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.
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
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.
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. Campbell4 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.
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.”
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
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.”