Excerpt from The Duke Divinity School Review, Vol. 41: Winter 1976 This issue of the Review is about preaching. In recent years, preaching has been ridiculed, maligned, and dispossessed even by those whose ordination sets them aside for the ministry of word. The prologue of the gospel of john calls the chief actor in all things The Word, and the great reformers viewed this whole area as absolutely central in the life of the church. Yet preaching has seemed empty and futile for many persons in ministry, and they have hoped for more significant activities such as counseling, edu cation, community action, small groups, etc. These are vital minis tries, but they have not yet displaced preaching as an integral part of the life of the Church. There are many evidences of the enduring power and mystery of preaching and some suggestions that we are now in a renaissance of interest and purpose relative to true preaching. The articles that follow will encourage all those who have anything at all to do with the word preached and heard to lift high their expectations for the place of the pulpit in the Christian Church. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.