True Eloquence | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 30, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 41.

True Eloquence.

FEW among those who listened to the eloquent words of the late Bishop Simpson would have dreamed that the master-speaker who stood before them was, in his early youth, marked out from his fellows by his lack of power to speak attractively. Yet so it was. And the Bishop's words, in telling of that period and of the way in which he acquired the gift which was in his subsequent life so markedly his, are so suggestive that they are worth repeating here.

"At school," he said, "the one thing I could not do was to speak. It cost me unspeakable effort to bring myself to attempt, and I was invariably mortified by my failures. At length, having felt called to the ministry, I sought to forget myself as far as possible, and, banishing all thoughts of oratory, to give myself absolutely to the task of saying things so that people could really understand them."

And that is the secret of all true eloquence,—speaking so that people can really understand.—Sunday School Times.