I've been reading C. H. Spurgeon's autobiography for a while now, and I just came across this great paragraph.

The setting is shortly after Spurgeon relates the first sermon he ever preached. He delivered an address of unknown length to a group of poor farmers and tradesman in a thatch-roofed cottage, in Teversham, a village about 6 miles from his home in Cambridge. A lowly beginning indeed!

"Are there not other young men who might begin to speak for Jesus in some such lowly fashion--young men who hitherto have been mute as fishes? Our villages and hamlets offer fine opportunities for youthful speakers. Let them not wait till they are invited to a chapel, or have prepared a fine essay, or have secured an intelligent audience. If they will go and tell out from their hearts what the Lord Jesus has done for them, they will find ready listeners. Many of our young folks want to commence their service for Christ by doing great things, and therefore do nothing at all; let none of my readers become the victims of such an unreasonable ambition. He who is willing to teach infants, or to give away tracts, and so to begin at the beginning, is far more likely to be useful than the youth who is full of affectations, and sleeps in a white necktie, who is aspiring to the ministry, and is touching up certain superior manuscripts which he hopes ere long to read from the pastor's pulpit. He who talks upon plain gospel themes in a farmer's kitchen, and is able to interest the carter's boy and the dairy-maid, has more of the minister in him than the prim little man who keeps prating about being cultured, and means by that--being taught to use words which nobody can understand. To make the very poorest listen with pleasure and profit, is in itself an achievement; and beyond this, it is the best possible promise and preparation for an influential ministry. Let our younger brethren go in for cottage preaching, and plenty of it." C. H. Spurgeon, Autobiography, 184.

Quote de Jour

"Let us not aim at being original thinkers, but at being witnesses and heralds of what God says to men." C. H. Spurgeon