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Third, King's file entitled "Sermons by Other Ministers" shows that he deliberately drew upon the work of renowned preachers such as Harry Emerson Fosdick. In this way, King quite intentionally thought with and through the communion of saints. Volume 6 includes facsimiles of pages from sermons and works of theology where King responds to the text with notes in the margins. For example, one facsimile shows a brief outline of King's sermon "What is Man?" on the opening page of his copy of Reinhold Niebuhr's 1932 Moral Man and Immoral Society, a text that presumably inspired these thoughts. The volume also includes seminary papers on various issues associated with preaching, one of which is a review of a homily by Karl Barth in which King harshly criticizes the Swiss theologian for failing to present his theology "in the light of the experiences of the people." The volume juxtaposes the seminary paper with a picture of King proudly walking arm–in–arm with Barth at Princeton Theological Seminary 12 years later.
King's interaction with Barth as a student and later as a nationally acclaimed public figure represents the fourth lesson about preaching that King teaches us through this volume. King held the conviction that good preaching must be theological preaching. In his edition of Halford Edward Luccock's 1944 book, In the Minister's Workshop, (shown in facsimile), King underlines Luccock's words and paraphrases them in the margins: "Every great movement in history has been prepared for and partly carried out through preaching … . If preaching is to have any depth, height and breadth, it must be theological preaching." King believed that a good preacher must have a strong intellect but also must make "the complex, the simple."
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