1.I 15. Style
Style.
Style is only the outside form which thoughts take on when embodied in language. Style, then, must always conform to the nature of the man who employs it; as the saying goes, “ Style is the man.” In general, it may be said, that is the best style which is the least obtrusive, which lets through the truth most nearly in its absolute purity. The truths of religion, in a simple and transparent style, shine as the sunlight on the fields and mountains, revealing all things in their proper forms and natural colours; but an artificial and gorgeous style, like a cathedral window, may let in some light, yet in blotches of purple and blue that spot the audience, and produce grotesqueness and unnatural effects.
It is desirable that the preacher should have a copious vocabulary, and a facility in the selection and use of words; and to this end he should read much, giving close attention to the words and phrases used by the best authors, not for servile copying and memorizing, but that these elements may become assimilated with his own mind, as a part of it, ready for use when the need comes.
He should also have an ear for strong and terse, but rhythmical sentences, which flow without jolt and jar. Above all other men, the preacher should avoid what may be called a literary style, as distinguished from a natural one; and by a “ literary style,” technically so called, I understand one in which abound these two elements the artificial structure of sentences, and the use of words and phrases peculiar to literature alone, and not to common life. Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile under standing of the truth. Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don’t whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want to tingle. A good fireman will send the water through as short and straight hose as he can. No man in his senses would desire to have the stream ilow though coil after coil, winding about. It loses force by length and complexity. Many a sermon has its sentences curled over it like locks of hair upon a beauty’s head. I have known men whose style was magnificent when they were once thoroughly mad. Temper straightened out all the curls, and made their sentences straight as a lance. It is a foolish and unwise ambition to introduce periphrastic or purely literary terms where they can possibly be avoided. Go right ahead. Don’t run round for your meaning. Long sentences may be good, but not twisting ones. Many otherwise good sermons are useless because they don’t get on. They go round, and round, and round, and always keep coming back to the same place.
There is a charm in some styles, an unwearying freshness and sweetness, which men find it difficult to account for. I think, upon analysis, it may be found that such styles are based upon vernacular words and home-bred idioms. At Pentecost every man heard in his own tongue wherein he was born.
Use homely words those which people are used to, and which suggest many things to them. The words that we heard in our childhood store up in them selves sweetness and flavour that make them precious all our life long afterwards. Words borrowed from foreign languages, and words that belong espe cially to science and learning and literature, have very little suggestion in them to the common people. But home-bred words, when they strike the imagination, awaken ineffable and tremulous memories, obscure, subtle, and yet most powerful. Words register up in themselves the sum of man’s life and experience. The words which, from the cradle to the grave, have been the vehicles of love, trust, praise, hope, joy, anger, and hate, are not simply words, but, like paper, are what they are by virtue of the thing written on them. He who uses mainly the Anglo Saxon vocabulary, giving preference to the idioms and phrases which are homely, will have a power which cannot be derived from any other use of human language. Such language is an echo in the experience of men; and as a phrase in a mountainous country, when roundly uttered, goes on repeating itself from peak to peak, running in alternate reverberations through the whole valley, so a truth runs through all the ranges of memory in the mind of the hearer, not the less real because so extremely rapid and subtle as to defy analysis. The words them selves, full of secret suggestions and echoes, multiply the meaning in the minds of men, and make it even more in the recipient than it was in the speaker.
Words are to the thought what musical notes are to the melodies. As an instance of contrasted style, let one read the immortal allegory of John Bunyan in contrast with the grandiose essays of Dr. Johnson.
Bunyan is to-day like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in season; his leaf shall not wither. Johnson, with all his glory, lies, like an Egyptian king, buried and forgotten in the pyramid of his fame.