Homiletics and pastoral theology - Shedd - III - Chapter 2

Required reading
Homiletics and pastoral theology by William G T Shedd (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 2 (Distinctive nature of homiletics, and reasons for its cultivation).

My summary
Today Shedd firstly looks at the distinctive nature of homiletics.  Basically, 'The sermon is not an essay or a treatise. It is an address to an audience, like a secular oration. Its purpose, like that of the secular oration, is to influence the will and conduct of the auditor.'

Then Shedd teaches us that homiletics has been cultivated because of:
(i) the intrinsic dignity and importance of the sermon as a species of literature;
(ii) the intrinsic difficulty of producing an excellent sermon;
(iii) the increasingly higher demands made by the popular mind upon its public religious teachers.

What grabbed me
This was a really interesting discussion. 

It helped remind me why some weeks I find it so difficult to sit down and work on my sermon.

I particularly liked this comment about why the preacher's job is so hard: 'The greatest difference between the men of the present day and their forefathers consists in the greater distinctness, and rapidity, of their mental processes. They are not more serious and thoughtful than their ancestors, but they are more vivid, animated, and direct in their thinking, than they were. They are more impatient of prolixity, of a loose method of arrangement, and of a heavy dragging movement in the exhibition of truth. Audiences a century ago would patiently listen to discourses of two hours in length, and would follow the sermonizer through a series of divisions and subdivisions that would be intolerable to a modern hearer. The human intellect seems to have shared in that increased rapidity of motion which has been imparted to matter, by the modern improvements in machinery. The human body is now carried through space at the rate of a mile a minute, and the human mind seems to have learned to keep pace with this increase of speed. Mental operations are on straight lines, like the railroad and telegraph, and are far more rapid than they once were. The public audience now craves a short method, a distinct sharp statement, and a rapid and accelerating movement, upon the part of its teachers.'

And this was written in 1867, long before the invention of the internet which has sped up the human mind even more!

Next week's reading
Commence Chapter 3 (Fundamental properties of style) by reading up to the paragraph beginning with, '3. The third fundamental property of style is beauty.'

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.