Jonathan Edwards on preaching
This quote from Jonathan Edwards, for which I am indebted to Seth Kember, a student at SBTS, captures perfectly my understanding of good preaching:
I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of the subject … Though, as I said before, clearness of distinction and illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method, in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected; yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light, and have no heat … Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their heart touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching, which has the greatest tendency to do this.
The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 1:391.