Noteless Sermons

Listen to these strong words from Prof. Robert Lewis Dabney:

Reading a manuscript to the people can never, with any justice, be termed preaching.... In the delivery of the sermon there can be no exception in favor of the mere reader. How can he whose eyes are fixed upon the paper before him, who performs the mechanical task of reciting the very words inscribed upon it, have the inflections, the emphasis, the look, the gesture, the flexibility, the fire, or oratorical actions? Mere reading, then, should be sternly banished from the pulpit, except in those rare cases in which the didactic purpose supersedes the rhetorical, and exact verbal accuracy is more essential than eloquence.

I have said it often, there are way too many "essay readers" in Christian pulpits that have been dedicated for the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Why do we need a trained and ordained man to read out an essay?  Can such productions not be bought off the Internet and someone asked to read it out?

But whatever you might call that, it's certainly not preaching.  A preacher whose eyes are fixed on a manuscript cannot have any meaningful eye contact with those to whom he is preaching.  When we communicate with another person, we look at their eyes.  Preaching is communication par excellence.  To communicate from a pulpit, you need to see the whites of your congregation's eyes and they need to see the white of yours.  

I know that someone will cite Jonathan Edwards who is believed to have read his manuscript under candle-light and many were struck down, convicted of their sin and savingly converted to Christ.  But do exceptions prove rules?  Hardly.

Dabney is correct - "mere reading should be sternly banished from the pulpit" as a rule.