Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching

ers have an equal prejudice against all sermons which have not been carefully precomposed. Among the latter are to be foun

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 com

o 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 i

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 re

ment. 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 p

ffects 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 ef

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

nce, and the eye

ned than

ies 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 b

al 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 w

s, 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 ob

on 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 thi

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 no

hey 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 abl

ment, 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 in

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

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

advantages attending the use of unprepared language. Some others remain 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

ntly 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

y." 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 practis

o 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 woul

able 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 b

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 a

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

isure, 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

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 increa

d 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

portion 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 vari

ace. I am desirous, in concluding this chapter, to add the favorable testimony of a writer, who expressly disapproves th

cision 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 themsel