Thoughts on preaching by J. W. Alexander (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'Remarks on the studies and discipline of the preacher'.
Most of the advice consists of warning against dangerous studies:
- addiction to books;
- never making any judgement on theories;
- reading poisonous error;
- reading commentaries without meditating upon Scripture;
- reading certain works from the German press;
- neglecting systematic theology;
- devotion to publication of classics and works of literature.
Another top section. Hard to choose what grabbed me most.
Particularly liked the encouragement to make judgements on the differing views of scholars: 'Every one can recall some bookish man who is at the same time shallow. His glory is in citation. Where there is no determinate judgment, great knowledge tends only to vacillation, debility, concession when pressed, and frequent change of opinion. The entire mental furniture of such a scholar is a kind of nominalism. He is a treasury of arbitrary distinctions, classifications, commonplaces. His questions are, Who has said it ? Who has opposed it ? Where is it found ? How expressed ? This is the history of truth, rather than truth itself. Except in the sense of remembering, this person can scarcely be said to think without a book in his hand.'
Nothing frustrates me more than a lecturer who lays out all the different options but never tells you what is his opinion. As Alexander says elsewhere in the section: 'They are felicitous conversers, walking indices to treasured lore, and sprightly essayists, but not investigators, in the true sense, not producers, not solid thinkers.'
Preachers must be solid thinkers who make right judgements.
Commence the
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