Evangelical Eloquence Quotes

“The preacher’s business is to take what is given him in the Scriptures, as it is given to him, and to endeavour to imprint it on the souls of men. All else is God’s work.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“The public prayers of the pastor are apt to be the models of the devotions of his people; when he leads them in prayer he is really teaching them to pray. Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath. Prayer is the appointed channel of his whole redemption. How mischievous is that man who by his coldness, inappropriateness, irreverence, vagueness, unbelief, chills the aspirations and obstructs the access of a whole multitude which he should have led up to the mercy-seat!”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“If, for instance, a Presbyterian pastor begins: “Methodists teach that a true believer may totally and finally fall away from a state of grace: this I shall now refute,” every person of that persuasion in the house will naturally feel as though he were personally assailed. But had this pastor advanced the opposite doctrine, so explained as to free it from odious misconceptions, in a didactic mode and temper, making only a respectful general reference to an honest difference of judgment upon it among the recognized followers of Christ, every fair-minded adherent of Wesley would have listened without offence, and would have come away with the pleasing impression that Christians were not so far asunder upon this vexed question as he had supposed. It is very much due to the observance of this simple rule that wise pastors (without infidelity to truth) preserve pleasant relations with other communions, hold their own ground triumphantly against encroachments, and even win accessions, without awakening denominational strife And it is usually the rash contempt of this easy caution which plunges others into unseemly and mischievous rivalries.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“Now, for the preacher, the chief of these secondary sources is the testimony of the sacred Scriptures. Their authority as our rule of faith is inferred immediately from their inspired character; for if God is perfect truth, as must be assumed, or else all search for truth anywhere is preposterous; and if the Bible is God’s word, then it is infallible, and of course authoritative over the soul. But is the inspiration of the Bible self-evident to its readers? I answer, it is not immediately self-evident – that is to say, the proposition, “The Bible is inspired,” is not axiomatic – but it is readily found to be true upon bringing the internal and external evidences of it under the light of our self-consciousness, our mental and our moral intuitions. This is but saying that God, in revealing himself to man, has clothed his revelation with an amount of reasonable and moral evidence adapted to the creature’s nature, and sufficient, when inspected, to produce a perfect conviction. Thereupon the word of God assumes its place as of plenary authority over the soul in the department of which it professes to teach, that of our religious beliefs, duties, and redemption.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“a strict integrity of mind should guide you in the selection and use of a passage of the Scriptures as a text. Never venture to expound it to the people, unless you are sure that you have the meaning intended by the Spirit, and offer to them no other than that.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“But I would urge that the expository method (understood as that which explains extended passages of Scripture in course) be restored to that equal place which it held in the primitive and Reformed Churches; for, first, this is obviously the only natural and efficient way to do that which is the sole legitimate end of preaching, convey the whole message of God to the people.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“But God’s topics, the fall, the curse, sin, death, immortality, duty, redemption, faith, hope, judgment, hell, heaven, these transcendent subjects have an abiding, an overmastering common interest All men share it, because they are men. These assert their power over the human soul under every condition, and in spite of man’s natural carnality, with a force akin to their vastness. Honour God then, my young brethren, by urging no other truths than those he has given you, urging them with disinterested fidelity, and he will honour your ministry.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“Now, questions of politics must ever divide the minds of men; for they are not decided by any recognized standards of truth, but by the competitions of interest and passion. Hence, it is inevitable that he who embarks publicly in the discussion of these questions, must become the object of party animosities and obnoxious to those whom he opposes. How then can he successfully approach them as the messenger of redemption? By thus transcending his proper functions, he criminally prejudices his appointed work with half the community, for the whole of which he should affectionately labour.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“The appropriate mission of the minister is to preach the gospel for the salvation of souls. The servant who by diverging into some other project not especially enjoined on him, nor essential for him to perform, precludes himself from his allotted task, is clearly guilty of disobedience to his master, if not of treason to his charge.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“Surely, the minister of a divine Redeemer should mount his pulpit with a more holy dread, by as much as he discusses a more sacred theme and more everlasting destinies. To preach a sermon is a great and awful task. Woe to that man, who slights it with a perfunctory preparation and a careless heart.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“He is not the true preacher who sends his hearers home exclaiming, “How eloquent the minister to-day; how beautiful his imagery; how artful his arrangement; how skilful his argument and his persuasion!” But he is the true sacred orator, who dismisses them so possessed and overpowered by God, that they have forgotten the creature who was the channel of the truth. The message should hide the messenger.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“In other words, in order to be capable of any power of persuasion, you must be men of ardent and genuine religious affections. You must be men of faith and prayer; you must live near the cross and feel “the powers of the world to come.” We thus learn again the great truth that it is divine grace which makes the true minister.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“If you would induce your hearer to adopt a given course, you must not only prove to his wisdom that it is the proper means to its end, but you must show to his heart that the end is desirable. Hence all suasive discourse, whatever its particular topic, may be reduced to two elements: that which places the proposition in the category of the true, and that which shows it in the category of the good. Both elements are essential to the oration. The latter may be present only by implication, but unless it is virtually present there is no rhetorical discourse.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“The discourse must be like a river which never ceases its motion toward the sea. But the stream which, where it is a rivulet amidst its native mountains, brawls and foams against the immovable rocks, at last disembogues itself calmly with its mighty volume of waters into the ocean. At the end it does not move with less force, but it moves without agitation, because its resistless current has swept every obstacle from its channel.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“Unity of discourse requires, then, not only singleness of a dominant subject, but also singleness of practical impression. To secure the former, see to it that the whole discussion may admit of reduction to a single proposition. To secure the latter, let the preacher hold before him, through the whole preparation of the sermon, the one practical effect intended to be produced upon the hearer’s will.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“It is usually wise to extend this fidelity to the text, not only to its abstract doctrine, but to its imagery. Let the sermon wear, in the main, the same figurative drapery with the passage on which it is founded.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“The falsehood of that man is full of impiety, who, avowedly standing up in a sacred place to declare God’s message to perishing souls, says that the Holy Spirit has said what he has not said. I would impress you with a solemn awe of taking any liberties in expounding the word. I would have you feel that every meaning of the text, other than that which God expressly intended it to bear, is forbidden fruit to you, however plausible and attractive – fruit which you dare not touch on peril of a fearful sin.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“Good expository preaching is always permanently attractive, and always most attractive to those whom it is most important to attract. It meets the great appetite of the human mind – the desire to know; it instructs. No man who has any intelligent sensibility toward sacred things can fail to make the reflection that, if the Bible is our authoritative rule of faith, then it is a matter of transcendent, of infinite concern to him to get the right meaning of that book. But all popular readers of the Scriptures have a strong consciousness of their own blindness of mind to much that they read there. They feel that in many places they have not the key of knowledge. Hence, he who proposes to open the meaning of the Scriptures meets the most serious desire of their religious nature.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“Heat without light is blind, as light without heat is cold. The Sun of Righteousness, like the natural luminary, becomes the fountain of life in his appropriate realm by giving heat through light. To the objection that didactic preaching is dry, I answer, that if it ever seems to be so, this is the fault of the preacher and not of the truth.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“The end, I repeat, of every oration is to make men do. But the things which the sermon would make men do, are only the things of God. Therefore it must apply to them the authority of God. If your discourse urges the hearer merely with excellent reasons and inducements, natural, ethical, social, legal, political, self-interested, philanthropic, if it does not end by bringing their wills under the direct grasp of a “thus saith the Lord,” it is not a sermon; it has degenerated into a speech.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“there are three stages through which preaching has repeatedly passed with the same results. The first is that in which scriptural truth is faithfully presented in scriptural garb – that is to say, not only are all the doctrines asserted which truly belong to the revealed system of redemption, but they are presented in that dress and connection in which the Holy Spirit has presented them without seeking any other from human science. This state of the pulpit marks the golden age of the Church. The second is the transition stage. In this, the doctrines taught are still those of the Scriptures, but their relations are moulded into conformity with the prevalent human dialectics. God’s truth is now shorn of a part of its power over the soul. The third stage is then near, in which not only are the methods and explanations conformed to the philosophy of the day, but the doctrines themselves contradict the truth of the Word.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence

“If this work has any peculiarities to which value may be attached, they are these: that the necessity of eminent Christian character is urged throughout as the foundation of the sacred orator’s power, and that a theory of preaching is asserted, with all the force which I could command, that honours God’s inspired word and limits the preacher most strictly to its exclusive use as the sword of the Spirit.”
― Robert Lewis Dabney, Evangelical Eloquence