This week’s contribution to the subject of ‘The Preacher and….Study’ comes from the pen of Spurgeon and is in typically earnest Spurgeonic tones:

“Need I affectionately call upon you, my brethren, to stir up the gifts which are in you? Cultivate your natural and gracious qualifications for the ministry. The pastor knows far more than when he left College; has he learned all he ought to have learned in that interval?

No doubt many of our brethren -

“Grow wiser than their teachers are, And better know the Lord.”

I am not so sure about those who are the most eager to assert this of themselves. Real progress may be usually reckoned by the gauge of humility. He knows most who is most aware that he knows little. We have all great need of much hard study if our ministry is to be good for anything. We have heard of the French peasants who sent to the Pope for a curate “who had finished his education.” They complained that their pastor was always studying, and they wanted a man who knew all that was necessary, and consequently needed no time for books and thoughts. What fools they must be in that part of France! We need exactly the kind of preacher whom they despised. He who has ceased to learn has ceased to teach. He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.”