From the author’s Introduction:
THIS further collation of plain Talks is a companion volume to The Brilliant Fool – Twenty Talks on the Gospels. My hope is that it might prove a blessing to readers and perhaps be an ideas prompter for fellow preachers. It could also be useful if used in private reflection and prayer, or as a stimulus for group discussion.
Like many others, I have tried to learn from the great John Wesley who wrote the following words as a Preface to his Sermons on Several Occasions, these being 44 discourses delivered by him in the mid-1700s: ‘I design plain truth for plain people: therefore, of set purpose, I abstain from all nice and philosophical speculations; from all perplexed and intricate reasonings; and, as far as possible, from even the show of learning, unless in sometimes citing the original Scripture. I labour to avoid all words which are not easy to be understood, or which are not used in common life and, in particular, those kinds of technical terms that so frequently occur in the study of Divinity; those modes of speaking which men of reading are intimately acquainted with, but which to common people are an unknown tongue.’
