primitive faculty, it is a general conception like memory, emotion, etc. Imagination in a general sense, is a property of every faculty in the human mind. Benevolence, for instance, in a state of activity can conceive of suffering so as to inspire the intellect to supply materials for a pathetic story. So Veneration, Hope, Spirituality, Amativeness, all have their imaginative side, and according to the development and passional activity of these organs will be the intensity of the imaginative picture which they present. Such is imagination in general; the higher functions of imagination-the sublime and beautiful-depend upon the passional activity of Sublimity and Ideality. Ideality gives that exquisite feeling of harmony and proportion; it detects and rejoices in the beautiful. An indescribable thrill of pleasure seems to radiate from all artistic works of perfection. Ideality is, therefore, an element in perfection of diction and beauty of ideas. But the most important organ in high and elevated oratory is Sublimity. All popular orators have possessed it well-developed. It seems almost absolutely necessary to popular oratory. When we conceive of the magnitude of the occasion when an orator must address thousands of men and women; when anything commonplace would be unsuitable for such a vast assembly; when, if the speaker wishes to preserve his own identity, his power over so vast and threatening a multitude, his language, his phraseology, his ideas must be correspondingly magnificent. Sublimity clothes all with power. Images and illustrations subjected to its influence burn with volcanic intensity. It has power to lift up and sway an audience as no other sentiment or intellectual faculty can. Besides imparting grandeur and magnitude to all the emotional nature, it draws the intellectual concep tions within its furnace and imparts to them a giant strength. Hence there have been orators who, in the utterance of what would have been otherwise cool intellectual statements, have seemed to swell with irresistible power. This was because the conceptions were so heightened in magnitude and power by sublimity that they lost for the present their commonplace intellectuality. If we wish to prove this, we have but to take up the speeches of Demosthenes and Chatham, and the sermons of the great Scottish preacher-Thomas Chalmers. Reason in Demosthenes is not commonplace; the strong elements are seized upon and sublimity exaggerates their proportions. It is the faculty which delights in strong contrasts. The Psalms of David and the book of Job, the prophets Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and the book of Revelation are examples. It abounds in Shakespeare, Homer, and Milton. It forms one-third of prose, two-thirds of poetry, and four-fifths of genuine oratory. I have no space for illustration, but here is a comparison which has rooted and blossomed in the fertile soil of sublimity. The orator is speaking of the corruptions of the Roman Empire, and is seeking for a comparison by which to represent the death of her national life, the effect of those corruptions. He compares the utter desolation of Roman nationality to an extinct volcano. "My friends, have you ever stood above the crater of a volcano when she has spouted forth her burning lava and gazed far down into her hissing womb, void of all save murky darkness? Such was Rome-one vast volcano drained of all her fire and life; the lurid light of her dying ashes served only to reveal the vile filth spread in heaps around; she grows detested in the sight of nations; her doom is drawing nigh; the cold hand of death is on her." Now, an equivalent statement of this by the intellectual faculties would be a tame affair. It would be simply that Rome, because of her corruptions of morals and general political disorganization, lost her national spirit and so fell a prey to her enemies. But how faint the impression made upon an audience by the latter expression. I have said that sublimity was one of the most useful faculities in oratory, inasmuch as it made even logic and metaphysics live in a dazzling atmosphere. Chalmers' astronomical sermons are illustrative of this. Probably no other orator ever submitted such deep intellectual thought to a mixed audience as Thomas Chalmers. Yet he was listened to with rapt attention because of the enthusiasm of his delivery and the magnitude of his expressions. In his portrait the organs of Sublimity and Ideality are both large. These organs, Ideality and Sublimity, prompt the intellect to express ideas concretely, not abstractly. This is a high element in oratory. There never has been a great orator, and probably there never can be one, who does not manifest this quality. All the great preachers have the faculty of picture-painting of ideas more or less. The tameness of the ordinary preacher is the result in part of a lack of this quality of the imagination. They gather a few commonplace thoughts and string them together by means of stale phraseology. The whole may have the appearance of condensed thought, but it is old thought in an old garb. Sunday after Sunday people are bored with this stuff, and there is no relief. The clergyman they had before preached in the same way, and should they get a new clergyman he would probably do the same thing, so there is no escape except to cut prayers as often as possible. The absence of imagination and originality in a minister is almost fatal to his success as a preacher, because the substantial facts of Christianity are old, and church-people have heard them over and over again. What is wanted in such circumstances is to produce truth in a new way, in new phraseology, with new illustrations, and new turns of thought, make it glow with the light of the imagination. I will just quote one extract from the greatest orator since Demosthenes-Lord Chatham, as an illustration of the difference between common-place statement and that produced by the imagination: "The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail-its roof may shake the wind may blow through it-the storm may enter the rain may enter-but the king of England cannot enter!-all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement." The common intellectual statement would be simply that the king of England has no power to enter a peasant's cottage without that peasant's permission. The latter some would regard as strong because more brief, and the speaker would get credit for condensation; but is it not a poor, insipid statement, compared with the pathos and sublimity of that of England's greatest orator? The other qualification, originality, is partly a product of the emotional nature and partly an intellectual endowment. The capacity to grasp truth in an original way, to clothe it with new phraseology and turns of thought, is an indication of true genius. A speaker may be influential who collects and gathers facts and presents them before an audience as matters of in- . formation without original reflection, but he never can wield the destinies of nations, or systems of truth, or the fate of great movements. It is great orators like O'Connell, Chatham, Fox,Mirabeau, and Luther, who can shake thrones, demolish old abuses, and build upon their ruins a new and more noble edifice, burning with the original fire of their own age. I have said that the power of originality was partly a quality of intellect and partly a product of the emotional nature. The intellectual faculty most concerned is Comparison, whose function is to detect similarities in ideas and things. Old truths become new by placing them in new relations, or by discovering their similiarity to other truths. In doing this there is a process of comparison going on, an object is presented by the observation, and the faculty of Comparison detects a likeness or common resemblance between that object and some other object or idea. This flash of identification is an element in originality. All great inventors and scientific investigators have made their discoveries in this way. It was by a stroke of the identifying faculty that Newton saw the law of gravitation in the falling apple, and that Watt beheld the steam engine in the white coils of the vapor issuing from the mouth of the kettle. -- Comparison extends through every department of knowledge in botany, chemistry, philosophy, and poetry. In oratory it is almost indispensable. The Saviour of mankind-the greatest orator the world has ever seen-seldom spoke without a comparison. "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed." "It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." The prodigal son, the man traveling into a far country, the foolish virgins and their oilless |