Lectures to My Students: Addresses Delivered to the Students of the Pastors' College, Metropolitan Tabernacle

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Recollect that to some of our people it is not so easy to be attentive; many of them are not interested in the matter, and they have felt not enough of any gracious operation on their hearts to make them confess that the gospel is of any special value to them.

They ought to roll their burden on the Lord; but do you always do so?

Do you always find it easy to escape from anxieties? Are you able to forget the sick wife and the ailing children at home? There is no doubt whatever that many come into the house of God loaded heavily with the thoughts of their daily avocations.

You must drive the mosquitoes away, and secure your people’s undistracted thoughts, turning them out of the channel in which they have been running six days into one suitable for the Sabbath.

Frequently it is very difficult for congregations to attend, because of the place and the atmosphere.

The next best thing to the grace of God for a preacher is oxygen.

The modern barbarous style of building gives us no more ceiling than a barn, and no more openings for ventilation than would be found in an oriental dungeon, where the tyrant expected his prisoner to die by inches.

Sometimes the manners of our people are inimical to attention.

In order to get attention, the first golden rule is, always say something worth hearing.

Most persons possess an instinct which leads them to desire to hear a good thing. They have a similar instinct, also, which you had better take note of, namely, that which prevents their seeing the good of attentively listening to mere words.

Amongst the commandments I am not aware of one which runs thus: “Thou shalt not be verbose,” but it may be comprehended under the command, “Thou shalt not steal;” for it is a fraud upon your hearers to give them words instead of spiritual food. “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin,” even in the best preacher.

Let the good matter which you give them be very clearly arranged.

Put the truth before men in a logical, orderly manner, so that they can easily remember it, and they will the more readily receive it.

Be sure, moreover, to speak plainly; because, however excellent your matter, if a man does not comprehend it, it can be of no use to him; you might as well

have spoken to him in the language of Kamtchatka as in your own tongue, if you use phrases that are quite out his line, and modes of express...

Go up to his level if he is a poor man; go down to his understanding if he is an educated person. You smile at my contorting the terms in that manner, but I think there is more going up in being plain to the illiterate, than there is in being refined for the polite; at any rate, it i...

Our Lord and Master was the King of preachers, and he never was above anybody’s comprehension, except so far as the grandeur and glory of his matter were concerned; his words and utterances were such that he spoke like “the holy child Jesus.”

Attend also to your manner of address; aim in that at the promotion of attention.

I have not relished it, for my digestion is not good enough to dissolve foolscap. It is better to do without the manuscript, even if you are driven to recite. It is best of all if you need neither to recite nor to read. If you must read, mind that you do it to perfection. Be the very the best of readers, and you had need to be if you would secure attention.

Here let me say, if you would be listened to, do not extemporize in the emphatic sense, for that is as bad as reading, or perhaps worse, unless the manuscript was written extemporaneously; I mean without previous study.

Do not, for instance, indulge in monotones.

Vary the tone; use the bass sometimes, and let the thunders roll within; at other times speak as you ought to do generally—from the lips, and let your speech be conversational. Anything for a change.

Human nature craves for variety, and God grants it in nature, providence and grace; let us have it in sermons also. I shall not, however, dwell much upon this, because preachers have been known to arouse and sustain attention by their matter alone, when their mode of speech has been very imperfect.

As a rule, do not make the introduction too long.

Well, good soul, as there was nothing particular in what he had said, the repetition only revealed the more clearly the nakedness of the land.

In order to maintain attention, avoid being too long. An old preacher used to say to a young man who preached an hour, “My dear friend, I do not care what else you preach about, but I wish you would always preach about forty minutes.” We ought seldom to go much beyond that—forty minutes, or say, three-quarters of an hour.

Brevity is a virtue within the reach of all of us; do not let us lose the opportunity of gaining the credit which it brings.

If you ask me how you may shorten your sermons, I should say, study them better.

Spend more time in the study that you may need less in the pulpit. We are generally longest when we have least to say. A man with a great deal of well-prepared matter will probably not exceed forty minutes; when he has less to say he will go on for fifty minutes, and when he has absolutely nothing he will need an hou...

If you want to have the attention of your people—to have it thoroughly and always, it can only be accomplished by their being led by the Spirit of God ...

If you need another direction for winning attention, I should say, be interested yourself, and you will interest others.

Your subject must weigh so much upon your own mind that you dedicate all your faculties at their best to the deliverance of your soul concerning it; and then when your hearers see that the topic has engrossed you, it will by degrees engross them.

The heart of preaching, the throwing of the soul into it, the earnestness which pleads as for life itself, is half the battle as to gaining attention.

Have something to say, and say it earnestly, and the congregation will be at your feet.

It may be superfluous to remark that for the mass of our people it is well that there should be a goodly number of illustrations in our discourses.

“There is a mission-station here, and young men come down to preach to us. I do not wish to find fault with these young gentlemen, but they tell us a great many very pretty little stories, and I do not think there is much else in what they say. Also I have heard some of their little stories before, therefore they do not so much interest me, as they would do if they would tell us some good doctrine out of the Scriptures.”

Ancient jests sicken us when witlings retail them as their own ideas, and anecdotes to which our great-grandfathers listened have much the same effect upon the mind.

Beware of those extremely popular compilations of illustrations which are in every Sunday school teacher’s hand, for nobody will thank you for repeating what everybody already knows by heart; if you tell anecdotes let them have some degree of freshness and originality; keep

your eyes open, and gather flowers from the garden and the field with your own hands; they will be far more acceptable than withered specimens borrowed from other men’s bouqu...

Real instruction must be given and solid doctrine taught, or you will find your imagery pall upon your hearers, and they will pine for spiritual meat.

I fear I cannot recall one of Mr. Taylor’s sentences so as to do it justice, but it was something like this: “Some of you make no advance in the divine life, because you go forward a little way and then you float back again: just like a vessel on a tidal river which goes down with the stream just far enough to be carried back again on the

return tide. So you make good progress for a while, and then all of a sudden”—what did he say?—“you hitch up in some muddy creek.” Did he not also repeat us a speech to this effect—“He felt sure that if they were converted they would walk uprightly and keep their bullocks out of their neighbor’s corn?”

A very useful help in securing attention is a pause.

Speech is silver, but silence is golden when hearers are inattentive.

This is, in fact, a most essential point, because nobody sleeps while he expects to hear something to his advantage.

Self-interest quickens attention. Preach upon practical themes, pressing, present, personal matters, and you will secure an earnest hearing.

Late attendance, also, needs remedying, and our gentlest reasonings and expostulations must be brought to bear upon it.

this class of assaults. I gave you a golden rule for securing attention at the commencement, namely, always say something worth hearing;

Be yourself clothed with the Spirit of God, and then no question about attention or non-attention will arise.

Come fresh from the closet and from communion with God, to speak to men for God with all your heart and soul, and you must have power over them.