Spurgeon's Advice to Preachers from Lectures to My Students
What did Charles Spurgeon tell young preachers? His fullest answer is Lectures to My Students, the Friday talks he gave to the men of his Pastors' College in London. In short: look after your own soul first, be sure God has called you, pray much, fill your sermons with Scripture and preach Christ, speak naturally and hold your hearers' attention, keep learning, rest when you need to, stand firm on the truth, keep your fire burning, and aim every sermon at the conversion of sinners. This page gathers that counsel by theme, in his own words, with the lecture each line comes from.
You can read the First Series and the Second Series free in TheWay Library. For a lecture-by-lecture outline, see the Lectures to My Students summary.
1. Watch yourself first
Spurgeon opens the whole course with the preacher's own soul. A man can't give what he doesn't have, and his life preaches louder than his sermons.
It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organise societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 1
Holiness in a minister is at once his chief necessity and his goodliest ornament.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 1
The life of the preacher should be a magnet to draw men to Christ, and it is sad indeed when it keeps them from him.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 1
2. Be sure of your call
He wanted no one in the pulpit who could be happy anywhere else.
If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 2
He also had little patience with men who decided they were called because they had failed at everything else. His reply to one was that "the ministry needs the very best of men."
3. Pray, in private and in public
He is not always in the act of prayer, but he lives in the spirit of it.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 3
On leading the congregation in prayer, his counsel is plain and practical:
Then, by way of negative canon, I should say, do not let your prayer be long.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 4
One little hint I cannot withhold — never appear to be closing, and then start off again for another five minutes.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 4
4. Put real food in the sermon, and preach Christ
We do not enter the pulpit to talk for talk's sake; we have instructions to convey important to the last degree, and we cannot afford to utter pretty nothings.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 5
Of all I would wish to say this is the sum; my brethren, preach CHRIST, always and evermore.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 5
He urged men to be students and expositors of the Bible:
I am sure that no preaching will last so long, or build up a church so well, as the expository.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 2
5. Be natural, and hold attention
Spurgeon disliked the "holy tone" some men put on for Sunday. He wanted preachers to sound like themselves.
The moment some men shut the pulpit door, they leave their own personal manhood behind them, and become as official as the parish beadle.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 8
Brethren, in the name of everything that is sacred, ring the whole chime in your steeple, and do not dun your people with the ding-dong of one poor cracked bell.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 8
If people aren't listening, he says, look at the pulpit before the pews.
You must attract the fish to your hook, and if they do not come you should blame the fisherman and not the fish.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 9
If you need another direction for winning attention, I should say, be interested yourself, and you will interest others.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 9
The same goes for life outside the pulpit:
There is such a thing as trying to be too much a minister, and becoming too little a man.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 12
6. Keep learning
Intermeddle with all knowledge, but above all things meditate day and night in the law of the Lord.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 2
For the poor pastor with a small shelf, his advice is to choose well and read deeply:
If a man can purchase but very few books, my first advice to him would be, let him purchase the very best.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 13
A man who has learned not merely the letter of the Bible, but its inner spirit, will be no mean man, whatever deficiencies he may labour under.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 13
7. Expect low seasons, and rest
"The Minister's Fainting Fits" is one of the most honest things Spurgeon wrote. He knew depression from the inside and wanted young men to know they weren't alone.
Fits of depression come over the most of us.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 11
Who can bear the weight of souls without sometimes sinking to the dust?
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 11
Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, Lecture 11
8. Depend on the Holy Spirit
Unless we have the spirit of the prophets resting upon us, the mantle which we wear is nothing but a rough garment to deceive.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 1
Do we not fail in many of our efforts, because we practically, though not doctrinally, ignore the Holy Ghost?
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 10
9. Be decided for the truth
We have a fixed faith to preach, my brethren, and we are sent forth with a definite message from God.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 3
I am certain that there is a God, and I mean to preach it as a man does who is absolutely sure.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 3
10. Stay in earnest
Asked what quality matters most for winning souls, Spurgeon answers "earnestness," and he wouldn't change his answer if asked again.
It is not in the order of nature that rivers should run uphill, and it does not often happen that zeal rises from the pew to the pulpit.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 8
A blacksmith can do nothing when his fire is out, and in this respect he is the type of a minister.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 8
11. Keep a blind eye and a deaf ear
A pastor who hears every complaint and chases every rumor will never have peace.
Know nothing of parties and cliques, but be the pastor of all the flock, and care for all alike.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 9
It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 9
12. Aim at conversions
The course ends where Spurgeon's heart always was.
Our great object of glorifying God is, however, to be mainly achieved by the winning of souls.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 10
Be a fool for Christ's sake if this will win them, or be a scholar, if that will be more likely to impress them.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 10
You will need much night-work in secret if you are to gather many of your Lord's lost sheep.
Lectures to My Students, Second Series, Lecture 10
Reading the lectures yourself
These lines are better in context, where Spurgeon's stories and humor carry them. Start with whichever need is closest: The Minister's Fainting Fits on a hard week, The Preacher's Private Prayer before preparing a sermon, or Conversion as Our Aim when the work feels aimless. The text comes from scans of the old editions and is still being proofread. The full books are here: Lectures to My Students, First Series and Second Series.
For an outline of every lecture, see the Lectures to My Students summary. For the preacher himself, read Who was Charles Spurgeon?, and for his own daily food, see Morning by Morning. More of his books are on his author page.