The Joy of Preaching

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Summary: Lectures on Preaching, by Phillips Brooks
Review: Phillips Brooks was an Episcopal minister in late-19th century Boston whose Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching set the standard for generations to come. When Dean Willard Sperry, of the Harvard Divinity School, told his predecessor that he had been invited to give the Beecher lectures, he was asked, "But what are you going to say? There isn't anything left to say. Phillips Brooks said all that can be said about preaching, and all that needs to be said, in his lectures long ago." Dean Sperry replied that he need not have labored the point. "I was already painfully aware of my dilemma."

The enduring appeal of Brooks' lectures may be seen in the fact that, as the twenty-first century begins, they are still in print and still being recommended by professors of preaching around the country.

To Brooks, preaching is "the communication of truth through personality." Thus his lectures have as much to do with the person in the pulpit as with the task of preaching. One cannot read the chapters of this book without feeling the force of Brooks' own personality. But there is also God's plenty of truth in the book, phrased in such a memorable way that it will leave an enduring impact.

Outside Trinity Church on Copley Square in Boston there is a statue of Phillips Brooks, but one might well say that his true monument is this book containing his views on preaching.