Preaching Quotes - Page 17

• Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there be apostolic prayer. Men of God, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Prayer, Men, Earth

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• Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint. It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God - men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Men, Mold, Saint

  Edward McKendree Bounds “Power Through Prayer”, CCEL

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• Resort to sermons, but to prayers most: Praying's the end of preaching.

  George Herbert

  Prayer, Praying, Ends

  George Herbert (1861). “The poetical works of George Herbert and Reginald Heber: With memoirs. Eight engravings on steel”, p.15

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• It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalatable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it.

  George Henry Lewes

  Wise, Men, Often Is

  "The Principles of Success in Literature". The Fortnightly Review, Volume 1, www.gutenberg.org. 1865.

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• Our whole message is it's easy to just keep preaching to the church and people that already come.

  Joel Osteen

  People, Church, Messages

  "Pastor Joel Osteen on 'FNS'". "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, www.foxnews.com. December 23, 2007.

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• What has God given you? Moses had a stick, David had a slingshot, and Paul had a pen. Mother
  Teresa possessed a love for the poor; Billy Graham, a gift for preaching; and Joni Eareckson
  Tada, a disability. What did they have in common? A willingness to let God use whatever they
  had, even when it didn't seem very useful. If you will assess what you have to offer in terms
  of your time, your treasure, and your talents, you will have a better understanding of how you
  might uniquely serve.

  Richard Stearns

  Letting Go, Mother, Understanding

  Richard Stearns (2009). “The Hole in Our Gospel: What does God expect of Us? The Answer that Changed my Life and Might Just Change the World”, p.259, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurlyburly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to, and riding out the gale.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Patience, Lying, Blow

  Henry Ward Beecher (1860). “Life thoughts”, p.61

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• Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Philosophy, Assuming, Propositions

  "The Philistine". Book by Elbert Hubbard, October 1897.

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• I will tell you what this people need, with regard to preaching; you need, figuratively, to have it rain pitchforks, tines downwards, from this pulpit, Sunday after Sunday. Instead of the smooth, beautiful, sweet, still, silk-velvet-lipped preaching, you should have sermons like peals of thunder, and perhaps we then can get the scales from our eyes.

  Brigham Young

  Beautiful, Sweet, Rain

  Brigham Young (1856). “Journal of Discourses”, p.222

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• By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.

  George Orwell

  Hatred, Leader, Doctrine

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946”

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• Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness - this is the means by which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and everything else are done and taught in vain.

  Martin Luther

  Healing, Mean, Law

  "The Freedom of a Christian" by Martin Luther, 1520.

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• The theater has often been at variance with the pulpit; they ought not to quarrel. How much is it to be wished that in both the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Mind, Noble

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1858). “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels”, p.57

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• Man makes up his mind he will preach, and he preaches.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Mind

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• Tell men that God is love; that right is right, and wrong, wrong; let them cease to admire philanthropy, and begin to love men; cease to pant for heaven, and begin to love God; then the spirit of liberty begins.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Men, Heaven, Liberty

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.299

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• Let all your preaching be in the most simple and plainest manner; look not to the prince, but to the plain, simple, gross, unlearned people, of which cloth the prince also himself is made. If I, in my preaching, should have regard to Philip Melancthon and other learned doctors, then should I do but little good. I preach in the simplest manner to the unskillful, and that giveth content to all. Hebrew, Greek and Latin I spare until we learned ones come together.

  Martin Luther

  Latin, Simple, Doctors

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• what we need in the world is manners ... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Thinking, Good Man, World

  Eleanor Roosevelt (1938). “My Days”

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• He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Littles, Virtue, Abstract

  Thomas Carlyle (1881). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.7

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• The province of the soul is large enough to fill up every cranny of your time, and leave you much to answer for if one wretch be damned by your neglect.

  John Dryden

  Soul, Answers, Enough

  John Dryden (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Dryden (Illustrated)”, p.3608, Delphi Classics

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• Preachers say, "Do as I say, not as I do." But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?

  John Selden

  Believe, Physicians, Disease

  John Selden (1819). “Table talk: being the discourses of John Selden, esq”, p.145

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• Preaching, in the first sense of the word, ceased as soon as ever the gospel was written.

  John Selden

  Firsts, Written

  John Selden, Samuel Weller Singer, Edward FitzGerald (1860). “Table Talk: With a Biographical Pref. and Notes”, p.224

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• The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate "upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.

  Austin Phelps

  Intelligent, Simple, House

  Austin Phelps (1882). “Men and Books: Or Studies in Homiletics; Lectures Introductory to The Theory of Preaching”

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• Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

  Edith Hamilton

  Poetry, Together, Pulpit

  Edith Hamilton (1957). “The Roman Way to Western Civilization”

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• Of all damnable offenses preaching prudence to the young is the most damnable.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Youth, Young, Caution

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• Formerly it was the fashion to preach the natural; now it is the ideal. People too often forget that these things are profoundly compatible; that in a beautiful work of imagination the natural should be ideal, and the ideal natural.

  August Wilhelm von Schlegel

  Beautiful, Fashion, People

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• We are born into this world with clenched fists, we leave it with fingers apart- preaching the lesson that you take nothing with you.

  Ethel Percy Andrus

  Lessons, Fists, World

  Ethel Percy Andrus (1968). “The Wisdom of Ethel Percy Andrus”

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