Quiet Hints, Chapter 21–"Mannerisms”

Notes taken from Quiet Hints to Growing Preachers by Charles E. Jefferson, Chapter 21, “Mannerisms.”

Mannerisms as a rule are veritable dragons which throwing themselves between the preacher and his hearers must be warred against and slain. Eternal vigilance is the price the man of God must pay for deliverance from this plague of pulpit pests.

If a man clears his throat at the end of every fifth sentence there will be person in his congregation who will want to clear it out of the pulpit altogether.

If he yells at the top of his voice in the utterance of feeble ideas he is a nuisance which ought to be abated.

When finely organized Christian men and women cannot attend church without receiving a headache from the stentorian tones of the preacher it would seem that yelling, like other forms of sin, ought to be made a cause for church discipline.

A congregation is nothing but a big, sensible man waiting to be spoken to by a little man in the pulpit, anything in the nature of a howl from his lips is as vulgar as it is absurd.

It is better that a minister should be afflicted with yellow fever than with a (ministerial) tone. With the yellow fever he might die.