# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S354
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

354   Compilation of the Reports on Exordia.

is said in the exordia before the exposition of the text can just as well and just as fittingly be said after it, in the transitus, which is after all itself a kind of introduction; just as, if someone wished to state the purpose of his visit while still outside the door, one would ask him to do so rather after he had entered."

The reporter's own opinion regarding the necessity of exordia agrees entirely with this. Yet a somewhat different light falls upon the exordia according as one follows either the synthetic or the analytic method, or the two combined. With the analytic, the exordia simply will not fit, and hence they are absent in Luther and others as well. But this method is the most difficult, and is therefore also called the "heroic"; for it takes something to expound the text verse by verse and sentence by sentence without falling into a dry, skeleton-like stringing together, but rather bringing everything under one leading thought; this was possible only to the heroic spirit of a Luther. With the synthetic and the analytic-synthetic method the exordia are indeed likewise not necessary, yet they are applicable and in most cases serviceable. Since, then, by common consent the latter method is the best for everyone who knows that he is no Luther, the use or non-use of the exordia must naturally be governed accordingly.

The second question is this: whether by the exordia what they are meant to accomplish is in fact achieved. One of the contributors answers: No; others leave it undecided. The words of the former are these: "I speak out of my own and others' experience, and must answer in the negative. It has always occurred to me and to others, while listening to an exordium: if only it is not too long, or if only it were already over, so that I might hear the main thing, namely the exposition of the text, which is of particular importance to me in this or that point, etc. — One also notices in the hearers, by their bearing, by their looks, and the like, that they still take their time with their attention until the explanation of the text. I know a preacher who for years has sought to remedy the inattention that shows itself during the introduction by casting his exordia into rhyme and declaiming them with mighty pathos."

Another contributor speaks thus: "They seem to me to scatter and fragment the leading thought, the principal propositions, in the sermon. Often a related saying, a hymn stanza, or a narrative of Holy Scripture is taken as the text of the introduction; upon that the hearers' first and greatest attention remains fixed, or may easily remain fixed, and by the time the actual principal propositions come, it is already exhausted. Our hearers do not understand much in any case; they fail to catch a great deal in sermons and in private conversation. All the more ought we to strive to impress upon them one or a few definite doctrinal propositions. This, to be sure, is perhaps precisely what the introductions are meant to achieve, but whether they really serve that end is the question. If the preacher steps