  The brow will be elevated in surprise, or lowered in determination and perplexity.