GREAT AMERICAN SERMONS

This collection focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The best-known of the authors are Jonathan Edwards and Lucretia Mott, but all are capable religious interpreters. The sermons were all written for an era when public speaking was a major form of entertainment, and the narrators miss this point. Their deliveries are crisp, clear, and capable, but they leave out the soaring emotion and drama that marked their original delivery. In the Edwards piece, particularly, the reader could have utilized dramatic pauses between the minister's points to better effect, instead of rolling from one right into the next. The narrators do, however, read the texts well enough to get their points across for a modern audience. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2008]