The Preacher Training His Memory
WE must learn to use that marvelous power, which enables us to recall and reproduce past experiences. First, the highest simplicity and greatest naturalness of arrangement will help us to retain what it is desired to retain. In proportion as things arc artificial and unnatural in arrangement will memory find it difificult, if not impossible, to remember. Nothing, for example, is more difficult to retain and reproduce than an artificial arrangement of numbers or of names; but the moment that a principle of classification is adopted by which one thing suggests, or leads on to, another, we find that the weakest memory can be trained to retention and readiness. Avoid, therefore, all artificiality.
Secondly, call to your aid the pictorial faculty if you would help the memory. Make your arrangement of thought as nearly visible as possible. For instance, Amos says: “Can two walk together except they be agreed,” Picture to yourself two persons walking together over one path. They must of course have a common starting-point; they must have a common course and a common goal. By fixing this image in your mind, a path, with a terminus a quo, and a terminus ad qtiem, you can readily remember the essential points of your discourse. If we would agree with God in our walk with Him, we must have a common point at which to start, a common path to walk in, a common goal at which to aim.
The simple object lesson of the “three crosses,” is another illustration of the help of pictures in aiding the memory. Three crosses are drawn, or, if you please, imagined. Over one is the inscription: “In, not on.” Over the middle cross: “On, not in.” Over the other cross: “In and on.” This means that sin was not in Christ, but laid upon Him as a sin offering; that it was in the penitent thief, but not laid on him as a penalty. With regard to the impenitent thief, it was both in him, as guilt, and on him, as penalty. Pictorial methods are not to be despised, if they help a weak memory in retaining and reproducing.
Thirdly, train yourselves to accurate analysis. Labor on the great departments of a sermon, and even the subordinate parts, until as far as may be you have perfected your analysis. The very effort to reach such perfection will make it difficult to forget what you have thus elaborated, and the naturalness and completeness of the analysis will itself help the memory in its retention.
Fourthly, you may sometimes avail yourselves of alliteration and parallelism and other rhetorical devices. For instance a modern author says the gospel “proscribes asceticism and prescribes ajstheticism.” The very form of the sentence not only gives the idea a very complete expression, but it makes it difficult to forget either the thought or its form. “Indolence and ignorance are the handmaids of vice, as industry and intelligence arc the handmaids of virtue.” Here a law of parallelism runs through the entire proverb. Fix the proverb once in memory and you have not only a valuable thought, but you have the heads of a valuable discourse. It has been said that the four rules of Christian living are,
PREACHER TRAINING HIS MEMORY. 2t
“admit, submit, commit, transmit.” Admit — open the doors to the Truth. Submit — bow to the will of God. Commit — trust yourself to Christ. Transmit — convey truth and life to other souls. How easily such an analysis is borne in mind.
Fifthly, sometimes an acrostic arrangement will help the memory. It is not necessary to tell your audience that you resort to an acrostic structure, but, if your memory is weak, this may assist you. or instance a man desired to make an address to young people on seven secrets of success. He associated them with the initial letters of the word “Forward” — Faith, Obedience, Resolution, Work, Associations, Relaxations, Devoutness. This made it impossible for him to forget his train of thought, and greatly assisted his memory in reproducing.
Sixthly, it is well sometimes to make a general framework for discourses of a more general character, leaving room for variety in filling in. A discourse which, like a popular lecture, is likely to be used many times, may retain on many different occasions its general uniformity of structure, while the speaker employs variety in the details. There is in Philadelphia, in one of
2 2 THE DIVIXE ART OF rREACHIXG.
the largest of our shops, a model cottage, built into the structure and fully furnished and garnished as a specimen or model for those who desire to prepare attractive and agreeable homes. The framework of the cottage has been the same for many years, but the furniture and the garniture are continually undergoing change. Now, let the structure of the cottage represent the general framework of such a discourse as I have supposed, and the furnishing and the garnishing represent the filling in of the minutiae.
At the beginning of my own ministerial life, foreseeing that demands would be frequently made upon me for public lectures and addresses, on general occasions, I framed several discourses on popular and useful themes, and have been accustomed to use them from time to time, making such changes in the elaboration of the various departments and illustrations of thought as xly own mental growth and increasing intelligence or the surrounding circumstances might allow; and I found these to be exceedingly useful to me, being oftentimes called upon with very little or no notice. These have lain in the mind and memory as the general foundation for addresses for which no special preparation could be made.
Seventhly, it is useful immediately before preaching to draw out what may be called a last analysis, casting aside previous preparations and notes already put down on paper; and, just as one is about to enter the pulpit, gathering the last impressions of the subject as it lies in the mind, with the latest light that has come to us by the Spirit and through the Word. This will oftentimes be found to be a most valuable preparation for the duty immediately before you. It will freshen and quicken the memory, and at the same time enable you to cast into form the last suggestions which the Truth has made upon your own mind and heart.