brilliant of his class, going on the mission can pretend to the hundredth part of the advantages that enabled Manning to dispense with the written page? Therefore, to conclude that because he, under such privileged circumstances, succeeded, you can do the same under a very different set of conditions, is to ignore the hard logic of facts and pay a poor compliment to your reason.

Father Burke and O'Connell

Then, we are confronted not with opinions but names—the two names that will stand for all time in the forefront of Irish orators are those of O'Connell and Father Burke. O'Connell wrote but one speech—his first. The orations delivered by Father Burke in America, by which he achieved a European reputation, were not written. What, then, it is asked, becomes of the advocacy of the written sermon? The answer to this argument is evident. If the question is reduced to one of great names, into the other side of the scales may be thrown not two but dozens of the most illustrious men who not only wrote, but became famous mainly because they wrote.

Passing by the great pagan orators, Cicero and Demosthenes, and the Doctors of the Church, Saints Augustine, John Chrysostom, &c.—these all wrote, polished and elaborated—we come to the four names that have flung a deathless glory around the French pulpit, that created a golden era of sacred eloquence which has never been surpassed: Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Massillon, and Fenelon. I will not labour the argument by showing how much of their strength and fame rested on the construction of their sermons. But, to return to the intrinsic merits of the statement—yes, O'Connell and Father Burke were great orators in spite of, and not because of, the fact that they spoke extemporarily. So crude were some of O'Connell's speeches, so careless was he of their dress, that Shiel complained: "He flung a brood of young, sturdy ideas upon the world, with scarce a rag to cover them."

If ever there was a case when the man made the sermon instead of the sermon making the man, it was the case of Father Burke. How little he owed to his sermons and how much they owed to his delivery is left on record by a capable judge. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy says: "Father Burke was a born orator; the charm of voice, eye and action combined to produce his wonderful effects. When his words were printed much of the spell vanished. One rejoiced to hear him over and over again, but re-read him rarely, I think."1 The greatest tribute that can be paid to the genius of these two orators is that compositions, wordy, loose, abounding in repetitions, in their mouths enthralled multitudes. Every defect disappeared; the mastery, the dazzling brilliancy of their oratory swept all hearts and blinded criticism. We well may pause before answering the question: What effects would they have produced had they time to write masterpieces of finished beauty like those of Grattan and of Bourdaloue? where each link in the chain of argument hangs in glittering strength, and each thought shows the flash of the gem and its solidity too.

1 "My Life in Two Hemispheres," Vol. II., 274.

Defence of the system I

The first great difficulty against extemporary preaching is that, though a priest studies his subject and maps his plan, he still reckons without his host. The mind aroused to activity and warmed by exertion is sure to spring new thoughts, arguments, and illustrations across his path. These offspring of latest birth clothed in freshness will prove a temptation too strong. He will swerve from the main line to pursue them: the tendency to chase the fresh hare can scarcely be resisted. Then another new thought springs up, and, alas! another fresh hunt. The defined sketch lying on his desk is abandoned: the new ideas have mastered him, but he cannot master them. He labours himself to death without avail, for there is neither point, argument, nor sequence: his sermon is a definition of eternity—without beginning and without end. The congregation is groaning in despair, and the only appreciated passage in the whole performance is the preacher's passage from the pulpit to the sacristy.

Now, to a man who writes his sermon, such a catastrophe is impossible. In the process of preparation the field is well beaten and every thought that could arise secured. From the best of these his selection is made. To this selection he clings without danger of swerve. The road on which he travels is not only mapped but free of ambush and surprises. The milestones are erected. He may not be a Bossuet or a Burke, but he speaks to a definite point, has a time to stop, and the people leave the church with a clear idea.

II.

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.

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 task clearly impossible, but more so when we remember the usual embarrassments that beset a young preacher—the nervous agitation, the want of self-control, the desire to succeed. It ends generally in a stammer and then a break, greeted by the congregation with a sigh of relief or perhaps a sneer of contempt.

Is it by preaching such as this you hope to challenge the respect and get a hold on the intellect of a cynical world? Is it through such instrumentality you would bring home the Church's message to proud and festering humanity? No one can succeed who attempts more than one task at a time.

Look to analogy. At the moment when a regiment is expected to charge, you don't find it engaged in collecting ammunition, sharpening swords, and learning drill. All these necessary preliminaries are long since completed. Now every bridle is grasped, every sword hilt in grip, and the rowelled heels are ready to dash into the horses' flanks at the first note of the trumpet blast.

The preacher should come to the pulpit in a like state of preparedness, with his thoughts already gathered, moulded, polished and clothed in the words that fit them best; with every argument as definite and well knitted as a proposition in Euclid; the page swept clear of superfluous verbiage; each idea standing out bright as a jewel in its setting, and the whole so thoroughly committed to memory that he can defy the most critical to discover a trace of effort. He should come, holding his elocutionary forces in reserve, and ready, when the moment arrives, to flash from his lips each living thought and send from his heart the waves of