CHAPTER I.

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HINTS

ON

EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING.

BY HENRY WARE, JR.

MINISTER OF THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON.

Maximus vero studiorum fructus est, et velut præmium quoddam

amplissimum longi laboris, ex tempore dicendi facultas.

_Quinct._ x. 7.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY CUMMINGS, HILLIARD & CO.

1824.

University Press--Hilliard & Metcalf.

TO

THE STUDENTS

IN THE

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY,

THIS LITTLE TREATISE,

WITH THE

SINCEREST PRAYERS THAT THEY MAY BECOME

PROFOUND DIVINES AND POWERFUL PREACHERS,

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

BY

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Advantages of Extemporaneous Preaching

CHAPTER II.

Disadvantages--Objections considered

CHAPTER III.

Rules

PREFACE.

It is the object of this little work, to draw the attention of those who

are preparing for the christian ministry, or who have just entered it,

to a mode of preaching which the writer thinks has been too much

discountenanced and despised; but which, under proper restrictions, he

is persuaded may add greatly to the opportunities of ministerial

usefulness. The subject has hardly received the attention it deserves

from writers on the pastoral office, who have usually devoted to it but

a few sentences, which offer little encouragement and afford no aid.

Burnet, in his Treatise on the Pastoral Care, and Fenelon in his

Dialogues on Eloquence, have treated it more at large, but still very

cursorily. To their arguments and their authority, which are of great

weight, I refer the more distinctly here, because I have not quoted them

so much at large as I intended when I wrote the beginning of the second

chapter. Besides these, the remarks of Quinctilian, x. 7. on the subject

of speaking extempore, which are full of his usual good sense, may be

very profitably consulted.

It has been my object to state fully and fairly the benefits which

attend this mode of address in the pulpit, and at the same time to guard

against the dangers and abuses to which it is confessedly liable. How

far I may have succeeded, it is not for me to determine. It would be

something to persuade but one to add this to his other talents for doing

good in the church. Even the attempt to do it, though unsuccessful,

would not be without its reward; since it could not be fairly made

without a most salutary moral and intellectual discipline.

It is not to be expected--nor do I mean by any thing I have said to

intimate--that every man is capable of becoming an accomplished preacher

in this mode, or that every one may succeed as well in this as in the

ordinary mode. There is a variety in the talents of men, and to some

this may be peculiarly unsuited. Yet this is no good reason why _any_

should decline the attempt, since it is only by making the attempt that

they can determine whether or not success is within their power.

There is at least one consequence likely to result from the study of

this art and the attempt to practise it, which would alone be a

sufficient reason for urging it earnestly. I mean, its probable effect

in breaking up the constrained, cold, formal, scholastic mode of

address, which follows the student from his college duties, and keeps

him from immediate contact with the hearts of his fellow men. This would

be effected by his learning to speak from his feelings, rather than from

the critical rules of a book. His address would be more natural, and

consequently better adapted to effective preaching.

HINTS ON EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING.

CHAPTER I.

It is a little remarkable that, while some classes of christians do not

tolerate the preaching of a written discourse, others have an equal

prejudice against all sermons which have not been carefully precomposed.

Among the latter are to be found those who favor an educated ministry,

and whose preachers are valued for their cultivated minds and extensive

knowledge. The former are, for the most part, those who disparage

learning as a qualification for a christian teacher, and whose ministers

are consequently not accustomed to exact mental discipline, nor familiar

with the best models of thinking and writing. It might seem at first

view, that the least cultivated would require the greatest previous

preparation in order profitably to address their fellow-men, and that

the best informed and most accustomed to study might be best trusted to

speak without the labor of written composition. That it has been thought

otherwise, is probably owing, in a great measure, to the solicitude for

literary exactness and elegance of style, which becomes a habit in the

taste of studious men, and renders all inaccuracy and carelessness

offensive. He who has been accustomed to read and admire the finest

models of composition in various languages, and to dwell on those

niceties of method and expression which form so large a part of the

charm of literary works; acquires a critical delicacy of taste, which

renders him fastidiously sensitive to those crudities and roughnesses of

speech, which almost necessarily attend an extemporaneous style. He is

apt to exaggerate their importance, and to imagine that no excellencies

of another kind can atone for them. He therefore protects himself by the

toil of previous composition, and ventures not a sentence which he has

not leisurely weighed and measured. An audience also, composed of

reading people, or accustomed to the exactness of written composition in

the pulpit, acquires something of the same taste, and is easily offended

at the occasional homeliness of diction, and looseness of method, which

occur in extemporaneous speaking. Whereas those preachers and hearers,

whose education and habits of mind have been different, know nothing of

this taste, and are insensible to these blemishes; and, if there be only

a fluent outpouring of words, accompanied by a manner which evinces

earnestness and sincerity, are pleased and satisfied.

It is further remarkable, that this prejudice of taste has been suffered

to rule in this way in no profession but that of the ministry. The most

fastidious taste never carries a written speech to the bar or into the

senate. The very man who dares not ascend the pulpit without a sermon

diligently arranged, and filled out to the smallest word, if he had gone

into the profession of the law, would, at the same age and with no

greater advantages, address the bench and the jury in language

altogether unpremeditated. Instances are not wanting in which the

minister, who imagined it impossible to put ten sentences together in

the pulpit, has found himself able, on changing his profession, to speak

fluently for an hour.

I have no doubt that to speak extempore is easier at the bar and in the

legislature, than in the pulpit. Our associations with this place are of

so sacred a character, that our faculties do not readily play there with

their accustomed freedom. There is an awe upon our feelings which

constrains us. A sense, too, of the importance and responsibility of the

station, and of the momentous consequences depending on the influence he

may there exert, has a tendency to oppress and embarrass the

conscientious man, who feels it as he ought. There is also, in the other

cases, an immediate end to be attained, which produces a powerful

immediate excitement; an excitement, increased by the presence of those

who are speaking on the opposite side of the question, and in assailing

or answering whom, the embarrassment of the place is lost in the

interest of the argument. Whereas in the pulpit, there is none to

assault, and none to refute; the preacher has the field entirely to

himself, and this of itself is sufficiently dismaying. The ardor and

self-oblivion which present debate occasions, do not exist; and the

solemn stillness and fixed gaze of a waiting multitude, serve rather to

appal and abash the solitary speaker, than to bring the subject forcibly

to his mind. Thus every external circumstance is unpropitious, and it is

not strange that relief has been sought in the use of manuscripts.

But still, these difficulties, and others which I shall have occasion to

mention in another place, are by no means such as to raise that

insuperable obstacle which many suppose. They may all be overcome by

resolution and perseverance. As regards merely the use of unpremeditated

language, it is far from being a difficult attainment. A writer, whose

opportunities of observation give weight to his opinion, says, in

speaking of the style of the younger Pitt--"This profuse and

interminable flow of words is not in itself either a rare or remarkable

endowment. It is wholly a thing of habit; and is exercised by every

village lawyer with various degrees of power and grace."[1] If there be

circumstances which render the habit more difficult to be acquired by

the preacher, they are still such as may be surmounted; and it may be

made plain, I think, that the advantages which he may thus ensure to

himself are so many and so great, as to offer the strongest inducement

to make the attempt.

[1] Europe; &c. by a Citizen of the United States.

That these advantages are real and substantial, may be safely inferred

from the habit of public orators in other professions, and from the

effects they are known to produce. There is more nature, more warmth in

the declamation, more earnestness in the address, greater animation in

the manner, more of the lighting up of the soul in the countenance and

whole mien, more freedom and meaning in the gesture; the eye speaks, and

the fingers speak, and when the orator is so excited as to forget every

thing but the matter on which his mind and feelings are acting, the

whole body is affected, and helps to propagate his emotions to the

hearer. Amidst all the exaggerated colouring of Patrick Henry's

biographer, there is doubtless enough that is true, to prove a power in

the spontaneous energy of an excited speaker, superior in its effects to

any thing that can be produced by writing. Something of the same sort

has been witnessed by every one who is in the habit of attending in the

courts of justice, or the chambers of legislation. And this, not only in

the instances of the most highly eloquent; but inferior men are found

thus to excite attention and produce effects, which they never could

have done by their pens. In deliberative assemblies, in senates and

parliaments, the larger portion of the speaking is necessarily

unpremeditated; perhaps the most eloquent is always so; for it is

elicited by the growing heat of debate; it is the spontaneous combustion

of the mind in the conflict of opinion. Chatham's speeches were not

written, nor Sheridan's, nor that of Ames on the British treaty. They

were, so far as regards their language and ornaments, the effusions of

the moment, and derived from their freshness a power, which no study

could impart. Among the orations of Cicero, which are said to have made

the greatest impression, and to have best accomplished the orator's

design, are those delivered on unexpected emergencies, which precluded

the possibility of previous preparation. Such were his first invective

against Catiline, and the speech which stilled the disturbances at the

theatre. In all these cases, there can be no question of the advantages

which the orators enjoyed in their ability to make use of the excitement

of the occasion, unchilled by the formality of studied preparation.

Although possibly guilty of many rhetorical and logical faults, yet

these would be unobserved in the fervent and impassioned torrent, which

bore away the minds of the delighted auditors.

It is doubtless very true, that a man of study and reflection,

accustomed deliberately to weigh every expression and analyze every

sentence, and to be influenced by nothing which does not bear the test

of the severest examination, may be most impressed by the quiet,

unpretending reading of a well digested essay or dissertation. To some

men the concisest statement of a subject, with nothing to adorn the

naked skeleton of thought, is most forcible. They are even impatient of

any attempt to assist its effect by fine writing, by emphasis, tone, or

gesture. They are like the mathematician, who read the Paradise Lost

without pleasure, because he could not see that it proved any thing. But

we are not to judge from the taste of such men, of what is suitable to

affect the majority. The multitude are not mere thinkers or great

readers. From their necessary habits they are incapable of following a

long discussion except it be made inviting by the circumstances

attending it, or the manner of conducting it. Their attention must be

excited and maintained by some external application. To them,

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant

More learned than their ears.

It is a great fault with intellectual men, that they do not make

sufficient allowance for the different modes of education and habits of

mind in men of other pursuits. It is one of the infelicities of a

university education, that a man is there trained in a fictitious scene,

where there are interests, associations, feelings, exceedingly diverse

from what prevail in the society of the world; and where he becomes so

far separated from the habits and sympathies of other men, as to need to

acquire a new knowledge of them, before he knows how to address them.

When a young man leaves the seclusion of a student's life to preach to

his fellow-men, he is likely to speak to them as if they were scholars.

He imagines them to be capable of appreciating the niceties of method

and style, and of being affected by the same sort of sentiment,

illustration, and cool remark, which affects those who have been

accustomed to be moved and guided by the dumb and lifeless pages of a

book. He therefore talks to them calmly, is more anxious for correctness

than impression, fears to make more noise or to have more motion than

the very letters on his manuscript; addressing himself, as he thinks, to

the intellectual part of man; forgetting that the intellectual man is

not very easy of access, that it is barred up, and must be approached

through the senses and affections and imagination.

There was a class of rhetoricians and orators at Rome in the time of

Cicero, who were famous for having made the same mistake. They would do

every thing by a fixed and almost mechanical rule, by calculation and

measurement. Their sentences were measured, their gestures were

measured, their tones were measured; and they framed canons of judgment

and taste, by which it was pronounced an affront on the intellectual

nature of man to assail him with epithets, and exclamations, and varied

tones, and emphatic gesture. They censured the free and flowing manner

of Cicero as "tumid and exuberant," nec satis pressus, supra modum

exultans et superfluens. They cultivated a more guarded and concise

style, which might indeed please the critic or the scholar, but was

wholly unfitted to instruct or move a promiscuous audience; as was said

of one of them, oratio--doctis et attente audientibus erat illustris; a

multitudine autem et a foro, cui nata eloquentia est, devorabatur. The

taste of the multitude prevailed, and Cicero was the admiration of the

people, while those who pruned themselves by a more rigid and

philosophical law, _coldly correct and critically dull_, "were

frequently deserted by the audience in the midst of their harangues."[2]

[2] Middleton's Life of Cicero, III. 324.

We may learn something from this. There is one mode of address for books

and for classical readers, and another for the mass of men, who judge by

the eye and ear, by the fancy and feelings, and know little of rules of

art or of an educated taste. Hence it is that many of those preachers

who have become the classics of a country, have been unattractive to the

multitude, who have deserted their polished and careful composition, for

the more unrestrained and rousing declamation of another class. The

singular success of Chalmers, seems to be in a considerable measure

owing to his attention to this fact. He has abandoned the pure and

measured style, and adopted a heterogeneous mixture of the gaudy,

pompous, and colloquial, offensive indeed to the ears of literary men,

but highly acceptable to those who are less biassed by the authority of

a standard taste and established models. We need not go to the extreme

of Chalmers,--for there is no necessity for inaccuracy, bombast, or

false taste--but we should doubtless gain by adopting his principle. The

object is to address men according to their actual character, and in

that mode in which their habits of mind may render them most accessible.

As but few are thinkers or readers, a congregation is not to be

addressed as such; but, their modes of life being remembered, constant

regard must be had to their need of external attraction. This is most

easily done by the familiarity and directness of extemporaneous address;

for which reason this mode of preaching has peculiar advantages, in its

adaptation to their situation and wants.

The truth is, indeed, that it is not the weight of the thought, the

profoundness of the argument, the exactness of the arrangement, the

choiceness of the language, which interest and chain the attention of

even those educated hearers, who are able to appreciate them all. They

are as likely to sleep through the whole as others. They can find all

these qualities in much higher perfection in their libraries; they do

not seek these only at church. And as to the large mass of the people,

they are to them hidden things, of which they discern nothing. It is not

these, so much as the attraction of an earnest manner, which arrests the

attention and makes instruction welcome. Every day's observation may

show us, that he who has this manner will retain the attention of even

an intellectual man with common-place thoughts, while with a different

manner he would render tedious the most novel and ingenious

disquisitions. Let an indifferent reader take into the pulpit a sermon

of Barrow or Butler, and all its excellence of argument and eloquence

would not save it from being accounted tedious; while an empty declaimer

shall collect crowds to hang upon his lips in raptures. And this manner,

which is so attractive, is not the studied artificial enunciation of the

rhetorician's school, but the free, flowing, animated utterance, which

seems to come from the impulse of the subject; which may be full of

faults, yet masters the attention by its nature and sincerity. This is

precisely the manner of the extemporaneous speaker--in whom the

countenance reflects the emotions of the soul, and the tone of voice is

tuned to the feelings of the heart, rising and falling with the subject,

as in conversation, without the regular and harmonious modulation of the

practised reader.

In making these and similar remarks, it is true that I am thinking of

the best extemporaneous speakers, and that all cannot be such. But it

ought to be recollected at the same time, that all cannot be excellent

_readers_; that those who speak ill, would probably read still worse;

and that therefore those who can attain to no eminence as speakers, do

not on that account fail of the advantages of which I speak, since they

escape at least the unnatural monotony of bad reading; than which

nothing is more earnestly to be avoided.

Every man utters himself with greater animation and truer emphasis in

speaking, than he does, or perhaps can do, in reading. Hence it happens

that we can listen longer to a tolerable speaker, than to a good reader.

There is an indescribable something in the natural tones of him who is

expressing earnestly his present thoughts, altogether foreign from the

drowsy uniformity of the man that reads. I once heard it well observed,

that the least animated mode of communicating thoughts to others, is the

reading from a book the composition of another; the next in order is the

reading one's own composition; the next is delivering one's own

composition memoriter; and the most animated of all is the uttering

one's own thoughts as they rise fresh in his mind. Very few can give the

spirit to another's writings which they communicate to their own, or can

read their own with the spirit, with which they spontaneously express

their thoughts. We have all witnessed this in conversation; when we have

listened with interest to long harangues from persons, who tire us at

once if they begin to read. It is verified at the bar, and in the

legislature, where orators maintain the unflagging attention of hearers

for a long period, when they could not have read the same speech without

producing intolerable fatigue. It is equally verified in the history of

the pulpit; for those who are accustomed to the reading of sermons, are

for the most part impatient even of able discourses, when they extend

beyond the half hour's length; while very indifferent extemporaneous

preachers are listened to with unabated attention for a full hour. In

the former case there is a certain uniformity of tone, and a perpetual

recurrence of the same cadences, inseparable from the manner of a

reader, from which the speaker remains longer free. This difference is

perfectly well understood, and was acted upon by Cecil, whose success as

a preacher gives him a right to be heard, when he advised young

preachers to "limit a written sermon to half an hour, and one from notes

to forty minutes."[3] For the same reason, those preachers whose reading

comes nearest to speaking, are universally more interesting than others.

[3] _Cecil's Remains_--a delightful little book.

Thus it is evident that there is an attractiveness in this mode of

preaching, which gives it peculiar advantages. He imparts greater

interest to what he says, who is governed by the impulse of the moment,

than he who speaks by rule. When he feels the subject, his voice and

gesture correspond to that feeling, and communicate it to others as it

can be done in no other way. Though he possess but indifferent talents,

yet if he utter himself with sincerity and feeling, it is far pleasanter

than to listen to his cold reading of what he wrote perhaps with little

excitement, and delivers with less.

In thus speaking of the interest which attends an extemporaneous

delivery, it is not necessary to pursue the subject into a general

comparison of the advantages of this mode with those of reading and of

reciting from memory. Each has prevailed in different places and at

different periods, and each undoubtedly has advantages and disadvantages

peculiar to itself. These are well though briefly stated in the

excellent article on Elocution in Rees' Cyclopædia, to which it will be

sufficient to refer, as worthy attentive perusal. The question at large

I cannot undertake to discuss. If I should, I could hardly hope to

satisfy either others or myself. The almost universal custom of reading

in this part of the world, where recitation from memory is scarcely

known, and extempore speaking is practised by very few except the

illiterate, forbids any thing like a fair deduction from observation. In

order to institute a just comparison, one should have had extensive

opportunities of watching the success of each mode, and of knowing the

circumstances under which each was tried. For in the inquiry, which is

to be preferred in the pulpit,--we must consider, not which has most

excellencies when it is found in perfection, but which has excellencies

attainable by the largest number of preachers; not which is first in

theory or most beautiful as an art, but which has been and is likely to

be most successful in practice. These are questions not easily answered.

Each mode has its advocates and its opponents. In the English church

there is nothing but reading, and we hear from every quarter complaints

of it. In Scotland the custom of recitation prevails, but multitudes

besides Dr. Campbell[4] condemn it. In many parts of the continent of

Europe no method is known, but that of a brief preparation and

unpremeditated language; but that it should be universally approved by

those who use it, is more than we can suppose.

[4] See his fourth Lecture on Pulpit Eloquence.

The truth is, that either method may fail in the hands of incompetent or

indolent men, and either may be thought to succeed by those whose taste

or prejudices are obstinate in its favor. All that I contend for, in

advocating unwritten discourse, is, that this method claims a decided

superiority over the others in some of the most important particulars.

That the others have their own advantages, I do not deny, nor that this

is subject to disadvantages from which they are free. But whatever these

may be I hope to show that they are susceptible of a remedy; that they

are not greater than those which attend other modes; that they are

balanced by equal advantages, and that therefore this art deserves to be

cultivated by all who would do their utmost to render their ministry

useful. There can be no good reason why the preacher should confine

himself to either mode. It might be most beneficial to cultivate and

practise all. By this means he might impart something of the advantages

of each to each, and correct the faults of all by mingling them with the

excellencies of all. He would learn to read with more of the natural

accent of the speaker, and to speak with more of the precision of the

writer.

The remarks already made have been designed to point out some of the

general advantages attending the use of unprepared language. Some others

remain to be noticed, which have more particular reference to the

preacher individually.

It is no unimportant consideration to a minister of the gospel, that

this is a talent held in high estimation among men, and that it gives

additional influence to him who possesses it. It is thought to argue

capacity and greatness of mind. Fluency of language passes with many,

and those not always the vulgar, for affluence of thought; and never to

be at a loss for something to say, is supposed to indicate inexhaustible

knowledge. It cannot have escaped the observation of any one accustomed

to notice the judgments which are passed upon men, how much reputation

and consequent influence are acquired by the power of speaking readily

and boldly, without any other considerable talent, and with very

indifferent acquisitions; and how a man of real talents, learning, and

worth, has frequently sunk below his proper level, from a mere

awkwardness and embarrassment in speaking without preparation. So that

it is not simply superstition which leads so many to refuse the name of

preaching to any but extemporaneous harangues; it is in part owing to

the natural propensity there is to admire, as something wonderful and

extraordinary, this facility of speech. It is undoubtedly a very

erroneous standard of judgment. But a minister of the gospel, whose

success in his important calling depends so much on his personal

influence, and the estimation in which his gifts are held, can hardly be

justified in slighting the cultivation of a talent, which may so

innocently add to his means of influence.

It must be remembered also, that occasions will sometimes occur, when

the want of this power may expose him to mortification, and deprive him

of an opportunity of usefulness. For such emergencies one would choose

to be prepared. It may be of consequence that he should express his

opinion in an ecclesiastical council, and give reasons for the adoption

or rejection of important measures. Possibly he may be only required to

state facts, which have come to his knowledge. It is very desirable to

be able to do this readily, fluently, without embarrassment to himself,

and pleasantly to those who hear; and in order to this, a habit of

speaking is necessary. In the course of his ministrations also amongst

his own people, occasions will arise when an exhortation or address

would be seasonable and useful, but when there is no time for written

preparation. If then he have cultivated the art of extemporaneous

speaking, and attained to any degree of facility and confidence in it,

he may avail himself of the opportunity to do good, which he must

otherwise have passed by unimproved. Funerals and baptisms afford

suitable occasions of making good religious impressions. A sudden

providence, also, on the very day of the sabbath may suggest most

valuable topics of reflection and exhortation, lost to him who is

confined to what he may have previously written, but choice treasure to

him who can venture to speak without writing. If it were only to avail

himself of a few opportunities like these in the course of his life, or

to save himself but once the mortification of being silent when he ought

to speak, is expected to speak, and would do good by speaking, it would

be well worth all the time and pains it might cost to acquire it.

It is a further advantage, not to be forgotten here, that the excitement

of speaking in public strikes out new views of a subject, new

illustrations, and unthought of figures and arguments, which perhaps

never would have presented themselves to the mind in retirement. "The

warmth which animates him," says Fenelon, "gives birth to expressions

and figures, which he never could have prepared in his study." He who

feels himself safe in flying off from the path he has prescribed to

himself, without any fear lest he should fail to find his way back, will

readily seize upon these, and be astonished at the new light which

breaks in upon him as he goes on, and flashes all around him. This is

according to the experience of all extemporaneous speakers. "The degree

in which," says Thomas Scott,[5] who practised this method constantly,

"after the most careful preparation for the pulpit, new thoughts, new

arguments, animated addresses, often flow into my mind, while speaking

to a congregation, even on very common subjects, makes me feel as if I

was quite another man than when poring over them in my study. There will

be inaccuracies; but generally the most striking things in my sermons

were unpremeditated."

[5] Life, p. 268.

Then again, the presence of the audience gives a greater seeming reality

to the work; it is less like doing a task, and more like speaking to

men, than when one sits coolly writing at his table. Consequently there

is likely to be greater plainness and directness in his exhortations,

more closeness in his appeals, more of the earnestness of genuine

feeling in his expostulations. He ventures, in the warmth of the moment,

to urge considerations, which perhaps in the study seemed too familiar,

and to employ modes of address, which are allowable in personal

communion with a friend, but which one hesitates to commit to writing,

lest he should infringe the dignity of deliberate composition. This

forgetfulness of self, this unconstrained following the impulse of the

affections, while he is hurried on by the presence and attention of

those whom he hopes to benefit, creates a sympathy between him and his

hearers, a direct passage from heart to heart, a mutual understanding of

each other, which does more to effect the true object of religious

discourse, than any thing else can do. The preacher will, in this way,

have the boldness to say many things which ought to be said, but about

which, in his study, he would feel reluctant and timid. And granting

that he might be led to say some things improperly, yet if his mind be

well disciplined, and well governed, and his discretion habitual, he

will do it exceedingly seldom; while no one, who estimates the object of

preaching as highly as he should, will think an occasional false step

any objection against that mode which ensures upon the whole the

greatest boldness and earnestness. He will think it a less fault than

the tameness and abstractness, which are the besetting sins of

deliberate composition. At any rate, what method is secure from

occasional false steps?

Another consideration which recommends this method to the attention of

preachers, though at the same time it indicates one of its difficulties,

is this; that all men, from various causes, constitutional or

accidental, are subject to great inequality in the operations of their

minds--sometimes laboring with felicity and sometimes failing. Perhaps

this fact is in no men so observable as in preachers, because no others

are so much compelled to labor, and exhibit their labors, at all

seasons, favorable and unfavorable. There is a certain quantity of the

severest mental toil to be performed every week; and as the mind cannot

be always in the same frame, they are constantly presenting proofs of

the variation of their powers. Now an extemporaneous speaker is of

course exposed to all this inequality of spirits, and must expect to be

sometimes mortified by ill success. When the moment of speaking arrives,

his mind may be slow and dull, his thoughts sluggish and impeded; he may

be exhausted by labor, or suffering from temporary indisposition. He

strives in vain to rally his powers, and forces his way, with thorough

discomfort and chagrin, to the end of an unprofitable talk. But then how

many men _write_ under the same embarrassments, and are equally

dissatisfied; with the additional mortification of having spent a longer

time, and of being unable to give their poor preparation the interest of

a forcible manner, which the very distress of an extemporaneous effort

would have imparted.

But on the other hand, when his mind is bright and clear, and his animal

spirits lively, he will speak much better after merely a suitable

premeditation, than he can possibly write. There will be more point and

vigor and animation, than he could ever throw into writing. "Every man,"

says Bishop Burnet, "may thus rise far above what he could ever have

attained in any other way." We see proof of this in conversation. When

engaged in unrestrained and animated conversation with familiar friends,

who is not conscious of having struck out brighter thoughts and happier

sayings, than he ever put upon paper in the deliberate composition of

the closet? It is a common remark concerning many men, that they pray

much better than they preach. The reason is, that their sermons are made

leisurely and sluggishly, without excitement; but in their public

devotions they are strongly engaged, and the mind acts with more

concentration and vivacity. The same thing has been observed in the art

of music. "There have been organists, whose abilities in unstudied

effusions on their instruments have almost amounted to inspiration, such

as Sebastian Bach, Handel, Marchand, Couperin, Kelway, Stanley, Worgan,

and Keeble; several of whom played better music extempore, than they

could write with meditation."[6]

[6] Rees' Cyclopædia.

It is upon no different principle that we explain, what all scholars

have experienced, that they write best when they write rapidly, from a

full and excited mind. One of Pope's precepts is, "to write with fury

and correct with phlegm." The author of Waverley tells us, "that the

works and passages in which he has succeeded, have uniformly been

written with the greatest rapidity." Fenelon's Telemachus is said to

have been composed in this way, and sent to the press with one single

erasure in the manuscript. The celebrated Rockingham Memorial at the

commencement of the late war, is said to have been the hasty composition

of a single evening. And it will be found true, I believe, of many of

the best sermon writers, that they revolve the subject till their minds

are filled and warmed, and then put their discourse upon paper at a

single sitting. Now what is all this but _extemporaneous writing_? and

what does it require but a mind equally collected and at ease, equally

disciplined by practice, and interested in the subject, to ensure equal

success in _extemporaneous speaking_? Nay, we might anticipate

occasional superior success; since the thoughts sometimes flow, when at

the highest and most passionate excitement, too rapidly and profusely

for any thing slower than the tongue to afford them vent.

There is one more consideration in favor of the habit I recommend, which

I think cannot fail to have weight with all who are solicitous to make

progress in theological knowledge; namely, that it redeems time for

study. The labor of preparing and committing to paper a sermon or two

every week, is one which necessarily occupies the principal part of a

minister's time and thoughts, and withdraws him from the investigation

of many subjects, which, if his mind were more at leisure, it would be

his duty and pleasure to pursue. He who _writes_ sermons, is ready to

consider this as the chief object, or perhaps the sole business of his

life. When not actually engaged in writing, yet the necessity of doing

it presses upon his mind, and so binds him as to make him feel as if he

were wrong in being employed on any thing else. I speak of the tendency,

which certainly is to prevent a man from pursuing, very extensively, any

profitable study. But if he have acquired that ready command of thought

and language, which will enable him to speak without written

preparation, the time and toil of writing are saved, to be devoted to a

different mode of study. He may prepare his discourses at intervals of

leisure, while walking or riding; and having once arranged the outlines

of the subject, and ascertained its principle bearings and applications,

the work of preparation is over. The language remains to be suggested at

the moment.

I do not mean by this, that preparation for the pulpit should ever be

made slightly, or esteemed an object of small importance. It doubtless

demands, and should receive the best of a man's talents and labors. What

I contend for is, that a habit of mind may be acquired, which shall

enable one to make a better and more thorough preparation at less

expense of labor and time. He may acquire, by discipline, that ease and

promptitude of looking into subjects and bringing out their prominent

features, which shall enable him at a glance, as it were, to seize the

points on which he should enlarge. Some minds are so constituted as "to

look a subject into shape" much more readily than others. But the power

of doing it is in a great measure mechanical, and depends upon habit.

All may acquire it to a certain extent. When the mind works with most

concentration, it works at once most quickly and most surely. Now the

act of extempore speaking favors this concentration of the powers, more

than the slower process of leisurely writing--perhaps more than any

other operation; consequently, it increases, with practice, the facility

of dissecting subjects, and of arranging materials for preaching. In

other words, the completeness with which a subject is viewed and its

parts arranged, does not depend so much on the time spent upon it, as on

the vigor with which the attention is applied to it. That course of

study is the best, which most favors this vigor of attention; and the

habit of extemporaneous speaking is more than any thing favorable to it,

from the necessity which it imposes of applying the mind with energy,

and thinking promptly.

The great danger in this case would be, that of substituting an easy

flow of words for good sense and sober reflection, and becoming

satisfied with very superficial thoughts. But this danger is guarded

against by the habit of study, and of writing for other purposes. If a

man should neglect all mental exertion, except so far as would be

required in the meditation of a sermon, it would be ruinous. We witness

its disastrous effects in the empty wordiness of many extemporaneous

preachers. It is wrong however to argue against the practice itself,

from their example; for all other modes would be equally condemned, if

judged by the ill success of indolent and unfaithful men. The minister

must keep himself occupied,--reading, thinking, investigating; thus

having his mind always awake and active. This is a far better

preparation than the bare writing of sermons, for it exercises the

powers more, and keeps them bright. The great master of Roman eloquence

thought it essential to the true orator, that he should be familiar with

all sciences, and have his mind filled with every variety of knowledge.

He therefore, much as he studied his favorite art, yet occupied more

time in literature, philosophy, and politics, than in the composition of

his speeches. His preparation was less particular than general. So it

has been with other eminent speakers. When Sir Samuel Romilly was in

full practice in the High Court of Chancery, and at the same time

overwhelmed with the pressure of public political concerns; his custom

was to enter the court, to receive there the history of the cause he was

to plead, thus to acquaint himself with the circumstances for the first

time, and forthwith proceed to argue it. His general preparation and

long practice enabled him to do this, without failing in justice to his

cause. I do not know that in this he was singular. The same sort of

preparation would ensure success in the pulpit. He who is always

thinking, may expend upon each individual effort less time, because he

can think at once fast and well. But he who never thinks, except when

attempting to manufacture a sermon (and it is to be feared there are

such men), must devote a great deal of time to this labor exclusively;

and after all, he will not have that wide range of thought or

copiousness of illustration, which his office demands and which study

only can give.

In fact, what I have here insisted upon, is exemplified in the case of

the extemporaneous _writers_, whom I have already named. I would only

carry their practice a step further, and devote an hour to a discourse

instead of a day. Not to all discourses, for some ought to be written

for the sake of writing, and some demand a sort of investigation, to

which the use of the pen is essential. But then a very large proportion

of the topics on which a minister should preach, have been subjects of

his attention a thousand times. He is thoroughly familiar with them; and

an hour to arrange his ideas and collect illustrations, is abundantly

sufficient. The late Thomas Scott is said for years to have prepared his

discourses entirely by meditation on the Sunday, and thus gained leisure

for his extensive studies, and great and various labors. This is an

extreme on which few have a right to venture, and which should be

recommended to none. It shows, however, the power of habit, and the

ability of a mind to act promptly and effectually, which is kept upon

the alert by constant occupation. He who is always engaged in thinking

and studying, will always have thoughts enough for a sermon, and good

ones too, which will come at an hour's warning.

The objections which may be made to the practice I have sought to

recommend, I must leave to be considered in another place. I am

desirous, in concluding this chapter, to add the favorable testimony of

a writer, who expressly disapproves the practice in general, but who

allows its excellence when accompanied by that preparation which I would

every where imply.

"You are accustomed," says Dinouart,[7] "to the careful study and

imitation of nature. You have used yourself to writing and speaking with

care on different subjects, and have well stored your memory by reading.

You thus have provided resources for speaking, which are always at hand.

The best authors and the best thoughts are familiar to you; you can

readily quote the scriptures, you express yourself easily and

gracefully, you have a sound and correct judgment on which you can

depend, method and precision in the arrangement of proofs; you can

readily connect each part by natural transitions, and are able to say

all that belongs, and precisely what belongs to the subject. You may

then take only a day, or only an hour, to reflect on your subject, to

arrange your topics, to consult your memory, to choose and to prepare

your illustrations,--and then, appear in public. I am perfectly willing

that you should. The common expressions which go to make up the body of

the discourse, will present themselves spontaneously. Your periods,

perhaps, will be less harmonious, your transitions less ingenious, an

ill placed word will sometimes escape you; but all this is pardonable.

The animation of your delivery will compensate for these blemishes, and

you will be master of your own feelings, and those of your hearers.

There will, perhaps, be apparent throughout a certain disorder, but it

will not prevent your pleasing and affecting me; your action as well as

your words will appear to me the more natural."

[7] Sur l'Eloquence du Corps, ou L'Action du Prédicateur.