Proclaimer Blog
Princeton Library online
The Princeton online library is an enormous and valuable resource. It is full of rare and useful books, over 55,000 of which have been digitsed. I have been reading, for example, The war and preaching by John Kelman, lectures given at Princeton during WWI. The later chapters have got some great stuff. Here's some advice about spending too much time on the art of preaching rather than the content…
Conscious art in preaching is doubly dangerous. It is dangerous to the preacher. Such a state of mind in the preacher obviously distracts his attention from the main purpose of his work. We have enumerated here three objects of preaching: testimony, education and appeal. But none of these can be rightly attained so long as the preacher is also aiming at creating an impression by his art. That can never be a legitimate object of preaching, and it has ruined many an able sermon.
But sermons which reveal the art with which they are composed are equally dangerous with respect to those who listen to them. Hatch's Lectures are full of the most startling suggestion as to this in their descriptions of those long sermons of the sophists that were delivered for the sake of the applause they drew…He reaches his climax in the account of Gregory of Nazianzus' greatest sermon, where his audience was so wedded to its search for art and not for conviction, thatr he broke forth in despair in his closing sentence, 'Farewell – ye are nearly all of you unfaithful to God' which the congregation greeted with a final outburst of applause.