Beginning with excerpts from the lectures of Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks, this seminar uses the Beecher Lectures of Yale Divinity School as a basis for examining the history and practice of preaching in the United States, with emphasis on the post-war period, to expose students to the richness and diversity of homiletical theory and equip them to incorporate this wisdom into their practice. The lectures of Fosdick, Craddock, Buechner, Trible, Brueggemann, Proctor, the Buttricks, and Taylor will be read and discussed, and sermons by most of the lecturers reviewed and examined.