[Transcriber's notes: This production is based onhttps://archive.org/details/fiveminutesermon00paul/page/n4]
These short sermons were commenced in St. Paul's Church, NewYork, toward the close of the year 1876. The motive for doingthis was that the great number of persons who generally attendonly a Low Mass on Sundays might enjoy the advantage of hearingthe word of God preached, without being delayed too long fortheir convenience. For this reason they were limited in time tofive minutes, while the effort was made to condense within thisbrief compass a sufficient amount of matter at once instructiveand hortatory, in plain and simple language, to answer thepractical purposes of a popular discourse. In order to securethis twofold object of making the sermons so short that theywould not overrun the limit of five minutes, and at the same timeso solid and pungent that they would furnish a real nutriment andstimulus to the minds and hearts of the audience, it wasobviously necessary that they should be carefully written out.For each priest to write and commit to memory his own sermonwould be undertaking too much; and therefore the plan was adoptedof assigning to one the task of writing all the sermons, to beread by each priest celebrating a Low Mass for the people.{iv}The sermons have been published every week in the CatholicReview, and an advanced sheet of the printed copy, pasted ona tablet, has been furnished, to be used in preaching the sermonat each one of the Low Masses on the Sunday. The utility of thesesermons, the satisfaction they give to the people who hear them,and the advantage which can be derived by reading them after theyhave been published, are too obvious to need explanation. Thisadvantage we hope to make more extensive by now publishing thegreater part of the sermons which have been thus far preached,and printed in a weekly newspaper, in the more convenient andpermanent form of a volume. It is hoped that they will bepractically useful to many priests who may read them, or use themin preparing similar short sermons of their own for thoseoccasions when it is not practicable to give longer and moreelaborate discourses to their congregations. Many of them will befound, besides, to furnish a nucleus for the composition ofsermons of the usual length and rhetorical completeness. To thefaithful they afford matter for spiritual reading and profitablemeditation which is all the better for being put into a brief andsimple shape.
The merit of devising and first carrying into execution thisexcellent plan of preaching the Five-Minute Sermons at Low Massbelongs to the late Rev. Algernon A. Brown, C.S.P. It is quiteproper to praise the works of one who has departed this life,even though he was one of our own society. Many of the sermonswritten by Father Brown and contained in the present volume aremasterpieces in the art of miniature discourse. They are notfragments or sections of sermons, readin