# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S377
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Rambach on the Faults of Declamation in the Delivery of Sermons. 377

on consumption, but one also causes thereby that the matter one is
delivering cannot be distinctly made out, on account of the noisy din of
the voice reverberating in the church.

3. Exilitas vocis [thinness of voice], when one speaks all too softly and
faintly, whereby the preacher causes the hearers in part to sleep, in part
to daydream, in part (in large churches) to converse among themselves, or
to read in a book, and so on, because they cannot understand his delivery
and can hear the least part of it.

4. Nimia vocis inæquitas [excessive unevenness of voice], when the voice
is far too uneven, as when, for instance, one shouts out certain words in
a sentence — which after all carry no particular emphasis — with a
strongly raised voice, but then lets the voice again drop so low that the
fewest hearers can hear it, and is thus just like a ship that is now
tossed up by the waves clear to the sky, and now again plunged down into
the abyss. This bespeaks a great weakness of judgment. One also often
exerts oneself too strongly at the beginning, so that afterward, toward
the end, at the application, one's voice grows faint; hence one must
husband one's strength, so as to deliver the application with the proper
earnestness and emphasis. To this also belongs the bad habit of reciting
the opening words of a sentence too loudly, while swallowing and
smothering the final syllables and withdrawing them from the hearers'
ears, so that they must either guess at them or come away with a mutilated
sense.

5. Omnimoda vocis æqualitas et monotonia [complete evenness and monotony
of voice], when one recites everything in one tone, and does not vary the
voice according to the nature of the matter. By this one lays oneself
open to the suspicion of having learned one's sermon by heart in a
childish manner. Keeping always the same one tone at the end of a
sentence (not letting the tone fall, or not raising it at a question), and
as it were chanting the sentences through, is likewise repugnant to the
congregation.

6. Nimia tarditas [excessive slowness], when one recites the words all
too slowly and, as it were, spells them out to the hearers and counts them
off on a string.

7. Nimia festinatio et praecipitantia linguae [excessive haste and
precipitancy of the tongue], when the words tumble out too hastily, like a
sudden downpour; when one pauses no longer where a period stands in the
speech than where a comma is, and behaves exactly as if someone stood
behind one's back with a whip, continually driving one on to press
forward so that the sermon might come to an end. Under such haste it
happens, in particular, that one easily misspeaks and, for example,
pronounces the words as John 20, when it in fact stands 1 John 3, or: as
the holy apostle Paul says, 1 John 2, and so forth.

8. Affectatio [affectation], when one assumes an affected oratorical or
so-called pulpit tone, which one otherwise does not tend to have at all in
one's speech when one speaks outside the pulpit; or when one wishes to
imitate others, though one's voice is not suited to it.

9. Inconsulta vocis interruptio [ill-considered interruption of the
voice], when in drawing breath one is not guided by the sense, but rather,
in the middle of a comma — indeed even