The Lord “has not come into His house to be trifled with, and to have His words shuffled like a pack of cards” (Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, p. 378).
Because Dead Children Can’t Breathe Fresh Air
“Some excellent brethren seem to think more of the life than of the truth; for when I warn them that the enemy has poisoned the children’s bread, they answer, ‘Dear brother, we are sorry to hear it; and, to counteract the evil, we will open the window, and give the children fresh air.’ Yes, open …
Ride Us Like a Nightmare
“Some seem to think that we poor souls, who are the Puritanic school, are ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confined’ by harsh dogmas, from which we would gladly escape. They imagine that we have to check every rising aspiration of our nobler selves, so as to preserve the tyranny of a certain iron system. John Calvin is supposed …
And Where Is He In Your Preaching?
“In forming your system of astronomy, where do you put the sun? If you are not clear on that cardinal matter, your scheme will be a failure. If you have not found out the true ‘tabernacle for the sun,’ I am not very particular as to where you put Mars or Jupiter. Where is Christ …
Dried to Death
“So long as the life of the sermon is strengthened by preparation, you may prepare to the utmost; but if the soul evaporates in the process, what is the good of such injurious toil? It is a kind of murder which you have wrought upon the sermon which you have dried to death” (Charles Spurgeon, …
Sermons, Not Essays
“Do you not think that many sermons are ‘prepared’ until the juice is crushed out of them, and zeal could not remain in such dry husks? . . . You will never get a crop if you plant boiled potates. You can boil a sermon to a turn, so that no life remaineth in it …
Ah, for a Vertebrate Ministry!
“This suspicion is born of want of fidelity in ministers. I saw, just now, outside the shop of a marine-store dealer, a placard which runs thus: ‘Fifty tons of bones wanted.’ ‘Yes,’ I said to myself, ‘mostly backbones.’ Fifty tons of them! I could indicate a place where they could take fifty tons, and not …
Why Some Sermons Are Half-Baked
“Heart fire is true fire. A housewife, who perseveres in the old method of making her own bread, does not want a great blaze at the mouth of the oven. ‘Oh, no!’ she says, ‘I want to get my faggots far back, and get all the heat into the oven itself, and then it becomes …
Wisdom Accumulates
“A certain minister may quickly compose a sermon, but you must remember that this is the result of the labour of many years. Even he who, according to common parlance, speaks quite extemporaneously, does not really do so; he delivers what he has in previous years stored up. The mill is full of corn, and, …
Far Better Actually
“Better that Demas should forsake us, than that he should abide with us, and import the world into the church” (Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, p. 295).