Who Was S. D. Gordon? The Layman Behind the Quiet Talks Books
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S. D. Gordon was an American lay speaker and writer who lived from 1859 to 1936. His full name was Samuel Dickey Gordon. He was never a pastor. He spent his early working years with the YMCA, then traveled for the rest of his life giving Bible talks in America, Europe and Asia. He's remembered for a long row of small books called Quiet Talks: Quiet Talks on Power, Quiet Talks on Prayer, Quiet Talks about Jesus and many more. They're written the way he spoke, in short, friendly sentences, as if he were sitting across the table from you.
Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and where to start reading him.
A Philadelphia boy and the YMCA
Gordon was born in Philadelphia on August 12, 1859. As far as the records show, his schooling was in the public schools, and he never went to college or seminary. That matters for understanding him. He didn't write like a scholar, and he didn't try to. He wrote like a working man who loved his Bible and wanted other ordinary people to love it too.
As a young man he went to work for the Young Men's Christian Association. From 1884 to 1886 he was an assistant secretary of the Philadelphia YMCA, and from 1886 to 1895 he was state secretary of the YMCA in Ohio. In those years the YMCA was a busy evangelical movement that held Bible classes, prayer meetings and gospel services for young men in cities and colleges. Gordon spent his days talking with young men about Christ, and he learned to speak simply and to the point.
A traveling speaker
After he left the Ohio work, Gordon gave himself to speaking. He liked to be called a lecturer rather than a preacher. He spent several years abroad holding Bible conferences and missionary meetings in Europe and Asia, and for decades afterward he traveled from city to city in America. His talks were often given at conferences and in churches, and many of them grew into books.
You can hear the traveler in his pages. His stories come from college campuses, harbors, railway trains, machine shops and mission fields. In Quiet Talks on Power he tells of colleges where young men gave up their careers for Christ, and in Quiet Talks with World Winners he writes about the open doors he saw on the mission field.
The Quiet Talks books
The first of the series, Quiet Talks on Power, came out in 1903. Quiet Talks on Prayer followed in 1904 and became his best-known book. Over the next thirty years he wrote about two dozen books, most of them with Quiet Talks in the title: on service, on Jesus, on personal problems, on following Christ, on John's Gospel, on Revelation, on life after death, and more. They sold widely for decades and are still in print.
The name fits. Gordon didn't shout. He talked. He used short headings, homely word-pictures and plenty of stories, and he wrote to the reader as "you."
What he taught
Prayer is the main thing
Gordon is best known for what he wrote about prayer. He believed prayer was the greatest work a Christian could do, and that most of us have the order wrong. We work first and pray for our work, when we ought to pray first and then work. He put it like this:
You can do more than pray, after you have prayed. But you can not do more than pray until you have prayed.
Quiet Talks on Prayer, chapter 1
He pictured prayer as the deciding factor in a spiritual battle. Satan is a real enemy, and the earth is the field where the fight goes on. When a Christian prays, he takes his stand on the victory Jesus already won and insists on it. In Gordon's words:
Prayer is striking the winning blow at the concealed enemy. Service is gathering up the results of that blow among the men we see and touch.
Quiet Talks on Prayer, chapter 1
He also wrote that "prayer changes things," a phrase that has been printed on countless plaques and calendars, and he later wrote a little book with that title. Late in life he added Quiet Talks on How to Pray, a plain how-to sequel full of practical suggestions.
Power through the Holy Spirit
His first book asked why so many Christians have so little power. His answer was that the Holy Spirit is a Person who wants full control of a life, and that the price of His power is surrender. Gordon drew it as a picture you don't forget:
In every heart there is a cross, and a throne, and each is occupied. If Jesus is on the throne, ruling, self is on the cross, dying.
Quiet Talks on Power, The Price of Power
Jesus shows us what God is like
Gordon loved to write about Jesus. In Quiet Talks about Jesus and Quiet Talks on John's Gospel he keeps coming back to one idea: God has always wanted to be known, and in Jesus He came close enough for us to see Him.
Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that man can understand.
Quiet Talks about Jesus, The Purpose in Jesus' Coming
He saw the whole Bible as a love story, with God as the Lover wooing a lost world back home.
Following Christ day by day
Gordon's books are practical. Quiet Talks on Personal Problems takes up sin, doubt, ambition, pain and guidance. Quiet Talks on Following the Christ maps the Christian life as a road Jesus walked first, with its valleys and its hilltops. In nearly every book he urges the same simple habit: time alone with God each day, with the Bible open. He also believed Christ's return could be near, and that hope runs through his later books.
Comfort for the grieving
Two of his books were written for people in sorrow. A Quiet Talk with Those Who Weep is a short, tender booklet for the heartbroken. Quiet Talks about Life After Death, written in 1920 after the First World War, answers grieving people from Scripture and warns them away from séances. The first ends with a line many readers have held onto:
Since the heart of our Lord Jesus broke, our breaking hearts can be repaired.
A Quiet Talk with Those Who Weep, chapter 2
His last years
Gordon kept writing into old age. His later books include talks on Revelation, on life after death and on prayer. He died in June 1936, in his late seventies.
He's sometimes confused with A. J. Gordon, the Boston Baptist pastor who wrote The Ministry of the Spirit. They were different men, though both wrote warmly about prayer and the Holy Spirit.
Why he's still read
Gordon wrote for people who don't read theology books. He took the large truths of prayer, surrender and the Holy Spirit and put them in words a farmer, a clerk or a schoolgirl could follow. He never talks down to his readers, and he never lets them off the hook either. More than a century later, his books still get people praying.
Where to start
TheWay Library has thirteen of his books, all free to read. Start with Quiet Talks on Prayer, his classic. Then read Quiet Talks on Power for his teaching on the Holy Spirit and surrender. If you want something to read each morning, try The Bent-Knee Time, a year of short daily readings. If you're grieving, begin with A Quiet Talk with Those Who Weep.
Our guide to S. D. Gordon's books explains what each one covers, and our collection of S. D. Gordon quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find all his books on the S. D. Gordon author page.