Preaching Made Easy by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 15, 1871

Preaching Made Easy.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THIS is an age of improvement. Everything that a man wants in any line he can have ready made, cheap and quick. Who needs anything worse than a dull, cold, stupid minister needs a good sermon ready made? Not one. So a company is started and sermons are now ground out by the hundred for so much apiece. Says the Christian Union:—

“Sermon-manufacture in England appears to be on the increase. A writer in the St. Paul's magazine says that there are now a dozen persons engaged in the trade. They furnish a half-guinea article when great flights of eloquence are desiderated, but the ordinary supply is on much lower terms, averaging 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. a sermon, postage paid. Two sermons a week at this rate would amount to £5 4s. a year. In other words, an annual sum of twenty-six dollars in gold would secure to a country parson all needful sermons, without any wear or tear of brain.”

Probably we ought not to find fault with this, as the hearers will get much better sermons than they otherwise would. But, another step is now much needed in this good work, that is, ready-made conversions. These are very much in demand, and would meet a great and growing want of the church. D. M. CANRIGHT.