“It is not true that some doctrines are only for the initiated; there is nothing in the Bible which is ashamed of the light . . . All revealed truth in harmonious proportion must be your theme . . . Do not insist perpetually upon one truth alone. A nose is an important feature in …
Pulpit Bombast
“It is infamous to ascend your puplit and pour over your people rivers of language, cataracts of words, in which mere platitudes are held in solution like infinitesimal grains of homeopathic medicine in an Atlantic of utterance” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 74).
And When You Run Out of Things to Say, Go On to the Next Verse
“The surest way to maintain variety in to keep to the mind of the Holy Spirit in the particular passage under consideration. No two texts are exactly similar; something in the connection or drift of the passage gives to each apparently identical text a shade of difference. Keep to the Spirit’s track and you will …
Spiritual Nutrition
“Whatever else may be present, the absence of edifying, instructive truth, like the absence of flour from bread, will be fatal” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 71).
Pulpits That Go Poof
“Rousing appeals to the affections are excellent, but if they are not backed up by instruction they are a mere flash in the pan, powder consumed and no shot sent home. Rest assured that the most fervid revivalism will wear itself out in mere smoke, if it be not maintained by the fuel of teaching” …
Hand-Packed Grace
“Horses are not to be judged by their bells or their trappings, but by limb and bone and blood; and sermons, when criticised by judicious hearers, are largely measured by the amount of gospel truth and force of gospel spirit which they contain. Brethren, weigh your sermons. Do not retail them by the yard, but …
The False Finish
“I have known men tantalize us with the hope that they were drawing to a close, and then take a fresh lease two or three times; this is most unwise and unpleasant” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 62).
Last Chance Seminary
“One brother I have encountered — one did I say? I have met ten, twenty, a hundred brethren, who have pleaded that they were sure, quite sure that they were called to the ministry — they were quite certain of it, because they had failed at everything else” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. …
Can’t Teach and Won’t Learn
“Another exceedingly large class of men seek the pulpit they know not why. They cannot teach and will not learn, and yet must fain be ministers” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 36).
Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing
“Certain good men appeal to me who are distinguished by enormous vehemence and zeal, and a conspicuous absence of brains; brethren who would talk for ever and ever upon nothing — who would stamp and thump the Bible, and get nothing out of it all; earnest, awfully earnest, mountains of labour of the most painful …