Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... HOMILETICS. CHAPTER I. RELATION OF SACRED ELOQUENCE TO BIBLICAL EXEGESIS The sources of Sacred Eloquence, it is evident, must lie deeper than those of secular oratory. That address from the Christian pulpit which, in its ultimate results, has given origin to all that is best in human civilization and hopeful in human destiny, must have sprung out of an intuition totally different from that which is the secret of secular and civil oratory. It is conceded by all, that eloquence is the product of ideas; and therefore, in endeavoring to determine what is the real and solid foundation of pulpit oratory, we must, in the outset, indicate the range of ideas and the class of trutha from which it derives both its subject-matter and its inspiration. These we shall find in Divine revelation, as distinguished from human literature. The Scriptures of the Christian Church, and not the wri tings of the great masters of secular letters, are the fona et origo of sacred eloquence. It will therefore be the aim of this introductory chapter in a treatise upon Homiletics, to consider the influence, in oratorical respects, upon the preacher, of the thorough exegesis and mastery of the Word of God. And in order to perform this task with most success and convincing power, it will be necessary to make some preliminary observations upon the nature of the written revelation itself, and particularly upon the relation in which the human mind stands to it. The opening of one of the most sagacious and suggestive of modern treatises in philosophy reads as follows: "Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to matter or to mind, permit him, and neither knows nor is capable of...