playactor

— It is the oldest of saws that every great orator, whether secular or ecclesiastical, has in him many of the attributes of a playactor, and no one can have listened to the most successful of American preachers — Mr. Henry Ward Beecher — whose name has been so long before the public in connection with a painful and humiliating investigation — without seeing how closely his performances on the platform of Plymouth Church draw their inspiration from the stage.