Self-control is not a virtue that can be tucked away in one small portion of our lives. We have seen that it applies everywhere, and that when a people are self-governed, they are in a position to enjoy free government. It should be self-evident to us that a huge collection of slaves to sin are …
Host, Guest, Food
In this meal we eat family style. We both receive the food and we pass the food. In addition to this, because it is a covenant meal, we consume the food that is made up for all the others, and we offer ourselves to be consumed to all the others. We are enabled to do …
Basic Qualifications
“Now if a shepherd know not which grass will bane, or which not, how is he fit to be a shepherd?” (Herbert, The Country Parson, p. 60; bane means poison).
With Gathered Force
“Behind every extemporaneous sermon, as really as behind every written sermon, the whole duration of the preacher’s life, with all the culture and learning it has brought with it, should lie” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, pp. 219-220).
Or Ought to Live
“But the chief and top of his knowledge consists in the book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, the holy Scriptures. There he sucks, and lives” (George Herbert, The Country Parson, p. 58).
Avoiding Word Salads in the Pulpit
“If he has no imagination, and no ideas, not even rambling and disconnected ones, then there is nothing left for him but to declaim, and exhort; and this manner of preaching is, perhaps, the most ineffectual and worst of all . . . It is a sin, for the preacher to be a mere rhapsodist. …
Exactly So
“The Parson is very strict in keeping his word, though it be to his own hindrance, as knowing, that if he be not so, he will quickly be discovered, and disregarded: neither will they believe him in the pulpit, whom they cannot trust in his Conversation” (Herbert, The Country Parson, p. 57).
That Would Seem to Follow
“No mind can be constructive, that does not actually construct” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, p. 214).
Remembering the Task
“A Pastor is the Deputy of Christ for the reducing of Man to the Obedience of God” (George Herbert, The Country Parson, p. 55).
He Means Outlining
“Skeletonizing is to sermonizing, what drawing is to painting” (Shedd, Homiletic and Pastoral Theology, p. 213).