HERALDS OF GOD
poet and the Christian preacher are compared. The paragraph is well worth pondering. "In every province of intellectual activity, and in that of poetry among the rest, the Greeks of the classical age demanded a living sympathy of mind with mind. What they felt in regard to the poet can be best understood by comparing it with the feeling which not they alone, but all people, have in regard to the orator and the preacher. The true orator, the great preacher, speaks out of the fulness of genuine conviction and emotion to the minds and hearts of those who hear him; through all variations of mood and tone, he keeps in mental touch with them. The excellence of the classical Greek poet was tried by the same test. No elaboration of art could sustain the poet through his ordeal, if he failed in truth to nature. False sentiment may pass muster in the study, but it is inevitably betrayed by its own unveracity when it is spoken aloud before listeners whose minds are sane, as those of the Greeks pre-eminently were; the hollow ring is detected; it offends; and the exemption of the best Greek poetry from false sentiment is a merit secured by the very conditions under which that poetry was produced." Remember, therefore, to keep your congregation before you as you write. For no array of literary merits can possibly redeem a discourse which lacks the living sympathy of mind with mind.
The other basic principle is this. Make sure that every sermon you preach has a definite aim. To say this is indeed simply to apply in one particular and
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