Excerpt from The American Presbyterian and Theological Review, 1867, Vol. 5 I. The term extemporaneous as commonly employed denotes something hurried, off-hand, and superficial, and gen eral usage associates imperfection and inefiiciency with this adjective. There is nothing, however, in the etymology of the word which necessarily requires that such a signification be put upon it. Extemporaneous preaching is preaching a: ternporc, from the time. This may mean either of two things, according to the sense in which the word tempus is taken. It may denote that the sermon is the hasty and careless product of that one particular instant of time in which the person Speaks the rambling and prolix effort of that punctum tem poris which is an infinitely small point, and which can produce only an infinitely small result. This is the meaning too commonly assigned to the word in question, and hence inferiority in all intellectual respects is too commonly associated with it, both in theory and in practice. For it is indisputable that the hu man mind will work very inefficiently if it works by the min ute merely, and originates its products under the spur and im pulse of the single instant alone. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.