Lectures to My Students, Volume 1 — First Series · Lecture 7 — Charles H. Spurgeon
MANY writers upon Homiletics condemn in unmeasured terms even the occasional spiritualizing of a text. F15 “Select texts,” say they, “which give a plain, literal sense; never travel beyond the obvious meaning of the passage; never allow yourself to accommodate or adapt; it is an artifice of men of artificial culture, a trick of mountebanks, a miserable display of bad taste and impudence.” Honor to whom honor is due, but I humbly beg leave to dissent from this learned opinion, believing it to be more fastidious than correct, more plausible than true. F16 A great deal of real good may be done by occasionally taking forgotten, quaint, remarkable, outof-the-way texts; and I feel persuaded that if we appeal to a jury of practical, successful preachers, who are not theorizers, but men actually in the field, we shall have a majority in our favor. It may be that the learned rabbis of this generation are too sublime and celestial to condescend to men of low estate; but we who have no high culture, or profound learning, or enchanting eloquence to boast of, have deemed it wise to use the very method which the grandees have proscribed; for we find it one of the best ways of keeping out of the rut of dull formality, and it yields us a sort of salt with which to give flavor to unpalatable truth. Many great soulwinners have felt it meet to give a fillip to their ministry, and to arrest their people’s attention by now and then striking out a path which had not been trodden heretofore. Experience has not taught them that they were in error, but the reverse. Within limit, my brethren, be not afraid to spiritualize, or to take singular texts. Continue to look out passages of Scripture, and not only give their plain meaning, as you are bound to do, but also draw from them meanings which may not lie upon their surface. Take the advice for what it is worth, but I seriously recommend you to show the superfine critics that everybody does not worship the golden image which they have; set up. I counsel you to employ spiritualizing within certain limits and boundaries, but I pray you do not, under cover of this advice, rush headlong into incessant and injudicious “imaginings,” as George Fox would call them. Do not drown yourselves because you are recommended to bathe, or hang yourselves on an oak because tannin is described as a valuable astringent. An allowable thing carried to excess is a vice, even as fire is a good servant in the grate, but a bad master when raging in a burning house. Too much even of a good thing surfeits and disgusts, and in no case is this fact more sure than in the one before us. I. The first canon to be observed is this — do not violently strain a text by illegitimate spiritualizing. This is a sin against common sense. How dreadfully the word of God has been mauled and mangled by a certain band of preachers who have laid texts on the rack to make them reveal what they never would have otherwise spoken. Mr. Slopdash, of whom Rowland Hill tells us in his Village Dialogues, is but a type of a numerous generation. That worthy is described as delivering himself of a discourse upon, “I had three white baskets on my head,” from the dream of Pharaoh’s baker, Upon this the “thrice-anointed ninny-hammer,” as a friend of mine would call him, discoursed upon the doctrine of the Trinity! A dear minister of Christ, a venerable and excellent brother, one of the most instructive ministers in his county, told me that he missed one day a laboring man and his wife from his chapel. He missed them again and again, Sunday after Sunday, and one Monday, meeting the husband in the street, he said to him, “Well, John, I have
not seen you lately.” “No sir,” was the reply, “We did not seem to profit under your ministry as we used to do.” “Indeed, John, I am very sorry to hear it.” “Well, me and my missis likes the doctrines of grace, and therefore we’ve gone to hear Mr. Bawler lately.” “Oh! you mean the good man at the High Calvinist Meeting?” “Yes, sir, and we are so happy; we get right good food there, sixteen ounces to the pound. We were getting half starved under your ministry — though I always shall respect you as a man, sir.” “All right, my friend; of course you ought to go where you get good for your soul, I only hope it is good; but what did you get last Sunday?” “Oh! we had a most refreshing time, sir. In the morning we had — I don’t seem to like to tell you — however, we had really a most precious time.” “Yes, but what was it, John?” “Well, sir, Mr. Bawler led us blessedly into that passage, ‘Art thou a man given to appetite? Put a knife to thy throat when thou sittest before a ruler,” “Whatever did he make out of that.” “Well, sir, I can tell you what he made out of it, but I should like to know first what you would have said upon it.” “I don’t know, John; I don’t think I should have taken it at all, but if I must have spoken about it, I should have said that a person given to eating and drinking should take care what he was about when he was in the presence of great men, or he would ruin himself. Gluttony even in this life is ruinous.” “Ah!” said the man, “that is your dead-letter way of rendering it. As I told my missis the other day, ever since we have been to hear Mr. Bawler, the Bible has been opened up to us so that we can see a great deal more in it than we used to do.” “Yes, but what did Mr. Bawler tell you about his text?” “Well, he said a man given to appetite was a young convert, who is sure to have a tremendous appetite for preaching, and always wants food; but he ain’t always nice about what sort of food it is.” “What next, John?” “He said that if the young convert went to sit before a ruler — that is to say, a legal preacher, or a duty-faith man, it would be the worse for him.” “But how about the knife, John?” “Well, sir, Mr. Bawler said it was a very dangerous thing to hear legal preachers, it would be sure to ruin the man; and he might just as well cut his throat at once, sir!” The subject was, I suppose, the mischievous effects of young Christians listening to any preachers but those of the hyper school; and the moral drawn from it was, that sooner than this brother should go to hear his former minister, he had better cut his throat! That was accommodating considerably! Ye critics, we give over such dead horses as these to your doggish teeth. Rend and devour as ye will, we will not upbraid. We have heard of another performer who delivered his mind upon Proverbs 21:17. “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.” The Proverbs are a favorite field for spiritualizers to disport themselves withal. Our worthy disposed of the proverb in this fashion: “ ‘He that loveth pleasure, that is, the Christian who enjoys the means of grace, ‘shall be a poor man,’ that is, he shall be poor in spirit; ‘and he that loveth wine and oil;’ that is to say, rejoices in covenant provisions, and enjoys the oil and wine of the gospel, ‘shall not be rich,’ that is, he shall not be rich in his own esteem;” showing the excellence of those who are poor in spirit, and how they shall enjoy the pleasures of the gospel — a very proper sentiment, but my carnal eyes fail to see it in the text. You have all heard of William Huntingdon’s famous rendering of the passage in Isaiah 11:8: “The sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.” “ ‘The sucking child,’ that is, the babe in grace, ‘shall play on the hole of the asp,’ ‘the asp,’ that is, the Arminian: ‘the hole of the, asp,’ that is, the Arminian’s mouth.” Then follows an account of the games in which simple minds are more than a match for Arminian wisdom. Professors of the