Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.
Some of the greatest sermons that have ever been preached were preached by the singing of a song.
It must be observed, that the best of men, the most holy and spiritually minded, may have, nay, ought to have, their thoughts of spiritual things excited, multiplied, and confirmed, by the preaching of the word.
The grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious failure if the doctrine of the grace of God be absent from it.
In church, sacred music would make believers of us all — but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance.
The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.
Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.
Go into one of our cool churches, and begin to count the words that might be spared, and in most places the entire sermon will go.
No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.
The attention of the congregation is a major part of the attention that the pastor gives to his or her utterance. It's very exceptional. I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy a good sermon. People who are completely nonreligious know a good sermon when they hear one.
