QUESTIONS, INTERRUPTIONS AND HECKLING
These rarely happen. Even out of doors, in surroundings other than Hyde Park and Clapham Common and Tower Hill, listeners do not often want to make themselves conspicuous. If they do ask questions in an orderly fashion we must of course, try to answer them, and even the inane questions which well-meaning but Scripturally ill-informed people are wont to ask can be turned to good account. Interruptions-expression of approval or disapproval-can generally be taken in our stride and allowed to pass. For heckling it is difficult to suggest rules. Not many of us nowadays have much experience of it. When Peter and his companions were heckled with the accusation of drunkenness32, Peter was able to make good use of the derision, and we may be able to do the same if called upon.

There are principles to be followed. If we are reviled, we will not revile again.33 If we are asked a clear question which seems to us to be beside the mark, or perhaps for the moment difficult to answer, we must not ridicule the questioner, nor indulge in oral sleight of hand to evade the difficulty. We shall do the Truth a far better service by honesty, even at the price of momentary discomfiture, than by an unprincipled adroitness, which can put the questioner in the wrong without revealing our impotence. There may be occasions when an obviously foolish question (which even the rest of the audience sees to be so) can be deflected into ways which reveal a truth to the advantage of the questioner, but it will not be considerations of expediency which decide those circumstances.