[1] “My Life in Two Hemispheres,” Vol.  II., 274.

[Side note:  Defence of the system I]

The first great difficulty against extemporary preaching is that, though a priest studies his subject and maps his plan, he still reckons without his host.  The mind aroused to activity and warmed by exertion is sure to spring new thoughts, arguments, and illustrations across his path.  These offspring of latest birth clothed in freshness will prove a temptation too strong.  He will swerve from the main line to pursue them:  the tendency to chase the fresh hare can scarcely be resisted.  Then another new thought springs up, and, alas! another fresh hunt.  The defined sketch lying on his desk is abandoned:  the new ideas have mastered him, but he cannot master them.  He labours himself to death without avail, for there is neither point, argument, nor sequence:  his sermon is a definition of eternity—­without beginning and without end.  The congregation is groaning in despair, and the only appreciated passage in the whole performance is the preacher’s passage from the pulpit to the sacristy.

Now, to a man who writes his sermon, such a catastrophe is impossible.  In the process of preparation the field is well beaten and every thought that could arise secured.  From the best of these his selection is made.  To this selection he clings without danger of swerve.  The road on which he travels is not only mapped but free of ambush and surprises.  The milestones are erected.  He may not be a Bossuet or a Burke, but he speaks to a definite point, has a time to stop, and the people leave the church with a clear idea.

[Side note:  II.]

The defenders of extemporary preaching must postulate three essentials in any man undertaking the office. (I) Orderly thought. (2) Abundant vocabulary. (3) Accurate and graceful expressions.  Without these he cannot speak.  Admit the want of any one of them and the contention falls to the ground.  Now, what young priest coming out of college has this equipment?  It is a singular fact, too, that these three can be acquired only by, and are the direct outcome of, pen practice.  How is it that this fact has escaped so many?  “Writing makes an exact man,” says Bacon; and to the question:  “How can I become an orator?” Cicero’s answer was:  “Caput est quam plurimum scribere.”  When then men point to a Gladstone or a Bright as an example of an extemporary orator we are entitled to ask:  “In what sense can they be called extemporary speakers, except in the most limited, since the well marshalled ideas, the flowing periods and elegant graces of delivery are the products of reams and reams of written pages and years of patient drudgery?” Yet, even with all these advantages, on great occasions it was on the written page they relied.  Till the young priest, then, comes to his task as well furnished as a Gladstone or a Bright, the advocates of extemporary speaking are out of count.