What the People Say by G. B. STARR

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 1, 1910

What the People Say

By G. B. STARR

G. B. STARR

“We like the preacher, and are interested in the subjects presented; but he wears us out with his long preaching. We really want to hear the next subject; but when we contemplate starting in to listen for an hour or an hour and a half, the strain looks too great for our tired nerves; and so, in self-defense, we plan to remain at home at least part of the time.”

“We wouldn’t mind a half-hour, or even forty minutes, of bright, earnest talk, but longer than that seems more than we are equal to.”

“The way it affects me,” says another, “is this: When I am enjoying a good thing, I want the speaker to stop while I am really enjoying it; but if he keeps on until I become weary, and my mind is overcrowded, I lose the sense of pleasure, and instead carry away with me a dread of another such experience, and so feel disinclined to attend again.”

Now the minds of the majority of people are not at leisure, as are the minds of speakers, to devote hours of earnest thought every day to Bible themes. Home cares, business, and many other things fill the mind, until it can not retain a long list of even very important facts.

Ought we not, therefore, to be admonished to pack and boil down and concentrate, and make sure of a few clear, clean-cut points, and nail them to stay? And ought we not to keep “the terminal apparatus” in good working order, and use it constantly by stopping on time, as well as to urge the people to “come on time”?

If we are to gather and hold large

audiences in the great cities, we shall have to listen to their friendly admonitions and warnings against the “sin which doth so easily beset” the public speaker.

Everybody likes to hear a bright, short speaker, and to hear him often.

Melrose, Mass.