“Little learning and much pride comes of hasty reading. Books may be piled on the brain till it cannot work” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 177).
Watering the Soup, To Use Another Image
“This age is full of word-spinners — professional book-makers, who hammer a grain of matter so thin that it will cover a five-acre sheet of paper; these men have their uses, as gold-beaters have, but they are no use to you” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 177).
Brother Charles Nails It
“Sensible persons do not expect a garden to yield them herbs from year to year unless they enrich the soil; they do not expect a locomotive to work without fuel, or even an ox or an ass to labour without food; let them, therefore, give over expecting to receive instructive sermons from men who are …
Fling Away the Stilts
“I am persuaded that one reason why our workingmen so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways. If they saw us, in the pulpit and out of it, acting like real men, and speaking naturally, like honest men, they would come around us . . . The vice …
No Dualism Here
“A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind’s face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 158).
Laid Up In Lavender
“We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed; we are to spend and be spent, not to lay ourselves up in lavender, and nurse our flesh” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 157).
And Other Days Your Tongue is a Brick
“It may save you much surprise and grief if you are forewarned that there will be great variations in your power of utterance. To-day your tongue may be the pen of a ready writer, to-morrow you thoughts and words may be alike frost-bound” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 152).
Bright Orange Paint on the Deep Green Carpet
We have been having a wonderful time here in the UK, seeing the sights and fellowshiping with the British saints. One of the points that has come up in various discussions is related to one of the more admirable traits of British evangelicalism — which is a great zeal and concern for evangelism, coupled with …
Courage in the Pulpit
“I must urge upon you the necessity of being cool and confident. As Sydney Smith says, ‘A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage'” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 150).
Loving Little Ones 2
INTRODUCTION: We have considered the fact that child nurture, if it is to be healthy, has to occur in a particular kind of soil—and that is the soil of grace, mercy, and kindness. This is not indulgence or relativism, but rather is the only real basis for bringing up children who will love and worship …