"Specimens of Bible Oratory", or, "Models of Preaching" all of which were originally considered, because it suggests precisely the purpose for which this treatise is written, a presentation of the public speeches contained in the Bible. The few brief criticisms are merely suggestive to the reader, and to interest him in a consideration of the Oratory of the Bible, which is of more interest to the world than that of any race or age, because it may be called the spirit of all the ages, the Universal Oratory. It has in it the finest and most useful qualities of Rhetoric and Oratory, a style of composition sublime yet simple, redundant yet concise, refined yet familiar, dignified yet lively, nervous yet flowing, pleasant yet pungent, sententious yet impassioned, delivered in the most natural, concise, energetic, vivacious, elevated, yet short, simple and effective common language of the most educated good people of the day in which it was originally spoken, and capable of translation into the same in any other age or nation. I have used throughout in copying the speeches the "Authorized Version" for two reasons, first it is the most easily read and finest rhetorically. that of Usher. The time used is |