The following quotation was part of the first sermon preached by C.H. Spurgeon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The subject was “We Preach Jesus Christ” and the text was Acts 5:42.
It is an old and trite saying that the ministers of the gospel may be divided into three kinds — the doctrinal, the experimental, and the practical. The saying is so often repeated that very few would contradict it. But it betrays at once, if it be true, the absence and lack of a something essentially unnecessary for the church’s success. Where is the preacher of Christ out of these? I propound this, that if a man be found a preacher of Christ, he is doctrinal, experimental, and practical. The doctrinal preacher generally has a limited range. He is useful, exceedingly useful, God constitutes him a barrier against the innovations of the times: he preaches upon his subjects so frequently that he is well versed in them, and becomes one of the armed men about the bed of Solomon.
But suppose the doctrinal preacher should have it all his own way, and there should be none others at all what would be the effect? See it in our Baptist churches about one hundred and fifty years ago. They were all sound and sound asleep. Those doctrines had preached them into lethargy, and had it not been for some few who started up and proposed the missions for the heathen, and who found but little sympathy at first, the church would have been utterly inactive. Now, I would not be hard with any, but there are some brethren still whose preaching might justly be summed up as being doctrinal, nothing more than doctrinal, and what is the effect of their ministry? Bitterness. They learn to contend not only earnestly for the faith, but savagely for it. Certainly we admire their earnestness, and we thank God for their soundness, but we wish there were mingled with their doctrine a somewhat else which might tone down their severity and make them seek rather the unity and fellowship of the saints than the division and discord which they labor to create.
Again, I will refer you to the next class of preachers, the experimental. — How delightful it is to sit under an experimental preacher! Perhaps of all ministries this one is the most useful, — he who preaches the doubts, the fears, the joys, the ecstasies of the people of God. How often do the saints see the footsteps of the flock, and then they find the shepherd under an experimental minister! But do you know the effect of an experimental minister, purely so, I mean, when all else is put aside to make room for experience? There is one school of divines always preaching the corruption of the human heart. This is their style: “Except thou be flayed alive by the law; except thou art daily feeling the utter rottenness of thine heart, except thou art a stranger to full assurance, and dost always doubt and fear; “Except thou abidest on the dunghill and dost scrape thyself with a potsherd, thou art no child of God.” Who told you that?
This has been the preaching of some experimental preachers, and the effect has been just this. Men have come to think the deformities of God’s people to be their beauty. They are like certain courtiers of the reign of Richard III., who is said by history to have had a hump upon his back and his admirers stuffed their backs that they might have a graceful hump too. And there be many who, because a minister preaches of doubts and fears, feel they must doubt and fear too, and then that which is both uncomfortable to themselves and dishonoring to God comes to be the very mark of God’s people. This is the tendency of experimental preaching, however judiciously managed, when ministers harp on that string and on that alone: the tendency is either to preach the people into a soft and savoury state, in which there is not a bit of manliness or might, or else into that dead and rotten state in which corruption outswells communion, and the savor is not the perfume of the king’s ointments, but the stench of a corrupt and filthy heart.
Take also the practical preacher; who would say a word against this good man? He stirs the people up, excites the children of God to holy duties, promotes every excellent object and is in his way an admirable supplement to the two other kinds of ministers. But sit under the practical preacher; sit under him all the year round and listen to his people as they come out. There is one who says, “the same thing over again — Do, do, do, nothing but do.” There is a poor sinner yonder just gone down the front steps. Follow him. “Oh,” says he, “I came here to find out what Christ could do for me, and I have only been told what I must do for myself.”
Now this is a great evil, and persons who sit under such a ministry become lean, starveling things. I would that practical preachers would listen to our farmers, who always say it is better to put the whip in the manger than upon the horse’s back. Let them feed the people with food convenient for them, and they will be practical enough but all practice and no promise, all exhortation and no sound doctrine, will never make the man of God perfect and zealous for good works. But what am I driving at in bringing up these three sorts of ministers? Why, just this: to show you that there is one minister who can preach all this, without the dangers of any one of the others but with the excellencies of the whole. And who is he? Why, any man in the world who preaches Christ. If he preaches Christ’s person he must preach doctrine. If I preach Christ I must preach him as the covenant head of his people, and how far am I then from the doctrine of election? If I preach Christ I must preach the efficacy of his blood, and how far am I removed then from the great doctrine of an effectual atonement? If I preach Christ I must preach the love of his heart, and how can I deny the final perseverance of the saints? If I preach the Lord Jesus as the great Head and King, how far am I removed from divine Sovereignty?
Must I not, if I preach Christ personally, preach his doctrines? I believe they are nothing but the natural outgrowth of that great root thought, or root substance rather, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who will preach Christ fully will never be lax in doctrine. And what better experience can you preach than in preaching Christ? Would you preach the sufferings of the saints, preach his agony and bloody sweat, his cross and passion; for the true sufferings of the saints are in fellowship with him. If you would preach their joys, preach his resurrection, his ascension, and his advent; you are never far from the joys of the saints when you are near to the joys of Christ; for did not he say, “My joy shall be in them that their joy may be fall”? And what better practice can be preached than preaching Christ? Of every virtue he is the pattern; of the perfection of human character he is the very mirror; of everything that is holy and of good report, he is the abiding incarnation. He cannot fail, then, to be a good doctrinal, experimental, practical preacher, who preaches Christ. Did you ever know a congregation grow less spiritual by a minister preaching Christ? Did you ever know them get full of doubts and fears by preaching Christ? Did you ever hear of their getting lax in sentiment by his preaching Christ? Did you ever hear a whisper that men became unholy in their lives because they heard too much about Christ? I think that all the excellence of all ministers may be gathered up into the teaching of the man who can preach Christ every day in the week, while there will not be any of the evil connected with the other forms of preaching.
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