This volume is edited by Michael Warner, professor of English at Rutgers University and author of The Letters
of the Republic: Publication and Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America.
Sample Chapter
Excerpts
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period
of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding�something is happening in our world.
The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South
Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee�the
cry is always the same�"We Want to be free."
And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going
to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands
didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about
war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence
in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.
Martin Luther King Jr., "Sermon Delivered April 3, 1968"
Review
"To peruse this work is to become reacquainted with the literary eloquence of our distant and recent past
and to observe what has happened to rhetoric itself over the centuries... [T]he sermon form is revealed to have
remarkable literary vitality. Influenced by the Bible, tinged by African and evangelical cadences, the sermons
constitute a very American idiom... [S]atisfying as literature."
--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, March 10
"The sermon is a peculiarly rich art form in America, a country that is secular in its head but theological
in its heart, a land founded for religious reasons and dedicated to religious freedom, a nation with a missionary
spirit and a messianic impulse... [T]he Library of America series is onto something with its latest offering [American
Sermons]."
--David M. Shribman, The Wall Street Journal, April 23
"[A] feast of history, language, and proclamation... Those of us who are devoted to the matter of these messages
will be further inspired by their theological richness and rhetorical vitality."
--The Christian Century, May 19-26, 1999
"The range reveals a collective magisterial achievement. Many are a sheer joy -to observe, even hear through
the text�the high-wire act of a good preacher who soars and thumps like a gymnast, half ballet dancer and half
boxer. "
--The Times Union (Albany), June 20, 1999
"...The Library of America series is onto something with its latest offering. It's called simply "American
Sermons," and inside its 939 pages are 58 sermons delivered to America's rebellious sinners between the years
1621 and 1968.
Read it cover to cover or dip into it at random and you will discover sermons on the universality of spiritual
death, the vileness of the body, the dogma of hell and even one, delivered by Fulton J. Sheen called "How
to Have a Good Time." An hour with this volume�an hour with Increase Mather, John Winthrop, Aimee Semple McPherson,
Billy Sunday, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr�and you will agree: The sermon was the original, and
maybe the finest, American theatrical form.
--Wall Street Journal
"...This handsome 940-page book includes about 60 sermons by the likes of John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fulton J. Sheen and many lesser-known practitioners of the great American tradition of Sunday
morning (or for some, Saturday morning) preaching.
To peruse this work is to become reacquainted with the literary eloquence of our distant and recent past and to
observe what has happened to rhetoric itself over the centuries. For example, the book may well demonstrate that
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the last of the great traditional American rhetoricians in a line stretching
back to the earliest sermon known to have been preached on American soil: one by Robert Cushman, visiting Plymouth
Colony in 1621, a year after the arrival of the Mayflower.
...taken as a whole, the sermon form is revealed to have remarkable literary vitality. Influenced by the Bible,
tinged by African and evangelical cadences, the sermons constitute a very American idiom. One can read these as
historical artifacts, which they are. I found them satisfying as literature."
--The New York Times
"A brief review cannot hope to do justice to the scope and breadth of this newest volume from the heroic editors
at the Library of America, which brings to light the neglected art of the sermon in its many American manifestations,
from the long, learned disquisitions of the Pilgrim ministers to the rhythmic invocations of African American preachers.
Its practitioners here include not only Jonathan Edwards but the likes of Quaker Lucretia Mott and popular Catholic
revivalist Fulton J. Sheen. This brilliant collection should whet the appetite of most readers for the possibilities
of the sermon. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal
The Library of AmericaWeb Site, August, 2002
Summary
Michael Warner, editor. The sermon is the first and most enduring genre of our literature. The 58 sermons collected
in this volume display the form's eloquence, intellectual rigor, and spiritual fervor. Ranging from the first New
England settlement to mass-media evangelism and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Public and private, radical
and conservative learned and vernacular, famous and neglected, these texts reclaim a neglected form of American
literary art.
The sermons of the Puritan tradition are extraordinary in their richness of imagery, force of argument, and probing
psychological insights. From John Winthrop's visionary injunction that "wee must consider that wee shall be
as a Citty upon a Hill, " to Samuel Danforth's admonition not to deviate from the divine "errand into
the wilderness," the early sermons first explored what it means to be an American.
Jonathan Edwards' remarkable "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which stirred its 18th-century audiences
to frenzy, shows the intensity to which the sermon could rise, while Jonathan Mayhew's "Discourse Concerning
Unlimited Submission" heralds the political thinking that led to the American Revolution.
The ferment of the 19th century�the Mexican War, the struggle against slavery, the Civil War�inevitably affected
the sermon. Orthodoxies were challenged, and a new diversity emerged in the Unitarianism of William Ellery Channing,
the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the new Church of Latter Day Saints, and the gathering strength of
the African-American sermon tradition.
The 20th-century sermons collected here continue to wrestle with fundamental spiritual and civic concerns. They
range from a homily on charity by the popular evangelist Billy Sunday to a discourse on interfaith cooperation
by Abraham Joshua Heschel, and from Harry Emerson Fosdick's controversial "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?"
to John Gresham Machen's uncompromising riposte. The achievement of the African-American sermon attains a new breadth
of influence in the inspiring oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Table of Contents
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Robert Cushman
A Sermon Preached at Plimmoth in New-England
December 9. 1621
John Winthrop
A Modell of Christian Charity
John Cotton
from The Way of Life, 4. The Life of Faith
Gal. 2.20. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me
Thomas Hooker
from The Application of Redemption, the Ninth and Tenth Books: Book X, Doctine 3. Application of special sins by
the Ministry, is a means to bring men to sight of, and sorrow for them
Thomas Shepard
from The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened & Applied:
Of Carnal Security in Virgin Churches
Jonathan Mitchel
Nehemiah on the Wall in Troublesom Times
Samuel Danforth
A Brief Recognition of New-Englands Errand into the Wilderness
Increase Mather
Sermon Occasioned by the Execution of a Man Found Guilty of Murder
Cotton Mather
from The Wonders of the Invisible World:
An Hortatory and Necessary Address. To a Country now Extraordinarily Alarum'd by the Wrath of the Devil
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Solomon Stoddard
The Tryal of Assurance
Cotton Mather
A Man of Reason
Benjamin Colman
from The Case of Satan's Fiery Darts in Blasphemous Suggestions and Hellish Annoyances:
Job II: 9, 10. Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine Integrity?
Charles Chauncy
Man's Life Considered Under the Similitude of a Vapour, That Appeareth for a Little Time, and Then Vanisheth Away
Mather Byles
A Discourse on the Present Vileness of the Body and Its Future Glorious Change by Christ
Jonathan Edwards
A Divine and Supernatural Light
Jonathan Edwards
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Samuel Johnson
A Sermon Concerning the Intellectual World
Jonathan Mayhew
A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers
Samuel Davies
The Nature and Universality of Spiritual Death
Samuel Finley
The Madness of Mankind
Anon.
A Sermon in Praise of Swearing
Samuel Cooke
A Sermon Preached at Cambridge
Nathanael Emmons
The Dignity of Man
Devereux Jarratt
The Nature of Love to Christ, and the Danger of Not Loving Him, Opened and Explained
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Lemeul Haynes
Universal Salvation, A Very Ancient Doctrine: With Some Account of the Life and Character of Its Author
Absalom Jones
A Thanksgiving Sermon: Preached January 1, 1808, In St. Thomas's, or the African Episcopal, Church, Philadelphia:
On Account of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, On That Day, by the Congress of the United States
John Comly
Sermon Delivered at Darby, April 15, 1827
William Ellery Channing
A Discourse at the Ordination of the Rev. Frederick A. Farley ("Likeness to God")
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sermon Delivered September 9, 1832 ("The Lord's Supper Sermon")
Joseph Smith
Sermon Delivered April 7, 1844 ("King Follet Sermon")
Theodore Parker
A Sermon of War
Lucretia Mott
Abuses and Uses of the Bible
Brother Carper
The Shadow of a Great Rock in a Weary Land, as recorded by James V. Watson
Henry Ward Beecher
Peace, Be Still
David Einhorn
War with Amalek!
Dwight Lyman Moody
On Being Born Again
Octavius Brooks Frothingham
The Dogma of Hell
T. De Witt Talmage
The Ministry of Tears
Sam P. Jones
Sermon Delivered August 2, 1885
Phillips Brooks
The Seriousness of Life
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Francis J. Grimké
A Resemblance and a Contrast: Between the American Negro and the Children of Israel in Egypt, or the Duty of the
Negro to Contend Earnestly for his Rights Guaranteed under the Constitution
J. Gresham Machen
History and Faith
Aimee Semple McPherson
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit
Reuben Archer Torrey
The Most Wonderful Sentence Ever Written
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Shall the Fundamentalists Win?
Billy Sunday
Food for a Hungry World
Abba Hillel Silver
The Vision Splendid
C.C. Lovelace
The Sermon: as heard by Zora Neale Hurston, at Eau Gallie in Florida, May 3, 1929
Paul Tillich
You Are Accepted
Reinhold Niebuhr
The Providence of God
C.L. Franklin
The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest
Fulton J. Sheen
How to have a Good Time
Martin Luther King Jr.
Transformed Nonconformist
John Courtney Murray
The Unbelief of the Christian
Abraham Joshua Heschel
What We Might Do Together
Martin Luther King Jr. Sermon Delivered April 3, 1968
("I've Been To the Mountaintop")
Note on the Sermon Form
Biographical Notes
Note on the Texts
Notes
Index of Preachers
