Lectures to My Students

Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be ‘much not many.

It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.

Far better for a man that he had never been born than that he should degrade a pulpit into a show box to exhibit himself in.

It is the tendency of deep feeling to subdue the manner rather than to render it too energetic.

Speech is silver, but silence is golden when hearers are inattentive.

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.

Heart language is logic set on fire.

Many preachers are at home among books but quite at sea among men.

Your own opinion of your state is not worth much. Ask the Lord to search you.

Throw away the servility of imitation, and rise to the manliness of originality.

It is foolish to be lavish in words and niggardly in truth.

A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are as easy as an old shoe are generally of as lttle worth .

Nonsense does not improve by being bellowed.

A student will find that he is more affected by one book which he has truly mastered than by 20 books which he has merely skimmed.

Zeal--what is it? How shall I describe it? Possess it, and you will know what it is. Be consumed with love for Christ, and let the flame burn continuously, not flaming up at public meetings and dying out in the routine work of every day.

Think it not strange if you should frequently feel yourself to have failed, nor wonder if it should turn out that at such times you have best succeeded. You must not expect to become sufficient as of yourself; no habit or exercise can render you independent of divine assistance;

Pantheists creep into the ministry, but they are generally cunning enough to concede the bredath of their minds beneath Christian phraseology.

Be interested yourself, and you will interest others.

EVERY workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair, for “if the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength.” If the workman lose the edge from his adze, he knows that there will be a greater draught upon his energies, or his work will be badly done. Michael Angelo, the elect of the fine arts, understood so well the importance of his tools, that he always made his own brushes with his own hands, and in this he gives us an illustration of the God of grace, who with special care fashions for himself all true ministers. It is true that the Lord, like Quintin Matsys in the story of the Antwerp well-cover, can work with the faultiest kind of instrumentality, as he does when he occasionally makes very foolish preaching to be useful in conversion; and he can even work without agents, as he does when he saves men without a preacher at all, applying the word directly by his Holy Spirit; but we cannot regard God’s absolutely sovereign acts as a rule for our action. He may, in His own absoluteness, do as pleases Him best, but we must act as His plainer dispensations instruct us; and one of the facts which is clear enough is this, that the Lord usually adapts means to ends, from which the plain lesson is, that we shall be likely to accomplish most when we are in the best spiritual condition; or in other words, we shall usually 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. This is a practical truth for our guidance. When the Lord makes exceptions, they do but prove the rule.

We ought to preach the gospel, not as our views at all, but as the mind of God--the testimony of Jehovah concerning His own Son, and in reference to salvation for lost men. If we had been entrusted with the making of the gospel, we might have altered it to suit the taste of this modest century, but never having been employed to originate the good news, but merely to repeat it, we dare not stir beyond the record. What we have been taught of God we teach. If we do not do this, we are not fit for our position.

Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not His saints. Live by the day--ay, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help.

He will glory against the church, and say, ‘These are your holy preachers: you see what their preciseness is, and whither it will bring them.’ He will glory against Jesus Christ Himself, and say, ‘These are thy champions! I can make thy chiefest servants to abuse thee; I can make the stewards of thy house unfaithful.

Despondency, is not a virtue; I believe it is a vice. I am heartily ashamed of myself for falling into it, but I am sure there is no remedy for it like a holy faith in God.

There is a something in the very tone of the man who has been with Jesus which has more power to touch the heart than the most perfect oratory:

God has made all things that are in the world to be our teachers.

We may rifle the treasures of antiquity and make the heathen contribute to the gospel even as Hiram of Tyre served under Solomon's direction for the building of the Temple.

A dash of humor will only add intense gravity to the proceedings, even as a flash of lightning only makes midnight dreariness all the more impressive.

The best way to preach men to Christ is to preach Christ to men.

There will be no fear of your becoming lethargic if you are continually familiar with internal realities.