By Charles H. Spurgeon
While I have utilized Spurgeon’s work for years, I have never read it cover to cover — until now. Lectures to my Students is thirty chapters of wisdom and pastoral insight from the Prince of Preachers to his students at The Pastor’s College.
Started in 1856, The Pastors College was established to provide continuing education to men who had been in the ministry for at least two years. Spurgeon writes, “The College aims at training preachers rather than scholars.” And if there were one aim above all, it was this:
If a student should learn a thousand things, and yet fail to preach the gospel acceptably, his College course will have missed its true design. . . . To be wise to win souls is the wisdom ministers should possess. (Preface)
Spurgeon never took even a dime for his efforts, which he began in 1856, just six years after God saved him. “During his lifetime nearly 900 pastors trained at the College and almost 200 new churches were planted in Britain alone.” Today, this work is carried under the banner of Spurgeon’s College.
It is challenging to pull just a few nuggets of gold from the mines of Spurgeon, but this one — which also displays Spurgeon’s penchant for humor — gets to the point:
We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again. (L1)
A few gems below from the pages of Lectures To My Students. After Lecture 1, I have attempted to limit myself to one highlight per lecture, an extremely difficult assignment. I did not do a good job of that. My “favorite” lectures were 1, 11, and 22, however I need all!
I have Lectures To My Students on Kindle, Paper, and Audible. The Audible is read by Grover Gardner — outstanding.
Lecture 1 - The Minister’s Self Watch
“We shall do our Lord’s work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do worst when they are most out of trim. . . . We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order.”
“It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organise societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; My own spirit, soul, and body, are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties, and my inner life, are my battle axe and weapons of war.... Remember you are God's sword, his instrument . . . . It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.
“Alas! the beard of reputation once shorn is hard to grow again.”
“The great enemy of souls takes care to leave no stone unturned for the preacher’s ruin. ‘Take heed to yourselves,’ says Baxter, ‘because the tempter will make his first and sharpest onset upon you.’”
Lecture 2: The Call To The Ministry
A man who would succeed as a preacher would probably do right well either as a grocer, or a lawyer, or anything else. A really valuable minister would have excelled at anything. There is scarcely anything impossible to a man who can keep a congregation together for years, and be the means of edifying them for hundreds of consecutive Sabbaths; He must be possessed of some abilities, and by no means a fool or ne’er-do-well. Jesus Christ deserves the best men to preach his cross, and not the empty-headed and the shiftless.
Lecture 3: The Preacher’s Private Prayer
Texts will often refuse to reveal their treasures till you open them with the key of prayer. . . . The closet is the best study.
Lecture 4: Our Public Prayer
About praying too long . . .
Do not let your prayer be long. I think it was John McDonald who used to say, “If you are in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because other people will not be able to keep pace with you in such unusual spirituality; and if you are not in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because you will then be sure to weary the listeners.”
Of Robert Bruce, of Edinburgh, it was said: “He was very short in prayer when others were present, but every sentence was like a strong bolt shot up to heaven” .... Only one in 1000 would complain of you for being too short, while scores will murmur at your being wearisome in length. “He prayed me into a good frame of mind,” George Whitfield once said of a certain preacher, “and if he had stopped there it would have been very well; but he prayed me out of it again by keeping on.”
Lecture 5: Sermons - Their Matter
More and more am I jealous lest any views upon prophecy, church government, politics, or even systematic theology, should withdraw one of us from glorying in the cross of Christ. Salvation is a theme for which I would feign enlist every holy tongue. I am greedy after witness for the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Oh that Christ crucified where the universal burden of men of God. Your guess at the number of the beast, your Napoleonic speculations, your conjectures concerning a personal Antichrist -- forgive me, I count them but mere bones for dogs; while men are dying, and hell is filling, it seems to me the veriest drivel to be muttering about an Armageddon at Sebastopol or Sadowa or Sedan, and peeping between the folded leaves of destiny to discover the fate of Germany. . . . I would sooner pluck one single brand from the burning than explain all mysteries period to win a soul from going down into the pit is a more glorious achievement than to be crowned in the arena of theological controversy as Doctor Sufficientissimus . . . .
Lecture 6: On The Choice of Text
Lecture 7:
Lecture 8: On The Voice
I return to my rule — use your own natural voices. . . Your own modes of speech will be most in harmony with your methods of through and your own personality. . . . I would repeat this rule till I wearied you if I thought you would forget it; be natural, be natural, be natural evermore.
Get a friend to tell you your faults, or better still, welcome an enemy who will watch you keenly and sting you savagely. What a blessing such an irritating critic will be to a wise man, what an intolerable nuisance to a fool. Correct yourself diligently and frequently, or you will fall into errors unawares, false tones will grow, and slovenly habits will form insensibly; therefore criticise yourself with unceasing care.
Lecture 9: Attention!
Often the mental mosquitoes sting the man while you are preaching to him, and he is thinking more of trifling distractions than of your discourse. . . . you must drive the mosquitoes away, and secure your people’s undistracted thoughts . . . . In order to get attention, the first golden rule is, always say. something worth hearing. . . . Brevity is a virtue with the reach of all of us. . . . If you need another direction for winning attention, I should say, be interested yourself, and you will interest others.
I gave you a golden rule for securing attention at the commencement, namely, always say something worth hearing; I will now give you a diamond rule, and conclude. Be yourself clothed with the Spirit of God, and then no question about attention or non-attention will arise.
Lecture 10: The Faculty of Impromptu Speech
Everything depends upon your being cool and unflurried. Forebodings of failure, and fear of man will ruin you. Go on, trusting in God, and all will be well.
My father gave me a very good rule when I was learning to write, which I think of equal utility in learning to speak. He used to say: ‘When you are writing, if you make a mistake by misspelling a word, or by writing a wrong word, do not cross it out and make a mess of it, but see how you can in the readiest way alter what you were going to say so as to bring in what you have written, and leave no trace of mistake.
Lecture 11: The Minister’s Fainting Fits
This lecture is a gold mine. It deserves pondering and pondering and practicing the pondering.
“Rest time is not waste time.”
Had it not been for the broken wing, some might have lost themselves in the clouds.
All mental work tends to weary and to depress, for much study is weariness of the flesh; but ours is more than mental work — it is heart work, the labour of our inmost soul.
Repose is as needful to the mind as sleep to the body.
Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world.
Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment.
Serve God with all your might while the candle is burning, and then when it goes out for a season, you will have less to regret. Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon our consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord. Set small store by present rewards; be grateful for earnests by the way, but look for the recompensing joy hereafter. Continue with double earnestness to serve your Lord when no visible result is before you. Any simpleton can follow the narrow path i the light: faith’s rare wisdom enable us to march on in the dark with infallible accuracy, since she places her hand in that of Great Guide.
Lecture 12: The Minster’s Ordinary Conversation
On ministerial starch: That is the article I am deprecating, that dreadful ministerial starch. If you have indulged in it, I would earnestly advise you to ‘go wash in the Jordan seven times',’ and get it out of you, every particle of it. I am persuaded that one reason why our working-men so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways.
It is far better to be industriously asleep that lazily awake.
Lecture 13: To Workers With Slender Apparatus (i.e. few books/resources)
On encouraging churches to supply their pastors with resources: Sensible persons do not expect a garden to yield them herbs from year to year unless they enrich the soil; They do not expect a locomotive to work without fuel, or even an ox or an asset to labour without food; let them, therefore, give over expecting to receive instructive sermons from men who are shut out of the storehouse of knowledge by their inability to purchase books.
The next rule I shall lay down is, master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them, masticate them, and digest them
Lecture 14: The Holy Spirit In Connection With Our Ministry
He is the Spirit of knowledge, — “He shall guide you into all truth.” He holds the key of the heavenly treasure, and can enrich us beyond conception; He has the clue of the most labyrinthine doctrine, and can lead us in the way of truth.
Lecture 15: The Necessity Of Ministerial Progress
I heard one say the other day that a certain preacher had no more gifts for the ministry than an oyster, and in my own judgment this was a slander on the oyster.
Count nothing little which even in a small degree hinders your usefulness.
Brethren, know man in Christ, and out of Christ. Study him at his best, and study him at his worst; know his anatomy, his secrets, and his passions. You cannot do this by books; you must have personal spiritual experience; God alone can give you that.
Lecture 16: The Need Of Decisions For Truth
The current principle of the present age seems to be, “some things are either true or false, according to the point of view from which you look at them. Black is white, and white is black according to circumstances; and it does not particularly matter which you call it….” We have a fixed faith to preach, my brethren, and we are sent forth with a definite message from God. We are not let to fabricate the message as we go along.
Lecture 17-18: Open-Air Preaching
We ought actually to go into the streets and lanes and highways, for there are lurkers in the hedges, tramps on the highway, street walkers, and lane-hunters, whom we shall never reach unless we pursue them into their own domains.
Lecture 19- 20: Posture, Actions, Gesture, etc.
Some may see this as petty, but as Spurgeon notes: “even the sandal in the statue of Minerva should be correctly carved, and in the service of God even the smallest things should be regarded with holy care.” Spurgeon provides abundant help to that end.
Be natural in your action.
On a certain occasion we heard five or six remarks upon the awkwardness of the doctor's posturing, and only one or two encomiums (formal expressions of praise) upon his excellent speech. “People should not notice such trifles,” remarks our friend Philo; but people do notice such trifles whether they ought to do so or not, and therefore it is well not to display them. “. . . it is certain that much good speech is bereft of power through the awkward deportment of the speaker.
All foreign matters of attitude, tone, or dress are barricades between us and the people
You are not sent of God to court smiles but to win souls.
Lecture 21: Earnestness: Its Marring And Maintenance
If I were asked — What in a Christian minister is the most essential quality for securing success in winning souls for Christ? I should reply, “earnestness.”
We must by some means secure uninterrupted meditation, or we shall lose power.
Zeal also is more quickly checked after long years of continuance in the same service than when novelty gives a charm to our work. In such case it is not the pace that kills, but the length of the race.
Lecture 22: The Blind Eye And The Deaf Ear** (most helpful for me and so much more than I share)
A minister ought to have one blind eye and one deaf ear.
Ecclesiastes 7:21 - “Also, take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear thy servant curse thee.”
It is the part of the generous to treat passionate words as if they had never been uttered.
What can’t be cured must be endured, and the best way of enduring it is not to listen to it.
THEY SAY. WHAT DO THEY SAY? LET THEM SAY.
Lord bacon wisely advises “the Provident stay of inquiry of that which we would be loathe to find.” When nothing is to be discovered which will help us to love others we had better cease from the inquiry, for we may drag to light that which may be the commencement of years of contention. I am not, of course, referring to cases requiring discipline which must be thoroughly investigated and boldly dealt with,
but I have upon my mind mere personal matters where the main sufferer is yourself; Here it is always best not to know, nor to wish to know, what is being said about you, either by friends or foes. Those who praise us are probably as much mistaken as those who abuse us, and the one may be regarded as a set off to the other, if indeed it be worth while taking any account at all of man's judgment. If we have the approbation of our God, certified by a Placid conscience, we can afford to be indifferent to the opinions of our fellow men, whether they commend or condemn. If we cannot reach this point we are babes and not men.Suspicion in kings creates tyranny, in husbands jealousy, and in ministers bitterness; such bitterness as in spirit dissolves all the ties of the pastor relation, eating like a corrosive acid into the very soul of the office and making it a curse rather than a blessing.
Brethren, shun this vice by renouncing the love of self. Judge it to be a small matter what men think or say of you, and care only for their treatment of your Lord.
To opinions and remarks about yourself turn also as a general rule the blind eye and the deaf ear. Public men must expect public criticism.
In proportion as praise pleases you censure will pain you.
LECTURE 23: On Conversion as our Aim.
Do we not fail in many of our efforts, because we practically, though not doctrinally, ignore the Holy Ghost? His place as God is on the throne, and in all our enterprises He must be first, midst, and end: we are instruments in His hand, and nothing more.
Where Jesus is exalted souls are attracted.
Spare not the sterner themes, for men must be wounded before they can be healed... no man will ever put on the robe of Christ's righteousness till he is stripped of his fig leaves, nor will he wash in the fount of mercy till he perceives his filthiness.
Lecture 24: Illustrations in preaching
The chief reason for the construction of windows in a house is, as Fuller says, to let in light. Parables, similes, and metaphors have that effect; and hence we use them to illustrate our subject, or, in other words, to “brighten it with light.”
Our Saviour, who is the light of the world, took care to fill his speech with similitudes, so that the common people heard him gladly.
Very beautiful sermons are generally very useless ones. To aim at elegance is to court failure.
It is possible to have too much of a good thing (illustrations): a glass house is not the most comfortable of abodes, and besides others objectionable qualities it has the great fault of being sadly tempting to stone-throwers. Illustrate, by all means, but do not let the sermon be all illustrations, or it will be only suitable for an assembly of simpletons.
