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    MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE.

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    Untitled Article

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    Untitled Article

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    Miscellaneous Correspondence.

    MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE .

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    On Extempore Preaching . To the Editor . Sir , I cassot donbt that many of your readers , as well as myself , have perused with great and increasing interest the able and important series of papers which have of late appeared in the Repository under the title of The Watchman . And

    although fidelity in his station has obliged the Watchman to uplift among us the voice of warning and reproof , and to acknowledge , even before the public , some truths which our feelings perhaps would rather have prompted us to leave in their obscurity , yet I trust that a general sense of obligation will be felt to one who has evidently the cause of truth so much

    at heart , and who has laboured with so much taleut and zeal in its promotion . I trust that he will not yet cease from his wholesome and necessary admonitions , but continue to wax still bolder and more earnest in eudeavouring to rouse the cold and slumbering body of Unitarians from their dangerous lethargy . As a feebler but not less sincere labourer

    in this good work , I am about to make a few additional remarks on one of the subjects of his expostulations . Not , as it appears to me , without very good reason , the Watchman has expressed a wish that the habit of reading sermons should be laid aside in Unitarian

    pulpits . In my own opinion , this is a point so essential to the extensive success of our cause , that till it be done , that cause neither will nor can prosper . I shall attempt in the sequel to exhibit in detail the advantages of extempore preaching , and to analyze the sources whence they spring . At present it will be well to recall to mind the undeniable

    fact , that every popular and spreading religious party has adopted this method : that scarce an instance occurs of any high degree of religious interest being awakened or kept alive without it : that among ourselves there has been a rapid

    decline in most of those old congregations where it has been disused 5 and , in short , that every thing goes to prove that hardly any thiug short of the ponderous vis inertice cif the establishment , and hardly even that , has been able to maintain its ground without it .

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    I shall not attempt to decide the question , whether the present disuse of e « rtempore preaching among Unitarians be rather to be attributed to the ministers or their hearers . That it is so exclusively owing to the preferences or fastidiousness of the latter , as the Watchman seems to suppose , may certainly admit of much doubt : my own observation would lead me to a different conclusion . 1

    know a congregation that insists on extempore preaching as a sine qua non : and another that remunerates its minister expressly on the ground of his giving extempore evening lectures . Among individuals , I have generally found a decided preference for this mode of

    discourse , provided only that it be fulfilled in a respectable and competent manner . I fully believe that were our ministers more generally to make the attempt , they would find themselves encouraged in it by the great majority in their congregations .

    Some , however , will be ready to say , Why , what does it signify ? Do we not get quite as good , or even a better sermon , when the minister reads it , as when he preaches without book ? And others positively dislike extempore preaching , or at least affect to do so , associating it in their minds with rant aud enthusiasm , or urging that all-conclusive objection , that it is tnethodisticat . Mauy entertain these sentiments from

    inveterate prejudice , but others probably from want of reflection ; and hoping that some of these latter may chance to cast their eyes over these lines , 1 will now endeavour to manifest their unfoundedness by pointing out the advantages of extempore preaching in detail . They will fall under three heads .

    1 . An unwritten address from a competent minister will in general , for the purposes for which it is or ought to be designed , be better than a written one in itself . That the truth of this assertion may be admitted , it is necessary for a moment to recollect what the great purposes of religious preaching are . It is not to inculcate on his hearers an

    elaborate and nicely-adjusted system of theology , that the preacher of the gospel is mainly concerned ; nor to make them critics in disputed and dilncult questions ; nor , in short , iu any way to promote in

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 129, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/57/