Eloquence, Worldly—Unnecessary in the Minister – Charles Spurgeon

IT is never worth a minister’s while to go up his pulpit stairs to show his auditors that he is an adept in elocution. High-sounding words and flowery periods are a mockery of man’s spiritual needs. If a man desires to display his oratory, let him study for the bar, or enter Parliament, but let him not degrade the cross of Christ into a peg to hang his tawdry rags of speech upon. The cross is only lifted up aright when we can say, “Not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Every minister should be able to say with Paul, “Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech.”