Garrick on Acting vs Preaching

It is an old story that a minister once asked Garrick, the actor, why actors portraying fiction on the stage affected the people so much more profoundly than ministers in the pulpit discussing the most momentous realities. The great actor replied : “Because we represent fiction, as though it were fact, and ministers represent fact as though it were fiction.” If actors displayed as little feeling on the stage as many ministers do in the pulpit, their career would be very short. Nothing but an earnest religion counts in this earnest age.

What care busy men for a dull, lifeless presentation of any subject? Display a zeal for spiritual results as earnest as theirs for wealth, and they will listen. Speak to them as those whose eyes have been wearied in trying to compass the height and depth of life; speak as those who have stood on the verge of time and peered behind the veil where the mortal has put on the immortal and they will hear.