eligious impressions. A sudden
providence, also, on the very day of the sabbath may suggest most
valuable topics of reflection and exhortation, lost to him who is
confined to what he may have previously written, but choice treasure to
him who can venture to speak without writing. If it were only to avail
himself of a few opportunities like these in the course of his life, or
to save himself but once the mortification of being silent when he ought
to speak, is expected to speak, and would do good by speaking, it would
be well worth all the time and pains it might cost to acquire it.

It is a further advantage, not to be forgotten here, that the excitement
of speaking in public strikes out new views of a subject, new
illustrations, and unthought of figures and arguments, which perhaps
never would have presented themselves to the mind in retirement. "The
warmth which animates him," says Fenelon, "gives birth to expressions
and figures, which he never could have prepared in his study." He who
feels himself safe in flying off from the path he has prescribed to
himself, without any fear lest he should fail to find his way back, will
readily seize upon these, and be astonished at the new light which
breaks in upon him as he goes on, and flashes all around him. This is
according to the experience of all extemporaneous speakers. "The degree
in which," says Thomas Scott,[5] who practised this method constantly,
"after the most careful preparation for the pulpit, new thoughts, new
arguments, animated addresses, often flow into my mind, while speaking
to a congregation, even on very common subjects, makes me feel as if I
was quite another man than when poring over them in my study. There will
be inaccuracies; but generally the most striking things in my sermons
were unpremeditated."

[5] Life, p. 268.

Then again, the presence of the audience gives a greater seeming reality
to the work; it is less like doing a task, and more like speaking to
men, than when one sits coolly writing at his table. Consequently there
is likely to be greater plainness and directness in his exhortations,
more closeness in his appeals, more of the earnestness of genuine
feeling in his expostulations. He ventures, in the warmth of the moment,
to urge considerations, which perhaps in the study seemed too familiar,
and to employ modes of address, which are allowable in personal
communion with a friend, but which one hesitates to commit to writing,
lest