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

Spurgeon - Lectures to My Students - Quotes on Prayer and Many Words

I recently finished reading one of the absolute classic books on ministry - C.H. Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students. Of all the books I've read on ministry, it is one of the very best and certainly one of the funniest! It's also just about the only book I've read on sermon preparation which gives about the right amount of weight to the importance of prayer... It's so good, in fact, that I may well do a mini-series of quotes from it!

Here are some on prayer and the dangers of too many words.

slovenly, careless, lifeless talk in the guise of prayer, made to fill up a certain space in the service, is a weariness to man, and an abomination to God. Had free prayer been universally of a higher order a liturgy would never have been thought of, and to-day forms of prayer have 110 better apology than the feebleness of extemporaneous devotions.
p55

Fine prayers are generally very wicked prayers. In the presence of the Lord of hosts it ill becomes a sinner to parade the feathers and finery of tawdry speech with the view of winning applause from his fellow mortals.
p56

Never fall into a vainglorious style of impertinent address to God; he is not to be assailed as an antagonist, but entreated with as our Lord and God.
p58

Verbiage is too often the fig-leaf which does duty as a covering for theological ignorance.
p74

The art of saying commonplace things elegantly, pompously, grandiloquently, bombastically, is not lost among us, although its utter extinction were "a consummation devoutly to be wished."
p77

Praying is the best studying.
p90

My brethren, it is a hideous gift to possess, to be able to say nothing at extreme length.
p165

The Importance of Prayer

I'm being really challenged at the moment about the importance of prayer. Just this morning, I was reminded from Ephesians 2 that by nature we are dead and objects of wrath. What hope therefore can there be for us to act in our own strength? What hope can there be that people will respond to preaching or to evangelism unless the Holy Spirit of God moves them. And if he moves us, how can we resist?

It is frequently a disappointment to me that so few books on preaching speak much about prayer. A great exception, of course is Spurgeon's Lectures to my Students.

If you can dip your pens into your hearts, appealing in earnestness to the Lord, you will write well ; and if you can gather your matter on your knees at the gate of heaven, you will not fail to speak well. Prayer, as a mental exercise, will bring many subjects before the mind, and so help in the selection of a topic, while as a high spiritual engage ment it will cleanse your inner eye that you may see truth in the light of God. Texts will often refuse to reveal their treasures till you open them with the key of prayer.

...

The minister who does not earnestly pray over his work must surely be a vain and conceited man. He acts as if he thought him self sufficient of himself, and therefore needed not to appeal to God. Yet what a baseless pride to conceive that our preaching can ever be in itself so powerful that it can turn men from their sins, and bring them to God without the working of the Holy Ghost. If we are truly humble-minded we shall not venture down to the fight until the Lord of Hosts has clothed us with all power, and said to us, " Go in this thy might." The preacher who neglects to pray much must be very careless about his ministry. He cannot have comprehended his calling. He cannot have computed the value of a soul, or estimated the meaning of eternity.

...

How much of blessing we may have missed through remissness in supplication we can scarcely guess, and none of us can know how poor we are in comparison with what we might have been if we had lived habitually nearer to God in prayer.

C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, chapter 3

Spurgeon - a New Biography by Arnold Dallimore

I started reading this book as part of Tim Challies' Reading Classics Together. That looks like a good idea for reading difficult stuff together, but 2 chapters a week is too slow a pace for a book I enjoy reading, as I did this one, so I finished it way ahead of schedule. Still, thanks to Tim Challies for suggesting it.

As a source on information about Spurgeon, it's pretty good. I'd heard of him, of course, but not realised quite how much God used him, and if this biography was aimed to make readers more fans of Spurgeon and wanting to read more of his work, in my case it certainly succeeded.

It was a great read, but I don't think it worked as a biography for several reasons. One was that I think by the end of the book we got to know Spurgeon as fans, but not as people who knew him did. We don't really get to know Spurgeon - he's always at arm's length. I guess that's especially true of his childhood. So when Spurgeon starts preaching at 15, or becomes pastor of a church aged 17, he seems almost a curiosity, rather than understanding where that came from or even what sense of calling he felt to it.

Dallimore comes across as a huge fan, which is ok in a biographer. But he also reads too many of today's controversies into Spurgeon's life. So, for example, chapter 19 contains this section:

This opposition to evangelical truth sprang first from the publication in 1859 of Darwin's Origin of Species. Teaching that life had originated not by divine creation but by blind chance, it directly contradicted the Scriptures and obviated the very idea of the existence of God.

Dallimore then goes on to conflate Darwin's ideas with the later German theological liberalism, and cites Spurgeon numerous times against liberalism to show that he also opposed Darwinism. Never once does he cite Spurgeon on Darwin. Now I'm not a 19th century historian, but as far as I can tell, Dallimore there is taking two different (but possibly linked) things, and saying they are the same. In doing so, he assumes lots of stuff about Biblical interpretation and theology of science, which I don't think is justified.

He's also very reticent to say that Spurgeon drank alcohol and smoked - it's almost as if he sees writing the book as a hagiography rather than a biography, and he wants Spurgeon to conform to his own culturally assumed norms of holiness. Though to be fair, he does include both, as well as mentions of Spurgeon's depression, though he always links that as a symptom of his gout.

I don't doubt that Spurgeon was a great man of God, and Dallimore gives us some great insights into how God used him, and what his priorities were. As a record of Spurgeon's life, this is good, and it's a good introduction to the man, but I wouldn't class it as a great biography.

Dallimore is more famous for his two-volume biography of George Whitefield, which I haven't read. On the basis of reading this, I'm more likely to read it, and I hope it gives us better insight into the man himself and what drove him and led him to become the man he was.

Spurgeon Quotes on Ministry

I've just finished reading a biography of the great Victorian preacher CH Spurgeon, of which more to follow.

But here are a few quotes from the great man:

Whatever "call" a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.
Lectures to my students, p.3

Better abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experimental knowledge of what they teach... He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism, is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God.
Lectures to my students, p.5

A man who has really within him the inspiration of the Holy Ghost calling him to preach, cannot help it - he must preach. As fire within his bones, so will that influence be, until it blazes forth...
Autobiography

Are churches in a right condition when they have only one meeting for prayer in a week, and that a mere skeleton?The Sword and the Trowel, August 1887

"Do not enter the ministry if you can help it," was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgment. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way...
Lectures to my students, p.23

True preaching is an acceptable adoration of God by the manifestation of his gracious attributes : the testimony of his gospel, which pre-eminently glorifies him, and the obedient hearing of revealed truth, are an acceptable form of worship to the Most High, and perhaps one of the most spiritual in which the human mind can be engaged.
Lectures to my students, p.54

More Quotes

We must not talk to our congregations as if we were half asleep. Our preaching must not be articulate snoring.
C.H. Spurgeon

So right! If we are not interested and engaged in what we are saying, how can we expect our congregations to be? (And why is that so rarely taught?)

The task of every generation is to discover in which direction the Sovereign Redeemer is moving, then move in that direction.
Jonathan Edwards

Edwards sounding remarkably charismatic there...