No Trifling With the Text

“Only, as one rule that has no exceptions, let your use of texts be real. Never make them mean what they do not mean. In the name of taste and reverence alike, let there be no twists and puns, no dealing with the Word of God as it would be insulting to deal with the word of any friend”

Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 124

Undigested Quotations

“Constant quotations in sermons are, I think, a sign of the same crudeness. They show an undigested knowledge . . . Learn to study for the sake of truth, learn to think for the profit and joy of thinking. Then your sermons shall be like the leaping of a fountain, and not like the pumping of a pump.”

Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 123