Bear in mind, however, that this does not mean you are always to confine yourself to a conversational level.  There are themes which demand large treatment, wherein vocal power and impassioned feeling are appropriate and essential.  But what Lord Brougham meant, and it is equally true to-day, was that good public speaking is fundamentally good talking.

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke recommended debate as one of the best means for developing facility and power in public speaking.  Himself a master of debate, he said, “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.  Our antagonist is our helper.  This amiable conflict with difficulty obliges us to have an intimate acquaintance with our subject, and compels us to consider it in all its relations.  It will not suffer us to be superficial.”

Burke, like all great orators, believed in premeditation, and always wrote and corrected his speeches with fastidious care.  While such men knew that inspiration might come at the moment of speaking, they preferred to base their chances of success upon painstaking preparation.

Massillon

Massillon, the great French divine, spoke in a commanding voice and in a style so direct that at times he almost overwhelmed his hearers.  His pointed and personal questions could not be evaded.  He sent truth like fiery darts to the hearts of his hearers.

I ask you to note very carefully the following eloquent passage from a sermon in which he explained how men justified themselves because they were no worse than the multitude: 

“On this account it is, my brethren, that I confine myself to you who at present are assembled here; I include not the rest of men, but consider you as alone existing on the earth.  The idea which occupies and frightens me is this:  I figure to myself the present as your last hour and the end of the world; that the heavens are going to open above your heads; our Savior, in all His glory, to appear in the midst of the temple; and that you are only assembled here to wait His coming; like trembling criminals on whom the sentence is to be pronounced, either of life eternal or of everlasting death; for it is vain to flatter yourselves that you shall die more innocent than you are at this hour.  All those desires of change with which you are amused will continue to amuse you till death arrives, the experience of all ages proves it; the only difference you have to expect will most likely be a larger balance against you than what you would have to answer for at present; and from what would be your destiny were you to be judged this moment, you may almost decide upon what will take place at your departure from life.  Now, I ask you (and connecting my own lot with yours I ask with dread), were Jesus Christ to appear in this temple, in the midst of this assembly, to judge us, to make the dreadful separation betwixt the goats and sheep, do you believe that the greatest number