“I heard one say the other day that a certain preacher had no more gifts for the ministry than an oyster, and in my own judgment this was a slander on the oyster, for that worthy bivalve shows great discretion in his openings, and knows when to close” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. …
If It Be Truth
“Be sure you have the truth, and then be sure you hold it. Be ready for fresh truth, if it be truth, but be very chary how you subscribe to the belief that a better light has been found than that of the sun” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 208).
To Whom Much Is Given
“Be masters of your Bibles, brethren . . . When grace abounds, learning will not puff you up, or injure your simplicity in the gospel. Serve God with such education as you have, and thank Him for blowing through you if you are a ram’s horn, but if there be a possibility of your becoming …
A Minister’s Family
“We ought to be such husbands that every husband in the parish may safely be such as we are. Is it so? We ought to be the best of fathers. Alas! some ministers, to my knowledge, are far from this, for as to their families, they have kept the vineyards of others, but their own …
Take It Easy
“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).