riters have
these very same faults of style! what a great want of force, neatness,
compactness, is there in the composition of most preachers! what
weakness, inelegance, and inconclusiveness; and how small improvement do
they make, even after the practice of years! How happens this? It is
because they do not make this an object of attention and study; and some
might be unable to attain it if they did. But that watchfulness and care
which secure a correct and neat style in writing, would also secure it
in speaking. It does not naturally belong to the one, more than to the
other, and may be as certainly attained in each by the proper pains.
Indeed so far as my observation has extended, I am not certain that
there is not as large a proportion of extempore speakers, whose diction
is exact and unexceptionable, as of writers--always taking into view
their education, which equally affects the one and the other. And it is
a consideration of great weight, that the faults in question are far
less offensive in speakers than in writers.

It is apparent that objectors of this sort are guilty of a double
mistake; first, in laying too great stress upon mere defects of style,
and then in taking for granted, that these are unavoidable. They might
as well insist that defects of written style are unavoidable. Whereas
they are the consequence of the negligent mode in which the art has been
studied, and its having been given up, for the most part, to ignorant
and fanatical pretenders. Let it be diligently cultivated by educated
men, and we shall find no more cause to expel it from the pulpit than
from the forum or the parliament. "Poverty, inelegance, and poorness of
diction," will be no longer so "generally observed," and even hearers of
taste will cease to be offended.

2. A want of order, a rambling, unconnected, desultory manner, is
commonly objected; as Hume styles it, "extreme carelessness of method;"
and this is so often observed, as to be justly an object of dread. But
this is occasioned by that indolence and want of discipline to which we
have just alluded. It is not a necessary evil. If a man have never
studied the art of speaking, nor passed through a course of preparatory
discipline; if he have so rash and unjustifiable a confidence in
himself, that he will undertake to speak, without having considered what
he shall say, what object he shall aim at, or by what steps he shall
attain it; the inevitable consequence will be confusi