Sunday, 17 May 2009

Wordy eloquence

Be deeply suspicious of it.

In this Pyromaniacs post, Charles Spurgeon compares eloqence to the tinkly bells on some horses, nice for some but a useless substitute for corn or hay.

3 comments:

Alistair Bain said...

Gordon. A few bloggers are picking up on this post. I agree with what Spurgeon says but I'm yet to find anyone who will turn Spurgeon's quaint comparison into something that I can test my own sermons by. How do I know when my prayerfully crafted sermon has become a tinkly bell rather than the bread of life? is eloquence always opposed to truthfulness? Should I just read the text for the week, pray like fury and then step up into the pulpit and see what happens?

This is the problem with negative stuff like this. Unless there are some positive applications or something to measure our own efforts by we who work hard at our sermons will always worry that we've become the bad guy.

Gordon Cheng said...

Thanks Al, I need to go away and have a think about that.

The short-cut answer is that your wife will tell you!

Alistair Bain said...

Gordon. Too true!