Puritan hearing of the Word – Charles Spurgeon

IN the old Puritanic times, sermons must have been tiresome to the thoughtless, but now-a-days I should think they are more tiresome to the thoughtful. The Christian of those days wanted to know a great deal of the things of God; and provided that the preacher could open up some mystery to him, or explain some point of Christian practice to make him holier and wiser, he was well satisfied, though the man might be no orator, and might lead him into no fields of novel speculation. Christians then did not want a new faith; but having received the old faith, they wished to be well rooted and grounded in it, and therefore they sought daily for illumination as well as for quickening; they desired not only to have the emotions excited, but also to have the intellect richly stored with divine truth; and there must be much of this in every church, if it is to be built up. No neglect of an appeal to the passions, certainly; no forgetfulness as to what is popular and exciting; but with this we must have the solid bread-corn of the kingdom, without which God’s children will faint in the weary way of this wilderness.