I do think that a minister who can preach a sermon without addressing sinners does not know how to preach.
Interpretation
A true sermon must confront moral failings to be effective.
In this quote, Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the importance of addressing moral failings and sinners in a sermon. He argues that a minister who avoids this topic lacks the essential understanding of their role, as preaching should guide the congregation towards self-reflection and improvement in their spiritual lives.
In practice
In a religious gathering, one might express this quote to highlight the preacher's responsibility.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
I did poorly in math for a couple of years in middle school; I was just not interested in thinking about it.
Educational bureaucracies dull a child's questing sensitivity.
Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.
Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be.
Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it's dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it's all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next dark room.
It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.
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