I. The Extemporaneous Element in Sermons and its varying Degrees. One preacher decides on his particular mode of expression and commits his words to paper; another makes the same decision, and commits his words to memory. In the pulpit each of them utters his words as pre-determined. One reads them; the other recites them. The man who preaches extempore is distinguished from the men who read or who preach memoriter, in this respect-he does not finally decide on his particular mode of expression until he is ready to speak. Some of his words may have previously suggested themselves to his mind; but before he is about to utter them he does not regard them as the determinate words which he must employ. Certain writers on homiletics make the impression that an extemporaneous address not only may, but must be unpremeditated. If this impression be the right one, a minister can never preach extempore on any subject of which he had formed a definite opinion before he entered the pulpit. Every unpremeditated speech is, indeed, extemporaneous; but every extemporaneous speech is not unpremeditated. If a man, instead of reading his discourse from a manuscript, or reciting it from memory, delivers it in words which he first resolves to use at the moment of uttering them, he is said to preach extempore, because he preserves himself to so great a degree in an extemporizing state of mind. In this state of freedom to select his forms of speech, he will be apt to select new thoughts and new forms of thought at the very instant of expressing them. That sermon may be most fully extemporaneous which is delivered on a theme not suggested to the minister until he begins his sermon upon it. In certain parts of our country it has been common to employ a test like the following for determining a man's fitness to enter the sacred office. When Rev. William Elliot "first began to preach, there was a certain Dr. G. in his neighborhood, who would not allow that he [Elliot] was called to the work of the ministry, seeing he was a man of limited edu See § 1. I. above. cation, unless he could preach from a text given him at the very hour at which his meeting was appointed. Mr. Elliot, who had entered the ministry with great diffidence, and who was willing to get rid of the responsibility of the sacred office if he could honestly do so, consented to submit his call to the test proposed by Dr. G. A meeting was appointed in the week-time. Information was spread in relation to it. The hour arrived; the people came together; and the text was given him, which was: 'A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about' (Ex. xxviii. 34). He looked at it awhile, and could see nothing in it. He read the opening hymn, and while the people were singing he looked at it again; but, not discovering a single idea which he could hold up before the assembly, he began to think he must confess that he had no call to the work of the ministry. However, he thought he would go as far as he could. So, when the hymn was sung, he said, 'Let us pray.' In this exercise he enjoyed in an unusual degree the aid of the Holy Spirit. During the singing of the second hymn, he was constantly revolving his text in his mind, but no ray of light seemed to fall upon it. In this state of embarrassment, he saw nothing before him but the announcement, so mortifying to his friends and so gratifying to the Doctor, that he had been deceived in the notion that he was called to preach. But he had been assisted thus far in the meeting, and it still seemed right and proper that he should go as far as he could; so he would read the text, and then, if he had nothing to say from it, he would make his confession. He read the passage; impenetrable darkness still rested upon it; but it was not time to stop until, according to custom, he had read it a second time. And now, suddenly, light bursts upon his soul. The text seems full of the gospel. The golden bell suggests its precious sound among the people, awakening, directing, comforting the souls of men. The pomegranate suggests the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The high-priest's robe points to the righteousness of Christ. He finds enough to say. He preaches an evangelical discourse; he preaches with an unwonted fluency; and the question seems to be settled in every mind that he is called of God to preach the gospel."1 As we see that one sermon may be extemporaneous in reference to its very subject, so another may be extemporaneous in reference to all but its precise theme; a third, in reference to all but its theme and the arrangement of its main thoughts; a fourth, in reference to all but its theme, the arrangement and illustrations of its main thoughts; a fifth, in reference to nothing at all except its language. So various are the degrees of the extemporaneous element 1 Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, pp. 238, 239. in sermons belonging to the extemporaneous class, that while a man is excogitating one of these sermons, he may go so far as to write; not, indeed, as a writer, but as a cautious thinker; not using his manuscript as a record, but as a regulator of his ideas; not aiming to fix in their definite relations the phrases which he will pronounce in the pulpit, but striving merely to confine his attention to the ideas expressed in these phrases. Whenever he writes a sentence for the sake of impressing on his mind the terms which he will use in public, he borrows aid from the "written" or the "memoriter" mode, and just so far ceases to be a pure extemporizer. II. The Qualifications, in their Varying Degrees, for Preaching Extempore. In order to obtain perfect success in this form of eloquence, a minister must have an intellect quick to see, strong to grasp, and steady to hold the truths appropriate to his discourse; a power of reading the countenances of his hearers, detecting the needs of the moment, and uttering the words adapted to those needs; a fertile imagination; an acute and deep sensibility, assuming the phase of a fitting interest in his subject, and also in his audience; a modest, but still a courageous, temper; a firm and steadfast will, controlling his thoughts and emotions, and making himself "master of the circumstances" in which he speaks; an active sympathy with his auditors and a magnetic power over them; a rich, or at least a large vocabulary; an easy elocution; a natural impulse, as well as moral choice, to express what he thinks and feels, and thus draw his hearers into harmony with himself. The minister who has all which is implied in these requisites was made for preaching extempore, as a nightingale was made for singing. We are pleased, however, with the linnet and the lark, although they can never warble like the nightingale. A preacher may want some, and yet may have so many, of the above-named qualifications as to promise a fair, though not a full, measure of success. He may be, like Lammennais, so far deficient in "collectedness, presence of mind, self-reliance, and self-control" that he ought not to venture on preaching an unwritten sermon to even a small company of children. A man of sound mental health, however, is seldom in this condition of impotence. The imagined inability to speak extempore is, in general, a result of mental disease. A minister may be able to preach without notes on one subject, but not on another; before one audience, but not before another; one part of a sermon, but not another part. This appropriateness of his services to his own characteristics may not only save himself from failure, but may also save his pulpit from monotony. A preacher, for example, has a vigorous intellect, but not a vivid imagination; he should then extemporize a didactic, but may write a descriptive, sermon. He has a profound sensibility, but not a power of controlling it; then he should extemporize an argumentative, but may write a pathetic, discourse. He has a quick sympathy with his audience, but not a ready command of words; then he should extemporize a sermon on a familiar subject, but may write on a subject lying out of the circle in which he is at home. "Non omnes possumus omnia." There has been an effective orator who had only one eye; another who had only one arm. Here a man has converted his indistinct articulation into a means of impressive speech; there he has derived a new power from a curved spine. Scores of clergymen have turned a slow articulation into a source of increased emphasis. Hundreds of them may do for their minds what Demosthenes did for his vocal organs. While regarding themselves as "destitute of the organ of language," they are every day preaching extempore, without knowing it. Their fluent remarks in the evening conference, 1 John Calvin in another sphere undertook to subdue nature, as many can subdue it in some degree. While acknowledging that he was not born a poet, he says, in allusion to the only poem which he ever wrote: "Quod natura negat, studii pius efficit ardor." - Felix Bungener's Life of Calvin (Edinburgh ed.), p. 150. ---- in the chamber of the sick, in the parlor interview, may be easily expanded, or perhaps contracted, into sermons. All the conversation of some men is preaching. In talking most familiarly with a friend, Dr. Emmons would unconsciously divide his remarks into Proposition, Proof, and Improvement. Men who plead their inability to extemporize in the pulpit will extemporize in lengthened interviews on business, and where their facility of expression fails, they will consult a memorandum either recite it from memory, or read it without lifting their eyes from it. be successful in preaching impromptu, if they would yield in the pulpit, as they do in conversation, to the peculiar bent of their own natures; speaking freely what they are qualified to utter without notes; reading or reciting what they are unfitted to utter otherwise; not losing heart or resolution in extemporizing one sermon because they have not the aptitude for extemporizing another; obeying the laws of their constitution, which are the laws of God. Many of these men would Before we consider the benefits or the evils of extemporary preaching, it may be well to consider the rules for it. The observance of these rules is a condition of the highest success, and the neglect of them is a cause of the frequent failure in this method of discourse. It is to be remembered, however, that, as there are varying degrees in which men pursue and are qualified to pursue the extemporary method, so the following rules are in varying degrees conditions of success in it. III. Rules for Extemporary Preaching. 1. The direction more fundamental than any other is: Cherish an earnest religious spirit. Mr. Spurgeon is excelled by many as an extemporaneous orator; not by many, however, as an extemporaneous preacher. Why? He does not seem to be laboring for a thought or a word; to be making any effort for the attainment of any grace of language or elocution; to be arraying himself in a Sabbath costume, or assuming any appearance which his daily life in any degree VOL. XXIX. No. 114. 44 |