Lectures to My Students Vol. 2

Practical and Spiritual Guidance for Preachers (Volume 2)

Charles H. Spurgeon

• Publisher: Aneko Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781622456635
• eBook ISBN: 9781622456642
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

"The solemn work of Christian ministry demands a man's all, and that all should be at its best. To engage in ministry halfheartedly is an insult to God and man. Sleep must leave our eyelids before men are allowed to perish. Yet we are all prone to sleep, and students, among the rest, are apt to act the part of the foolish virgins. Therefore, I have sought to speak out my whole soul in the hope that I might not create or foster any dullness in others, and to this end, my lectures are colloquial, familiar, full of anecdote, and often humorous. May He, in whose hand are the churches and their pastors, bless these words to younger brethren in the ministry, and if so, I will count it more than a full reward and will gratefully praise the Lord."
- Charles H. SpurgeonIncludes lectures 1-10 from Volume 2Table of Contents
Ch. 1: The Holy Spirit in Connection with Our Ministry
Ch. 2: The Necessity of Ministerial Progress
Ch. 3: The Need of Decision for the Truth
Ch. 4: Open-Air Preaching - A Sketch of Its History
Ch. 5: Open-Air Preaching - Remarks Thereon
Ch. 6: Posture, Action, Gesture, and So Forth (Part I)
Ch. 7: Posture, Action, Gesture, and So Forth (Part II)
Ch. 8: Earnestness: Its Marring and Maintenance
Ch. 9: The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear
Ch. 10: On Conversion As Our Aim

Lecture 6

Posture, Action, Gesture, and So Forth (Part I)

The subjects of this lecture are to be posture, gesture, and action in the delivery of a sermon. I shall not attempt to draw any hard and fast line of division between the one and the other, for it would need a very highly discriminating mind to keep them separate; indeed, it could not be done at all, for they naturally merge into each other. As I have, after a fair trial, found it impossible to keep even “posture” and “gesture” in an absolutely unmingled state in my own mind, I have allowed them to run together, but I hope that no confusion will appear in the result.

The sermon itself is the main thing. Its matter, its aim, and the spirit in which it is brought before the people, the sacred anointing upon the preacher, and the divine power applying the truth to the hearer – these are infinitely more important than any details of manner. Posture and action are comparatively small and inconsiderable matters; but still even the sandal in the statue of Minerva should be correctly carved, and in the service of God even the smallest things should be regarded with holy care.

Life is made up of little incidents, and success in it often depends upon attention to minor details. Small flies make the apothecary’s ointment to stink, and little foxes spoil the vines, and therefore, small flies and little foxes should be kept out of our ministry. Doubtless, faults in even so secondary a matter as posture have prejudiced men’s minds, and so injured the success of what would otherwise have been most acceptable ministries.

A man of more than average abilities may, by ridiculous action, be thrown into the rear rank and kept there. This is a great pity, even if there were only one such case, but it is to be feared that many are injured by the same cause. Little oddities and absurdities of mode and gesture which wise men would endeavor not to notice are not overlooked by the general public; in fact, the majority of hearers fix their eyes mainly upon those very things, while those who come to scoff observe nothing else. Persons are either disgusted or diverted by the oddities of certain preachers, or else they want an excuse for inattention and jump at this convenient one; there can be no reason why we should help men to resist our own endeavors for their good. No minister would willingly cultivate a habit which would blunt his arrows, or drift them aside from the mark; and, therefore, since these minor matters of movement, posture, and gesture may have that effect, you will give them your immediate attention.

We very readily admit that action in preaching is an affair of minor consequence; for some who have succeeded in the highest sense have been exceedingly faulty from the eloquent speaker’s point of view. At the present moment there is in Boston, U.S.A., a preacher of the very highest order of power, of whom a friendly critic writes, “In the opening sentences one or the other of his arms shakes at his side in a helpless fashion, as if it were made of caudal vertebrae loosely jointed. He soon exhibits a most engaging awkwardness, waddling about in a way to suggest that each leg is shorter than the other, and shaking his head and shoulders in ungainly emphasis. He raises one eyebrow in a quite impossible fashion. No one else can squint so.”

This is an instance of mind overcoming matter, and the excellence of the teaching condoning defects in utterance; but it would be better if no such drawbacks existed. Are not apples of gold all the more attractive for being placed in baskets of silver? Why should powerful teaching be associated with waddling and squinting? Still, it is evident that proper action is, to say the least, not essential to success. Homer would appear to have considered the entire absence of gesture to be no detriment to eminent power in speech, for he pictures one of his greatest heroes as entirely renouncing it, though not without some sense of censure from his audience.

But when Ulysses rose, in thought profound,

His modest eyes he fixed upon the ground;

As one unskilled or dumb, he seemed to stand,

Nor rais’d his head, nor stretched his sceptred hand.

But when he speaks, what elocution flows!

Soft as the fleeces of descending snows,

The copious accents fall, with easy art;

Melting they fall, and sink into the heart!

Wondering we hear, and, fixed in deep surprise,

Our ears refute the censures of our eyes.

Nor need we go back to the ancients for proof that an exceedingly quiet action may be connected with the highest power of eloquence, for several instances occur to us among the moderns. One may suffice: our own supremely gifted Robert Hall had no oratorical action and scarcely any motion in the pulpit, except an occasional lifting or waving of the right hand, and in his most impassioned moments an alternate retreat and advance.

It is not so much incumbent upon you to acquire right pulpit action as it is to get rid of that which is wrong. If you could be reduced to motionless dummies, it would be better than being active and even vigorous incarnations of the grotesque, as some of our brethren have been. Some men by degrees fall into a suicidal style of preaching, and it is a very rare thing indeed to see a man escape when once he has entangled himself in the meshes of an evil mannerism. No one likes to tell them of their strange antics, and so they are unaware of them; but it is surprising that their wives do not mimic them in private and laugh them out of their awkwardness.

I have heard of a brother who in his earlier days was most acceptable, but who afterwards dropped far behind in the race because he by degrees fell into bad habits: he spoke with a discordant whine, assumed most singular attitudes, and used such extraordinary mouthings that people could not hear him with pleasure. He developed into a man to be esteemed and honored but not to be listened to.

Excellent Christian men have said that they did not know whether to laugh or to cry when they were hearing him preach: they felt as if they must laugh at the bidding of nature, and then they felt that they ought to cry from the impulse of grace when they saw so good a preacher utterly ruined by absurd behaviors. If you do not care to cultivate proper action, at least be wise enough to steer clear of that which is grotesque or affected. There is a wide difference between the foolish person curling and perfuming his locks, and a person permitting their hair to hang in matted masses like the mane of a wild beast.

We should never advise you to practice postures before a mirror, nor to imitate great preachers, nor to mimic the fine gentleman; but there is no need, on the other hand, to be vulgar or absurd. Postures and attitudes are merely a small part of the manner of a discourse, and it is not in manner that the substance of the matter lies. A man in cotton fabric is a man for all that, and also a sermon which is oddly delivered may be a good sermon for all that; but still, as none of you would care to wear a pauper’s suit if you could procure better raiment, so you should not be so unkempt as to clothe truth like a beggar when you might array her as a prince’s daughter.

Some men are naturally very awkward in their persons and movements. I suppose we must blame what the countryman called their “broughtens up.” The rustic’s gait is heavy and his walk is slouching. You can see that his natural habitat is a ploughed field. On the pavement or the carpet he is suspicious of his footing, but down a muddy lane, with a mule’s burden of earth on each boot, he progresses with ease, if not with elegance. There is a sluggishness and clumsiness innate in the elements of some men’s constitutions. You could not make them elegant if you crushed them in a mortar among wheat with a pestle.

The drill sergeant is of the utmost use in our schools, and those parents who think that drill exercise is a waste of time are very much mistaken. There is a shape and handiness, a general propriety of form, which the human body acquires under proper drill which seldom comes in any other manner. Drill brings a man’s shoulders down, keeps his arms from excessive swinging, expands the chest, shows him what to do with his hands, and, in a word, teaches him how to walk uprightly, and to bring himself into something like shipshape condition, without any conscious effort to do so, which effort would be a sure betrayal of his awkwardness. Very spiritual people will think me trifling, but indeed I am not. I hope the day will come when it will be looked upon as an essential part of education to teach a young man how to carry himself and move without clumsiness.

It may happen that awkward gestures arise from feeble utterance and a nervous consciousness of lack of power in that direction. Certain splendid men of our acquaintance are so modest as to be shy, and hence they become hesitating in speech and disarranged in manner. Perhaps no more notable instance of this can be mentioned than the late beloved Dr. James Hamilton. He was the most beautiful and modest of speakers, with an action painful to the last degree. His biographer says,

In mental resources and acquirements he was possessed of great wealth; but in the capacity to utter his thoughts, with all the variation of tone and key which their nature required, yet so as to be thoroughly heard in a great edifice, he was far less gifted. In this department, accordingly, he was always pained by a conscious shortcoming from his own ideal. It is certain that lack of vocal force, and ready control over his intonations, largely detracted from the power and popularity of his preaching.

In delicacy of conception, in the happy choice of idioms, in the command of striking and original imagery, and in the glow of evangelical fervor that pervaded all, he had few equals. These rare qualities, however, were shorn of half their strength, in as far as his public preaching was concerned, by the necessity under which he constantly lay of straining to make himself audible, by standing on his tiptoes, and throwing out his words in handfuls, if so being they might reach the far-distant aisles.

If the muscles of his chest had been such as to enable him to stand solidly at ease, while his lips performed the task of articulation without the aid of auxiliary blasts from over-inflated lungs, James Hamilton would certainly have been followed by greater crowds, and obtained access for his message to a wider and more varied circle. But we do not know what counterbalancing evil might have come in along with such external success. Although with all his prayers and pains this thorn was still left in the flesh, the grand compensation remained: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” What talents the Lord saw meet to bestow, he laid out with marvelous skill and diligence in the giver’s service, and if some of the talents were withheld, the Withholder knows why. He hath done all things well.

In this sentiment we heartily concur, but we should be sorry for any young man to submit at discretion to a similar defect and ascribe it to the hand of the Lord. Dr. Hamilton did not do so. He earnestly endeavored to overcome his natural disadvantage, and ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• The Holy Spirit in Connection with Our Ministry
• The Necessity of Ministerial Progress
• The Need of Decision for the Truth
• Open-Air Preaching – A Sketch of Its History
• Open-Air Preaching – Remarks Thereon
• Posture, Action, Gesture, and So Forth (Part I)
• Posture, Action, Gesture, and So Forth (Part II)
• Earnestness: Its Marring and Maintenance
• The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear
• On Conversion As Our Aim
• Charles H. Spurgeon – A Brief Biography
• Other Similar Titles