Lectures to My Students Quotes

“Harmony requires that the voice of one doctrine shall not drown out the rest”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“It is not true that some doctrines are only for the learned; there is nothing in the Bible which is ashamed of the light.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Better to abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experiential knowledge of what they teach.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“You will never be capable of speaking properly in public unless you acquire such mastery of your own thought as to be able to decompose it into its parts, to analyze it into its elements, and then, at need, to recompose, regather, and concentrate it again by a [purely observational] process.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared with our closets.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“A man with a surpassingly excellent voice, who is destitute of a well-informed head and an earnest heart, will be, to use Plutarch’s expression, Vox et praeterea nihil – a voice and nothing else.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Pray over the Scripture;”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Our great master theme is the good news from heaven – the tidings of mercy through the atoning death of Jesus, and mercy to the chief of sinners upon their believing in Jesus.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Bring in all the features of truth in due proportion, for every part of Scripture is profitable, and you are not only to preach the truth, but also preach the whole truth.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Never can you be short of themes for prayer; even if no one should suggest them to you, look at your congregation. There are always sick folk among them, and many more who are soul-sick. Some are unsaved, others are seeking and cannot find. Many are desponding, and not a few believers are backsliding or mourning. There are widows’ tears and orphans’ sighs to be put into our bottle and poured out before the Lord.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“the pulpit is never to be the ladder by which ambition is to climb.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Truth must not only be in us, but also shine from us.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Prayer is twice blessed: it blesses the pleading preacher and the people to whom he ministers.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“The preacher who neglects to pray much must be very careless about his ministry.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“as St. Austin speaks: with their doctrine they build, and with their lives they destroy.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“A man who has learned not merely the letter of the Bible but also its inner spirit will be an exceptional man, whatever other deficiencies he may labor under.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“those who have unlimited stores at their command are able to find that a few standard books are sufficient.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“It is far better to be industriously asleep than lazily awake.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Look at the mower in the summer’s day with so much to cut down before the sun sets. He pauses in his labor; is he a sluggard? He looks for his stone and begins to draw up and down the blade of his scythe with a rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink. Is that idle music? Is he wasting precious moments? How much he might have mown while he has been ringing out those notes on his scythe! But he is sharpening his tool, and he will do far more when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before him. Even thus, a little pause prepares the mind for greater service in the good cause.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Even the earth must lie fallow and have her Sabbaths, and so must we. Hence the wisdom and compassion of our Lord when He said to His disciples, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” What! When the people are fainting? When the multitudes are like sheep upon the mountains without a shepherd, does Jesus talk of rest? When the scribes and Pharisees like grievous wolves are tearing the flock, does He take His followers on an excursion into a quiet resting place? Does some red-hot zealot denounce such atrocious forgetfulness of present and pressing demands? Let him rave in his folly. The Master knows better than to exhaust His servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Be sure, moreover, to speak plainly. 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 Russia’s Kamchatka as in your own tongue, if you use phrases that are quite out of his line and modes of expression which are not suitable to his mind.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“If we cannot prevail with men for God, we will at least endeavor to prevail with God for men.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“None are so able to plead with men as those who have been wrestling with God on their behalf.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“Be fit for your work, and you will never be out of it.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“(Ignorant beings they must be if they look for wealth in connection with the Baptist ministry.)”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers, Volume 1

“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 extemporizing power, the frequent writing of them, Those of us
who write a great deal in other forms, for the press, et cetera, may not so
much require that exercise; but if you do not use the pen in other ways,
you will be wise to write at least some of your sermons, and revise them
with great care. Leave them at home afterwards, but still write them out,
that you may be preserved from a slipshod style. M. Bautain in his
admirable work on extempore speaking, remarks, "You will never be
capable of speaking properly in public unless you acquire such mastery of
your own thought as to be able to decompose it into its parts, to analyze it
into its elements, and then, at need, to recompose, re-gather, and
concentrate it again by a synthetical process. Now this analysis of the idea, which displays it, as it were, before the eyes of the mind, is well executed
only by writing. The pen is the scalpel which dissects the thoughts, and
never, except when you write down what you behold internally, can you
succeed in clearly discerning all that is contained in a conception, or in
obtaining its well-marked scope. You then understand yourself, and make
others understand you.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to my Students, the first series, Lectures 1-13