# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S376
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

376

Rambach on the Faults of Declamation in the Delivery
of Sermons.

Perhaps in no country are so many faults committed, precisely with regard
to declamation (the use of the voice) in the delivery of sermons, as here
in America. A warning and counsel in this respect from an older
theologian should therefore not be entirely superfluous. Under conditions
such as prevail here, certain bad habits unnoticed become downright
fashion. We therefore communicate herewith, on this subject, a section
from Johann Jacob Rambach's Homiletics, which we have already reviewed in
the Pastor's Library, and permit ourselves in it only the one alteration,
that we render into German the Latin and Greek words used by Rambach and
not explained by him himself. The ninth chapter of the work indicated
treats of Action, and the fourth and fifth paragraphs of the same treat of
Declamation (excluding Gesticulation). It runs, then, as follows:

"Much indeed depends on the voice of a preacher being rightly
constituted, yet one can give very few rules concerning this, because most
of it depends in part on nature and in part arises from affect and habit —
matters, however, that will not submit to the strict demands of rule.
Nevertheless, since the common people look very much to it that the
preacher have a good voice and pronunciation,*) and since natural defects,
too, can gradually be improved and laid aside,**) instruction on this
point can do no harm.

Accordingly, the faults to be avoided and improved are to be noted, and
among these:

1. Somnolentia, when the voice is too drowsy, which is a sign that one is
not speaking out of the fullness of the heart, and that one does not stand
in the affect that the matter brings with it. If someone, for instance,
speaks of the great love of God which he has shown the world in Jesus
Christ, or of the dreadful wrath of God against sinners, and the words as
it were die on his lips, this is utterly repugnant, and everyone sees that
he is speaking of things that do not move him.

2. Clamositas, when one shouts so dreadfully that the hearers' ears and
heads ache from it, especially in small churches. By this one does
oneself harm not only in one's health, since one can easily burst a
blood-vessel in the lung and bring on consumption†) —

*) We would still like to add: and since the manner of delivery has great
influence on the understanding of what is delivered, it can thus become of
itself a hindrance to the effect of the Word of God. THE EDITOR.

**) It is known that the most famous orator of antiquity, Demosthenes,
suffered from various natural defects that hindered him in the exercise of
oratory (he could not, for instance, pronounce the letter R) and which he
overcame through persistent practice. THE EDITOR.

†) Namely, the consumption of the windpipe and inflammation of the larynx
so frequently found here. THE EDITOR.

2*