ritten discourse, others have an equal
prejudice against all sermons which have not been carefully precomposed.
Among the latter are to be found those who favor an educated ministry,
and whose preachers are valued for their cultivated minds and extensive
knowledge. The former are, for the most part, those who disparage
learning as a qualification for a christian teacher, and whose ministers
are consequently not accustomed to exact mental discipline, nor familiar
with the best models of thinking and writing. It might seem at first
view, that the least cultivated would require the greatest previous
preparation in order profitably to address their fellow-men, and that
the best informed and most accustomed to study might be best trusted to
speak without the labor of written composition. That it has been thought
otherwise, is probably owing, in a great measure, to the solicitude for
literary exactness and elegance of style, which becomes a habit in the
taste of studious men, and renders all inaccuracy and carelessness
offensive. He who has been accustomed to read and admire the finest
models of composition in various languages, and to dwell on those
niceties of method and expression which form so large a part of the
charm of literary works; acquires a critical delicacy of taste, which
renders him fastidiously sensitive to those crudities and roughnesses of
speech, which almost necessarily attend an extemporaneous style. He is
apt to exaggerate their importance, and to imagine that no excellencies
of another kind can atone for them. He therefore protects himself by the
toil of previous composition, and ventures not a sentence which he has
not leisurely weighed and measured. An audience also, composed of
reading people, or accustomed to the exactness of written composition in
the pulpit, acquires something of the same taste, and is easily offended
at the occasional homeliness of diction, and looseness of method, which
occur in extemporaneous speaking. Whereas those preachers and hearers,
whose education and habits of mind have been different, know nothing of
this taste, and are insensible to these blemishes; and, if there be only
a fluent outpouring of words, accompanied by a manner which evinces
earnestness and sincerity, are pleased and satisfied.

It is further remarkable, that this prejudice of taste has been suffered
to rule in this way in no profession but that of the ministry. The most
fastidious taste never carries a wr