“The Parson’s Method in handling of a text consists of two parts: first, a plain and evident declaration of the meaning of the text; and secondly, some choice Observations drawn out of the whole text, as it lies entire, and unbroken in the Scripture itself” (Herbert, The Country Parson, p. 64).
Always Potent
“Sermons are dangerous things . . . none goes out of Church as he came in, but either better, or worse” (Herbert, The Country Parson, pp. 62-63).
Joy and Throne
“The Country Parson preacheth constantly, the pulpit is his joy and his throne” (Herbert, The Country Parson, p. 62).
Different Ways It Can Go
“An ignorant, undisciplined, and unspiritual man cannot write a good sermon; neither need a learned, thoroughly disciplined, and holy man, preach a bad extemporaneous sermon” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, p. 221).
Turn Us, Lord: Eighth Decade of Psalms/Psalm 80
Introduction: As with others of the psalms of Asaph, this is likely either in the tradition of the school of Asaph, or by another Asaph downstream from the father of that tradition. The events described here are not what we see in the time of David and Solomon, so it is either written later, or …
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).