nts, 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, com