On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
them merely intellectual acquisitions . For things of thrs kind there Is a proper season , but certainly they are not the main business of the pulpit . The burden of the faithful minister's addresses will be things few , and plain , and generally known : some misconceptions , indeed , he will have to correct ; some difficulties
to clear up : but these are by the bye . His great work is , by pointed appeals to the conscience , to excite his hearers to a practical regard to known but neglected truths ; to awaken the careless , to abash the presumptuous , to expose the hypo * critical , to rebuke the iniquitous , to encourage the virtuous , to console the dejected ; to animate all with a conviction of the realities of faith , and with the divine experience of lore . Now , in
respect to all this , the style of compositions penned in the study is seldom the most efficacious . Critically speaking , it is too good . The sentences are too long : the language too bookish and re ft tied : the very ideas too elegant and recherch ^ s : conceived , written , revised , and corrected , in all the calmness of the closet , it becomes the wrong sort of thing , and has not the proper tone and feeling of a homily of the living minister to his assembled hearers . The unwritten address
will commonly have more force and point : it will both be conceived and expressed with more simplicity : hence it ¦ will be better understood ; it will also be -composed in a more animated and energetic state of mind ; and hence it will be better calculated to excite the feelings .
2 . Moreover , the unwritten discourse is likely to be better delivered . This particular , though of very great importance , appears so self-evident as not to require any illustration . No one expects from a mere reader , the animation , expression , and varied gesture , natural to a speaker : the nature of things does not allow of it . Yet is it not to the manner
of' delivery that we must look , as one of the principal advantages which a sermon heard from the pulpit has over as good , or a better one , read at home ? Of how great importance , then , must this point be to the general power and influence Of the ptilpit ! 3 . The last point which I shall notice ,
and I think it the most important of the three , is the advantages of preaching Over reading' sermons in respect to the personal feelings existing between the minister and his people . After all , were it not for this consideration , the shortest and best way of dispatching pulpit duty would be to provide a well-selected stock
Untitled Article
of printed sermons , as the church did her homilies , and thus reduce the duty of the minister to that of a mere reader . It is evident that sermons thus drawn from the first masters would , iu intrinsic merit , exceed all the ordinary performances of our pulpits ; and if the collection were
sufficiently voluminous , no evil could be felt from want of variety . Why then would not this plan be preferable to our present plan ? I know not what other reason can be assigned why it should not be so , except that arising from the topic which 1 am now considering : namely , the influence of personal feeling between the minister and people . To speak
plainly , it is not only what is said , nor how it is said , but likewise who says it , that affects the influence of an address . Why is this ? Plainly for this reason : that the sympathy of minds is much stronger than the power of words . This is the great secret of the power of extempore preaching . When a minister reads a
written discourse , this sympathy is comparatively but little excited : his hearers have no absolute assurance that it is even of his own composition : or , though it be , still it may have been written many years ago , and be little more the expression of his present feelings than if it were not his own : at any rate , we sympathize more readily with what a man speaks ,
than what he writes ; it generally savours more strongly of his real feelings , and exhibits more of the habitual current of his thoughts . The very effort which the people witness in extempore preaching , interests their feelings ; the laborious exertions of their minister in his duty are mauifest before them ; the workings of his mind are exposed to them ; they become sensible that his heart is in Mm
work , and that he employs his best energies in . their service : while the comparatively unstudied character of his address gives them a greater assurance that it is the genuine expression of his ovvji feelings . It is thus that religious feeling Is excited , and its sympathy caught from man to man , while the pulpit obtains a living , energetic power capable of producing the greatest effects . But it is not
the people only who wifl be influenced by this sympathy of souls ; doubtless the situation of a man who is addressing au attentive and congenial assembly on an important subject , is one of the most animating that can exist : it naturally tends to produce in the speaker a high , and often a sublime , excitement of mind : it gives hip fancy a vigour , his feeling * a glow , and all his thoughts an energy and expression which he could hardly coru-
Untitled Article
130 Miscellaneous Correspondence .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 130, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/58/
-