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Untitled Article
on the preachers themselves , and on the character of the clergy in the eyes of the world . The general effects on the preachers themselves , after which we should inquire , are those which may be produced on their advancement in learning , and on their piety and good morals .
Advancement in knowledge must be very much impeded by the constant writing of two or even only one sermon a week ; for sound learning and extensive knowledge are not to be acquired by desultory reading , but by a regular plan of study persisted in with constancy . Now the very time employed in composition must be so great as to interfere much with the prosecution of such a plan ; and during that part of the week . in which the
writer is employed in composing , he will seldom be found capable of engaging in any regular plan of study at all . As I have already observed ^ it is generally only in the latter part of the week that he is employed in writing . During the for * mer part of it , his mind is too much oppressed with the pros *
pect of the labour which he knows he has to go through , and with the suspense which he is in about the choice of a proper Subject ^ to apply himself to his general studies . But the preparing of a plan for a sermon is a work of so much less labour , occupies so much less time ^ and can in prospect so little oppress the mind , that it must interfere much less with a plan of study . Of course , the preaching from plans is likely to be more conducive to the attainment of knowledge .
As to the . piety and good morals of the clergy , it might at first view seetn that both of these modes of preaching must be perfectly indifferent , or rather that neither of them could have any influence at all ; and it is admitted that neither of them can have any direct and immediate influence ; but it may be doubted whether they have not an influence which is indirect and
remote . As far as serious study is likely to promote these qualities more than desultory reading , or indolent apprehensions of labour , so far the advantage lies on the side of preaching from a plan - Besides , from the labour attending the writing of
sermons , it is scarcely to be expected that the work will be generally persisted in for a great length of time * It is rather to be feared that it will be submitted to in general only-during the first years of a man ' s ministry ; and that when he has once gotten a considerable stock of sermons , he will preach them
over and over again , instead of composing new ones . It is indeed a fact that most clergymen used to do this . They employed , perhaps , a little art to disguise them ,, so that they might not be detected by their hearers , according to those line * of Dean Swift— *
Untitled Article
512 Essay on the Delivery of a Sermon *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1806, page 572, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1730/page/12/
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