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

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Supernatural power must be your reliance.

If you do not touch the heart you will soon weary the ear.

Clothe yourself, then, with the power of the Spirit of God, and preach to men as those who must soon give an account, and who desire that their account may not be painful to their people and grievous to themselves, but that it may be to the glory of God.

Neither of these is the subject now under consideration, although we may incidentally allude to each of them, but we are now to speak of extemporaneous speech in its truest and most thorough form—speech impromptu, without special preparation, without notes or immediate forethought.

Our first observation shall be that we would not recommend any man to attempt preaching in this style as a general rule.

The Holy Spirit has made no promise to supply spiritual food to the saints by an impromptu ministry.

He will never do for us what we can do for ourselves.

If we can study, and do not, if we can have a studious ministry and will not, we have no right to call in a divine agent to make up the de...

Gentlemen, do not attempt, as a rule, to follow a system of things which is so generally unprofitable that the few exceptions only prove the rule.

All sermons ought to be well considered and prepared by the preacher; and, as much as possible, every minister should, with much prayer for heavenly guidance, enter fully into his subject, exert all his mental faculties in original thinking, and gather together all the information within his reach.

Viewing the whole matter from all quarters, the preacher should think it out, get it well masticated and digested; and having first fed upon the word himself shoul...

Our sermon should be our mental life-blood—the out-flow of our intellectual and spiritual vigor; or, to change the figure, they should be diamonds well cut and well set—precious, intrinsically, and bearing the marks of labor. God forbi...

Very strongly do I warn all of you against reading your sermons, but I recommend, as a most healthful exercise, and as a great aid towards attaining extempo...

Leave them at home afterwards, but still write them out, that you may be preserved from a slipshod style.

The most arduous and commendable plan is to store your mind with matter upon the subject of discourse, and then to deliver yourself with appropriate words which

suggest themselves at the time.

Only thoughtless persons think this to be easy; it is at once the most laborious and the most efficient mode of preaching, and it has virtues of its own of which I cannot now speak particularly, since it would lead us away from the point in hand.