Excerpt from West Roxbury Sermons
One of the tests of a great preacher is his power to get and hold the ear of the community or of the age in which he lives. He may do it by studying the arts of popularity, or, like the great preachers and prophets of every age, he may do it when the ears of men are closed against him. Neither in his presentations of theology nor in his advocacy of reforms was Theodore Parker on the popular side. Strange as it seems to us to-day, his utterances were deemed so dangerous that at first no publisher would consent to put his name on Parker's pamphlets; and yet, either through the force of his ideas or through the force of his personality, he compelled a hearing.
When a man succeeds in doing this, the question often arises. What is the secret of his power? Sometimes this is easily apparent. It lies in the arts of rhetoric, in grace of elocution, in fascination of manner, in artistic power of depiction. Dickens or Howells could write interestingly about a three-legged stool. Chrysostom, if he had taken the same text, might have shown its relation to the Delphic tripod, and then preached a glowing sermon on the divine oracles.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге West Roxbury Sermons (Classic Reprint)