II. Rules. — Sermonizing may be said to embrace the two important particulars of plan and style.
1. Plan. — Little is hazarded in saying that a good plan is essential to a good sermon. It is by no means essential that the plan be formally stated or even made perceptible to the hearer, but it is needed to guide the thought and accomplish the aim of the speaker. The preacher who has no plan is liable to wander from his
proper line of thought, to repeat himself, to confuse his hearers, and to fail in all the important objects of a ser- mon. Superticial readers have imagined, and some- times asserted, that the sermons of Christ and his apos- tles were uttered without plan. Carefid analysis will, however, reveal in every instance an underlying or per- vading plan well ada[ited to the object in view. Still it is proper to acknowledge, judging from the reports that have come down to us, that not only during the New-Test, period, but during the early Christian cen- turies, but little, if any, attention was given to artiticial or minutely drawn plans. The style of preaching dur- ing the patristic age being for the greater part exposi- tory, preachers were naturally hehl to the order of the portions of Scripture expounded. To whatever extent ' panegyrics were introduced in the 4th and 5th centuries, in imitation of the Greek orators, the order of narration was naturally followed. Rarely were the formal parts of an oration, as described by the Greek and Iloman rhetoricians, distinctly developed in sermons. It was reserved for the schoolmen of the 12th centurv and later to apply the minutise of ancient rhetoric and logic to the framework of sermons. That ap|)lication was, however, so ingeniously made by them as to project its influ- ence downward through successive centuries. That in- fluence may be traced in the preaching of both Cath- olics and Protestants of various countries even down to the present time. The prevailing fault of what may be termed the scholastic method of sermonizing has been that of excess in detail. By not a few authors it has been drawn out into a minuteness of division and Sub- division, and, in short, an extreme of artificiality suffi- cient to destroy all freedom of thought and expression. Not only professed scholastics, but various writers of comparatively recent date, have bewildered themselves and their readers with their tedious and multiplied schemes of suggestion and division. Whoever has the curiosity to see this statement illustrated may find am- ple material in a joint comparison of bishop Wilkins's Gift of Preaching, Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon, anil G. W. Hervey's Christian Rhetoric. While it may be said that in some sense these three books represent England, France, and the United States of America, and also the 17th, the 18th, and the 19th centuries, it would be more proper to say that they rep- resent an antique fashion, together with the action of a certain class of minds, of which more or less appear in every age.
Wilkins, seeking to simplify the detailed processes of preceding writers, so as to enable preachers to "teach clearly, convince strongly, and persuade powerfully," gives schemes of explicatifm, confirmation, and applica- tion which cover six continuous duodecimo pages.
Claude, in order to help preachers avoid " poor, dry, and spiritless observations," and also to reduce "obscure matters to a natural, popular, and modern air," prescribes twenty-seven different sources of observations, designed to aid thought and facilitate invention. They are prac- tically copied from the Loci Cotnmunes, or CommonpUtces, of Aristotle, one only of his twenty-eight being omitted,
Hervey, in the modest endeavor to do what he thinks all other American writers have failed to do — namely, " to find the true groundworks of homiletics, and to reduce tlie science to something like a clear and suffi- cient s}'stem" — not only repeats the twenty-seven topics of Claude, but, on his own account, enumerates and ex- emplifies forty-one kinds of topical division !
It is not surprising that such excesses have called forth both opposition and ridicule, and have even pro- voked some minds to the rejection, if not of all plans, yet of all divisions of a sermon. Fenclon, archbishop of Cambray, represented the opposition of his period to the scholastic system in his Dialorpies concerning Elo- quence. He said, " For the most part, divisions give only a seeming order, while they really mangle and clog a discourse by separating it into two or three parts, which must interrupt the orator's action and the effect
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