1.I 11. The Natural Method

The Natural Method.

It is a good thing to select your text and unfold precisely its meaning and its. context, and then to deduce from it certain natural lines of thought. But this is only one way. A descriptive sermon, an argumentative sermon, a poetical sermon, and a sermon of sentiment, have, severally, their own genius of form. I need not tell you that variety is, in the best sense of that term, the “ natural” method. In nature a few elements, by various permutations and combinations, produce infinite varieties, endless contrasts, and constant changes. Nature is always fresh, and never stales upon the taste.

Besides all this, every preacher will find that something is to be allowed for the way in which his own mind works. A man naturally inclined to mysticism has his whole temperament arrayed against the anatomical method of sermonizing. The man of a dry intellectual nature, who sees all things cold, clear, and colourless, cannot imitate the man whose mind lives under an arch of perpetual rainbows. So then, because the plans of sermons must be affected by the nature of the truth itself, by the nature of the man himself, and, above all, by the ends sought in the sermon and the nature of the people to whom the sermon is addressed, you will perceive the absurdity of attempting any one method of laying out a sermon, and the wisdom of seeking endless diversity of method as well as of subject.