As a rule, I prepare my sermons beforehand. I am careful and conscientious over them, but no one is better aware than myself of their deficiencies.
Tonight I was of necessity preaching extempore, and as I looked down on the sea of upturned faces, a sudden madness entered my brain. I ceased to be in any sense a Minister of God. I became an actor. I had an audience before me and I wanted to move that audience—and more, I felt the power to move it.
I am not proud of what I did that night. I am an utter disbeliever in the emotional Revivalist spirit. Yet that night I acted the part of a raving, ranting evangelist.
I gave out my text slowly.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I repeated it twice, and I heard my own voice, a resonant, ringing voice unlike the voice of the everyday Leonard Clement.
I saw Griselda from her front pew look up in surprise and Dennis follow her example.
I held my breath for a moment or two, and then I let myself rip. The congregation in that church were in a state of pent-up emotion, ripe to be played upon. I played upon them. I exhorted sinners to repentance. I lashed myself into a kind of emotional frenzy. Again and again I threw out a denouncing hand and reiterated the phrase.
“I am speaking to you …”
And each time, from different parts of the church, a kind of sighing gasp went up.
Mass emotion is a strange and terrible thing.