The reappearance of characters and places from O'Hara's other fictional works relates Sermons and Soda-Water to the rest of his canon. Especially striking is O'Hara's use of the autobiographical character Jim Malloy as his narrator; the young boy in the 1935 story "The Doctor's Son" is here a man of O'Hara's age, reflecting on the changes the years have brought to Gibbsville, its inhabitants, and himself.