Quiet Hints, Chapter 6–"The Foremost of the Demons”

Notes taken from Quiet Hints to Growing Preachers by Charles E. Jefferson, Chapter 6, “The Foremost of the Demons.”

“It is not true, as some men think, that all clergymen are lazy, but it is true that they like other men are tempted, and alas, too many of them succumb.”

’Not infrequently a man will fuss and bustle over miscellaneous matters, giving the parish the impression of tremendous diligence, while all the time his intellect is a dawdler at its work.”

“He will engage in all sorts of schemes and enterprises to maintain the interest of the people, rather than buckle down to hard, exacting, redeeming mental labor.”

“The minister is a public character and when he speaks whatever rust is on his mind is seen.”

“A scraggy, scrambling prayer, a raveled, a faded style, a juiceless, pithless sermon, what are these but weeds in the garden of a man who has folded his mental hands?”

“No man can long be interesting in the pulpit who does not think. No man can think wisely who does not study.”

“A man may be brilliant once or twice, but not all the time. Nothing grows stale so soon as brilliancy.”

“Get out of the pulpit or go to work."

“To be a preacher and a preacher whom the years cannot wear thin, a man must be a painstaking, indefatigable, everlasting worker.”