In Lectures to My Students, C.H. Spurgeon identified earnestness as the most important quality in the Christian minister who would win souls.
…In many instances ministerial success is traceable almost entirely to an intense zeal, a consuming passion for souls, and an eager enthusiasm in the cause of God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) is widely regarded as the ‘Prince of Preachers’. Converted at the age of 15, he began preaching soon afterwards. In 1854, at the age of just 19, he was called to the pastorate at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, London. Throughout his life – and well beyond – a weekly sermon was published. These were bound up in annual volumes – The New Park Street Pulpit, and then (following a move to purpose-built premises) the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.…
‘Reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon; but similitudes are the windows which give the best lights’ (Thomas Fuller).
Spurgeon expands the latter thought in this quotation, by suggesting that illustrations, like windows:-
1. should let in light: they should clarify and explain our meaning. Joshua Shute wrote: ‘That sermon has most learning in it that has most plainness. Hence it is that a great scholar was wont to say, “Lord, give me learning enough, that I may preach plain enough.”‘…
