PROFESSOR IN THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Sixth Edition. PHILADELPHIA: SMITH, ENGLISH & CO., 710 ARCH STREET. NEW YORK: CARTER & BROS., 530 BROADWAY. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by JOHN A. BROADUS, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. PREFACE. THIS HIS wok is designed, on the one hand to be a textbook for classes, and on the other to be read by such ministers, younger or older, as may wish to study the subjects discussed. As a teacher of Homiletics for ten years, the author had felt the need of a more complete text-book, since a course made up from parts of several different works would still omit certain important subjects, and furnish but a meagre treatment of others, leaving the class to a great extent dependent entirely upon the lectures. The desire thus arose to prepare, whenever possible, a work which should be full in its range of topics, and should also attempt to combine the thorough discussion of principles with an abundance of practical rules and suggestions. When the labor involved in teaching this and at the same time another branch of Theology became excessive, and it was necessary to relinquish Homiletics - though always a favorite branch the author determined, before the subject should fade from his mind, to undertake the work he had contemplated. The treatise is therefore a result of practical instruction, but it is not simply a printed course of lectures. The materials existing in the form of brief notes have been everywhere rewrought, the literature of the subject carefully re-examined, and the place which had been occupied by text-books, filled by an independent discussion. |