Lectures to My Students: Attention, Part 4

From Lectures to My Students: A Selection from Addresses Delivered to the Students of The Pastors’ College, Metropolitan Tabernacle

First Series, Lecture IX
By C.H. Spurgeon

As a rule, do not make the introduction too long. It is always a pity to build a great porch to a little house. An excellent Christian woman once heard John Howe, and, as he took up an hour in his preface, her observation was, that the dear good man was so long a time in laying the cloth, that she lost her appetite: she did not think there would be any dinner after all. Spread your table quickly, and have done with the clatter of the knives and the plates.

You may have seen a certain edition of Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” with an introductory essay by John Foster. The essay is both bigger and better than the book, and deprives Doddridge of the chance of being read. Is not this preposterous? Avoid this error in your own productions.

I prefer to make the introduction of my sermon very like that of the town-crier, who rings his bell and cries, “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! This is to give notice,” merely to let people know that he has news for them, and wants them to listen. To do that, the introduction should have something striking in it. It is well to fire a startling shot as the signal gun to clear the decks for action. Do not start at the full pitch and tension of your mind, but yet in such way that all will be led to expect a good time. Do not make your exordium a pompous introduction into nothing, but a step to something better still. Be alive at the very commencement.

In preaching, do not repeat yourselves. I used to hear a divine who had a habit, after he had uttered about a dozen sentences, of saying, “As I have already observed,” or, “I repeat what I before remarked.” Well, good soul, as there was nothing particular in what he had said, the repetition only revealed the more clearly the nakedness of the land. If it was very good, and you said it forcibly, why go over it again? And if it was a feeble affair, why exhibit it a second time?

Occasionally, of course, the repetition of a few sentences may be very telling; anything may be good occasionally, and yet be very vicious as a habit. Who wonders that people do not listen the first time when they know it is all to come over again?

Yet further, do not repeat the same idea over and over again in other words. Let there be something fresh in each sentence. Be not for ever hammering away at the same nail: yours is a large Bible; permit the people to enjoy its length and breadth. And, brethren, do not think it necessary or important every time you preach to give a complete summary of theology, or a formal digest of doctrines, after the manner of Dr. Gill,—not that I would discredit or speak a word against Dr. Gill—his method is admirable for a body of divinity, or a commentary, but not suitable for preaching.

I know a divine whose sermons whenever they are printed read like theological summaries, more fitted for a classroom than for a pulpit—they fall flat on the public ear. Our hearers do not want the bare bones of technical definition, but meat and flavour. Definitions and differences are all very well; but when they are the staple of a sermon they remind us of the young man whose discourse was made up of various important distinctions. Upon this performance an old deacon observed, that there was one distinction which he had omitted, namely, the distinction between Meat and bones. If preachers do not make that distinction, all. their other distinctions will not bring them much distinction.

In order to maintain attention, avoid being too long. An old preacher used to say to a young man who preached an hour,—“My dear friend, I do not care what else you preach about, but I wish you would always preach about forty minutes.” We ought seldom to go much beyond that—forty minutes, or say, three-quarters of an hour. If a fellow cannot say all he has to say in that time, when will he say it? But somebody said he liked “to do justice to his subject.” Well, but ought he not to do justice to his people, or, at least, have a little mercy upon them, and not keep them too long? The subject will not complain of you, but the people will.

In some country places, in the afternoon especially, the farmers have to milk their cows, and one farmer bitterly complained to me about a young man—I think from this College—“Sir, he ought to have given over at four o’clock, but he kept on till half-past, and there were all my cows waiting to be milked! How would he have liked it if he had been a cow?” There was a great deal of sense in that question. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ought to have prosecuted that young sinner. How can farmers hear to profit when they have cows-on-the-brain?

The mother feels morally certain during that extra ten minutes of your sermon that the baby is crying, or the fire is out, and she cannot and will not give her heart to your ministrations. You are keeping her ten minutes longer than she bargained for, and she looks upon it as a piece of injustice on your part. There is a kind of moral compact between you and your congregation that you will not weary them more than an hour-and-a-half, and if you keep them longer, it amounts to an infraction of a treaty and a piece of practical dishonesty of which you ought not to be guilty.

Brevity is a virtue within the reach of all of us; do not let us lose the opportunity of gaining the credit which it brings. If you ask me how you may shorten your sermons, I should say, study them better. Spend more time in the study that you may need less in the pulpit. We are generally longest when we have least to say. A man with a great deal of well-prepared matter will probably not exceed forty minutes; when he has less to say he will go on for fifty minutes, and when he has absolutely nothing he will need an hour to say it in. Attend to these minor things and they will help to retain attention.