# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S188
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188 On the Composition of Sermons.

destroy the sequence of images already established in the carefully and properly composed draft, and afterward continually stumble and get stuck in the pulpit, as J. H. Ursinus aptly remarks in his Ecclesiast., book 3, p. 39.

Dr. Dav. Chytraeus writes in his Prolegomena in rhetoricam: Students should learn to hate and abhor the presumptuous stupidity of certain men who boast that they wish to speak extemporaneously on great matters, just as some preachers boast that they shake their sermon out of their sleeve. Their stupidity and laziness ought to be beaten out of them with rods.

Fr. Eberh. Rambach writes in his preface to Dr. Chr. Tim. Seidel’s Pastoral Theology: Unfortunately, one finds teachers who, in their sermons, so lose sight of both their thoughts and their expression that it appears as though they were speaking entirely without any preparation when they preach the Gospel. Only two kinds of people succeed in delivering an edifying discourse without any preparation: namely, those who are compelled by an unavoidable circumstance to speak, and then those who possess exceptionally good gifts, who have attained fine theological learning, have a clear and orderly mind, to whom words flow readily, and who have long practiced sacred eloquence. If such an emergency arises, in which one does not have much time to consider what one wishes to say and how one wishes to say it, one may rely on the aid of God, which must be sought in heartfelt prayer. Apart from these cases, however, it always remains blameworthy when a teacher, whether from laziness, from imagined edification, or from being overwhelmed with household affairs, enters the pulpit without preparation and pours forth poor and confused thoughts in equally poor and confused expressions. We are told of Pericles, that great orator of Greece, that when he was to appear and speak before a court or an assembly of state, he invoked the gods to grant him the favor of presenting nothing that was not useful to the state and worthy of the Republic of Athens. What, then, will not be incumbent upon a Christian teacher who must speak concerning the affairs of the kingdom of God and the eternal salvation of mankind? He must call upon God, the giver of all good gifts, to grant him grace for the discharge of his duty; but such a prayer would amount to a mockery of God if he were to neglect what is incumbent upon him in this regard.