rs 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 w