# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S358
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

358   Compilation of the Reports on Exordia.

fault, which we ought therefore rather to seek to lay aside than to draw from it a reason for fighting against something. A well-worked-out sermon with a short, fitting introduction is therefore far preferable to a long and often repetitious one without an introduction. One must only always keep this in view, that exordium and sermon do not stand side by side as two alien things, but that they strive toward one goal. —

The fourth question is this, whether we find an analogy for the exordia in Scripture or in Luther and his contemporaries. With regard to this one contributor says: "Do we find long introductions to the discourses of our LORD Christ and His apostles, or in the preaching of the angels? Further, in the sermons of the time of the Reformation, or of the period nearest to it? Rather, one goes straight in mediam rem. Or were the hearers then different from those we have?"

Another contributor says: "Exordia are not in accordance with the example of the ancient church, for one seldom finds a trace of them in the church fathers, as also in the sermons of Dr. Luther and his contemporaries. Only from 1560 onward do they occur ever more frequently. Now who understood the right manner of preaching better, these or those? Our following will be governed accordingly, if indeed we are convinced of the excellences of the earliest Lutheran age. Let one take up the first sermon that comes to hand and consider whether one will miss an exordium in it; and again let one see, in later sermons, whether what was said in the exordium was really necessary for the understanding of the text, or might just as well have been left out."

In Scripture we find, as regards form, no such sermons, and therefore no such introductions either. Yet there is no lack of examples: I point to the penitential sermon of the prophet Nathan. — Further to Isaiah, chapter 1:2. The apostles too, in their epistles, do not go straight in mediam rem, but send a short introduction ahead. — That Luther and his contemporaries used no exordia has its ground in the analytic method of preaching which they followed, and it may well be a motive for us not to use them either, but it is no proof that they are to be rejected.

In favor of the exordia, finally, one contributor expresses himself thus: "They are surely meant to convey and prepare the leading thought or thoughts, and to serve toward pressing them all the deeper into the heart. This aim may well be attained. They are like the marksman's taking aim, like the jumper's run-up, whereby the actual purpose is to be reached, the mark hit, the ditch happily leaped over. Both are necessary, at least in most cases. If, then, by the introductions the mind is collected and the heart rightly prepared for the reception of the chief truth of the text, they have certainly brought a great blessing."

C. G.