Lectures to My Students

While C.H. Spurgeon is still remembered as being the most popular preacher of the Victorian era, it has generally been forgotten that the influence he exercised on fellow ministers and theological students was possibly an even greater factor in his life than his own personal ministry. That he organized a college, supervised the training of some 845 students, presided at an annual conference of ministers, and regarded all this as his ‘life’s labour and delight’ are facts that are little known today.

Spurgeon’s Lectures to my Students, contain the substance of Spurgeon’s regular Friday afternoon addresses to the college students. This new complete and unabridged Banner edition, which as been newly typeset, contains all the lectures in the original first and second series, including The Minister’s Self-Watch, The Preacher’s Private Prayer, The Minister’s Fainting Fits, The Holy Spirit in Connection with our Ministry, The Need of Decision for the Truth, and On Conversion as our Aim. Also included is a third series of lectures, originally published as The Art of Illustration, which focuses on the nature, use, and sources of illustrations and anecdotes in preaching. To make this new edition as complete as possible, the publishers have also included Spurgeon’s Commenting and Commentaries, which contains two further lectures and a fascinating and often humorously annotated catalogue of commentaries. This catalogue, compiled by Spurgeon after a review of some three to four thousand volumes, is anything but dull: calculated to produce enthusiasts for books, it also opens up a new world by its well placed signposts to the riches of the past.

Contents

Publisher’s Note

FIRST SERIES

The Pastors’ College
Introduction and Apology

1. The Minister’s Self-Watch
2. The Call to the Ministry
3. The Preacher’s Private Prayer
4. Our Public Prayer
5. Sermons – Their Matter
6. On the Choice of a Text
7. On Spiritualizing
8. On the Voice
9. Attention!
10. The Faculty of Impromptu Speech
11. The Minister’s Fainting Fits
12. The Minister’s Ordinary Conversation
13. To Workers with Slender Apparatus

SECOND SERIES

Introduction

1. The Holy Spirit in Connection with Our Ministry
2. The Necessity of Ministerial Progress
3. The Need of Decision for the Truth
4. Open-Air Preaching – A Sketch of Its History
5. Open-Air Preaching – Remarks Thereon
6. Posture, Action, Gesture, etc – First Lecture
7. Posture, Action, Gesture, etc – Second Lecture
8. Earnestness – Its Marring and Maintenance
9. The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear
10. On Conversion as Our Aim

THIRD SERIES

The Art of Illustration
Introductory Notes

1. Illustrations in Preaching
2. Anecdotes from the Pulpit
3. The Uses of Anecdotes and Illustrations
4. Where Can We Find Anecdotes and Illustrations?
5. Cyclopædias of Anecdotes and Illustrations
6. Books of Fables, Emblems, and Parables
7. The Sciences as Sources of Illustration – Astronomy

Appendix a: Reviews of Books of Anecdotes, etc.
Appendix b: List of C. H. Spurgeon’s Illustrative Works

COMMENTING & COMMENTARIES

Preface
The Pastors’ College

1. A Chat about Commentaries
2. On Commenting
3. Remarks upon the Catalogue of Commentaries
4. Catalogue of Biblical Commentaries and Expositions