Spurgeon - Lectures to My Students - Quotes on Preaching

Here are some more excellent quotes from Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students, this time on the subject of preachers and preaching, but also including evangelism and apologetics...

Painfully do I call to mind hearing one Sabbath evening a deliverance called a sermon, of which the theme was a clever enquiry as to whether an angel did actually descend, and stir the pool at Bethesda, or whether it was an intermitting spring, concerning which Jewish superstition had invented a legend. Dying men and women were assembled to hear the way of salvation, and they were put off with such vanity as this! They came for bread, and received a stone ; the sheep looked up to the shepherd, and were not fed.
p.79

Some ministers need to be told that they are of the same species as their hearers.
p.183

But if you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words.
p.188

Is religion to be tabooed the best and noblest of all themes forbidden? If this be the rule of any society, we will not comply with it. If we cannot break it down, we will leave the society to itself, as men desert a house smitten with leprosy. We cannot consent to be gagged. There is no reason why we should be. We will go to no place where we cannot take our Master with us.
p.189

It is to be hoped that we shall never, in our ordinary talk, any more than in the pulpit, be looked upon as nice sort of persons, whose business it is to make things agreeable all round, and who never by any possibility cause uneasiness to any one, however ungodly their lives may be.
p.189