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American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr.

Edited by Michael Warner

“[T}aken 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

Overview
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Interviews Reinhold Niebuhr combined “tough-minded political realism with a sympathetic understanding of society’s injustices”
April 16, 2018

The sermon is the first and most enduring genre of American literature. At the center of the Puritan experience, it continued in succeeding centuries to play a vital role—as public ritual, occasion for passion and reflection, and, not least, popular entertainment. The fifty-eight sermons collected in this volume display the form’s eloquence, intellectual rigor, and spiritual fervor. ranging from the first New England settlements to mass-media evangelism and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, these texts reclaim a neglected American tradition.

The Puritan sermons with which the volume opens are extraordinary in their richness of imagery, force of argument, and probing psychological insight. 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,” these seventeenth-century works first explored what it means to be an American.

Jonathan Edwards’s 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 twentieth-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.

Michael Warner, volume editor, is professor of English and American Studies at Yale University and author of The Letters of the Republic: Publication and Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr. is kept in print by a gift from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
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”)
Contributors

Henry Ward Beecher
Phillips Brooks
Mather Byles
Brother Carper
William Ellery Channing
Charles Chauncy
Benjamin Colman
John Comly
Samuel Cooke
John Cotton
Robert Cushman
Samuel Danforth
Samuel Davies
Jonathan Edwards
David Einhorn
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nathanael Emmons
Samuel Finley
Harry Emerson Fosdick
C. L. Franklin
Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Francis J. Grimké
Lemuel Haynes
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Thomas Hooker
Devereux Jarratt
Samuel Johnson
Absalom Jones
Samuel Porter Jones
Martin Luther King Jr
C. C. Lovelace
John Gresham Machen
Cotton Mather
Increase Mather
Jonathan Mayhew
Aimee Semple McPherson
Jonathan Mitchell
Dwight Lyman Moody
Lucretia Coffin Mott
John Courtney Murray
Reinhold Niebuhr
Theodore Parker
Fulton J. Sheen
Thomas Shepard
Abba Hillel Silver
Joseph Smith
Solomon Stoddard
Billy Sunday
Thomas De Witt Talmadge
Paul Tillich
Reuben Archer Torrey
John Winthrop

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