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.

[Side note: III.]

The extemporary preacher challenges nature on her own ground. No
one need doubt the issue. Nature will conquer, and the man who
defies her will succumb. He endeavours to think, to select
word-clothing for his thoughts, to labour his memory, and deliver
his sermon, and performs all four operations at the same time, a