1.G 06. The Art of Resting Audiences

The Art of Resting Audiences.

It is a great art to know how to preach as long as you want to, or have to, and yet not tire your audience, especially where you have been preaching many years in the same place. For my own part I do not think that a very long sermon is adapted to edification; but a man ought to be able to preach an hour, and to hold his audience too. He cannot do it, however, if his sermon is a monotone, either in voice or thought. He cannot do it unless he is interesting. He cannot possibly hold his people unwearied, when they have become accustomed to his voice, his manner, and his thoughts, unless he moves through a very considerable scale, up and down, resting them; in other words, changing the faculties that he is addressing. For instance, you are at one time, by statements of fact, engaging the perceptive reason, as a phrenologist would say. You soon pass, by a natural transition, to the relations that exist between facts and statements, and you are then addressing another audience,- namely, the reflective faculties of your people. And when you have concluded an argument upon that, and have flashed an illustration that touches and wakes up their fancy and imagination, you are bringing in still another audience, the ideal or imaginative one. And now, if out of these you express a sweet wine that goes to the emotions and arouses their feelings, so that one and another in the congregation wipes his eyes, and the proud man, that does not want to cry, blows his nose, what have you done? You have relieved the weariness of your congregation by enabling them to listen with different parts of their minds to what you have been saying.

If I were to stand here on one leg for ten minutes, I should be very grateful if I were permitted to stand on the other a little while. If I stood on both of them, perfectly erect, I should be glad to have the opportunity of resting more heavily on one, and taking an easy position. In other words, there is nothing that tires a man so much as standing in one posture, stock still. By preaching to different parts of the minds of your audience, one part rests the others; and persons not wearied out will listen to long sermons and think them very short. It is a good thing for a man to preach an hour, and have his people say, “Why, you ought not to have stopped for an hour yet.” That is a compliment that you will not get every day, and you ought to be very grateful when you do get it.