# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S355
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Compilation of the Reports on Exordia.   355

forward, the people at once want to know what the main thing is now to be, and what is really to be preached here; therefore let one tell them this promptly as well."

The reporter's opinion is this: whether by the exordia what they are meant to accomplish is achieved cannot be answered either simply with No or with Yes, and that for this reason: because it cannot be demonstrated, but is a matter of experience, and hence the contributors too could adduce only their own and others' experience as a counter-argument. But here the old proverb holds: "Exempla non probant, sed illustrant." I can, on the contrary, say out of my own and others' experience that the introductions have for the most part sharpened for me both my attention and my desire for the truth contained in the text. That one often notices the hearers' inattention in their bearing, in their looks, and the like, holds unfortunately, as experience testifies, of the sermon as well; hence just as much as this proves against the exordia, just so much does it prove against the sermon itself.

Furthermore, if an exordium does not exceed its measure, but is, as indeed it ought to be, brief and framed in measured expressions, then attention cannot possibly be wearied by it already; and if it nevertheless happens, then it lies not with the exordium but with the hearer, whose attention would certainly have vanished entirely even with the bare sermon before it was half delivered. To the wish that, when the preacher steps forward, the people would gladly know at once what the main thing is and what is to be preached about, the exordia offer no obstacle, since they are to occupy only a very short span of time. If, moreover, the wish is really lively among the people, they will have read the pericope through beforehand and can therefore know in advance what the main thing is; and so it would then be just fitting to set before them, with a few words first, the importance of that main thing, so that they may become ever more eager for the treatment of it.

Summa summarum: whether by the introductions what they are meant to accomplish is achieved is not a thing to be settled by vote. If they are good, there is no doubt of it; if they are not good, then they are of no help to the matter either. Hence one contributor says: "The objection may of course now be made that there is a difference between exordia and exordia. True as this certainly is, it cannot however be maintained that the failures always have their ground in the lack of diligence of their authors; rather, with many preachers there is a certain ineptness for it." Another contributor adds: "The finding of material for the exordium often causes the preacher great torment, for he vexes himself — with a self-chosen vexation, to be sure — often enough with long turning the matter this way and that: what will you say in the exordium? Of all this he can be relieved at once if he leaves them out altogether, for who requires such a thing at his hands? He does therefore far better to expend time and effort on an all-round understanding of the text and its exposition; for from