Sermons on the Beatitudes

Among the many activities which claimed Calvin’s attention during his long ministry in Geneva, preaching was the most public and perhaps the most influential. Public because, for many years, twice on Sundays and daily in alternate weeks, the Reformer stood before a congregation of townsfolk, refugees and visitors to teach, warn, appeal, counsel, admonish, and encourage. Influential because, vital as the Institutes, commentaries and treatises were to the defence and propagation of Christian doctrine, it was the Word preached and applied from the pulpit which above all fashioned Geneva’s evangelical culture and made it the nerve-centre of Reformed Protestantism.