421 - Sermons Preached in a University Church

Sermons Preached in a University Church
By George A. Buttrick
222 pp. New York, Abingdon Press, 1959. $3.75.

Preachers and teachers of preaching in America have awaited with ore than ordinary anticipation the appearance of a book of sermons from the pen of George A. Buttrick, Preacher to the University and Summer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University. During a outstanding ministry for twenty-eight years at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City, lie won a reputation as an excellent pastor and in Protestant religious circles his name became synonymous with great preaching. Some of his readers and hearers give him the somewhat equivocal title "a preacher's preacher," which even in the best sense of the term his characteristic humility would hesitate to accept, Itch less to claim; but the consistently crowded sanctuary of Memorial Church at Harvard indicates in the broader context the unmistakable but that the era of great preaching, in America at least, is not yet over. In order to prepare his readers, Dr. Buttrick writes an exceedingly Helpful Foreword to his book and takes care to point out that these are University sermons, written primarily for students, and from tile per Executive of one who is trying to throw some light for them upon the Complex issues and problems of mid-twentieth century life. Then fol-

422 - Sermons Preached in a University Church

low twenty-six sermons that fall into three groups: Faith and Doubt; Faith and Life; and the Christian Year. The general format of the boot takes its shape doubtlessly from the preacher's attempt to present a provocative Christian witness before a secular academic community, but individual sermons succeed in singling out for expert handling those deep personal problems that are the common burden of the student mind today Indeed an intelligent reader of these pages will discover that tile decisive and inevitable encounter of the Gospel with moral conditions and intellectual strictures is not peculiar to, nor needed especially by, the university group, but has real significance for the larger areas of our society and culture as well. These sermons are a well-balanced criticism of and of those ills which the basic moral incapacity of our human nature creates in both the student and day-laborer alike.

This book is the product of a brilliant mind. The insights therefore are incisive and the skilful handling of ideas brings out Dr. Buttrick genius as both thinker and preacher. Every phrase counts and the fulness of these well-documented pages shows that in Dr. Buttrick the preacher, scholar, and theologian are happily bound together. The range of his thinking and the sincerity of his sentiments appear especially when lie speaks with a devastating sentence against some current socially or philosophical aberration and then with almost pastoral tenderness a case of personal fretfulness or blindness. In none of these address does lie ever ride a pet theme. His "magnificent obsession" is Christ who stands as a strong and manly figure at the center of a well-round Gospel.

Readers will have varied reactions to this volume of sermons. SOL will miss the Buttrick they knew and appreciated so deeply in Jesus Came Preaching and The Parables of Jesus; they will prefer the from simplicity when lie was more the preacher than philosopher and material less crowded with sub-thoughts and subtle by-play of local elevance and timeliness. Yet, when the history of American preaching comes to be written down, it will be to books such as Sermons Preach in a University Church that the scholar will turn in order to assess impact of a prophetic voice upon the mind and will of the age.

Donald Macleod
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey