It is supposed to have happened in a little country church where a young preacher had to contend with an older member in his congregation who was a giant in the Word as well as in the writings of its foremost expositors. Unfortunately the young parson had the habit of constructing his sermons mainly from a medley of other men's thoughts, and while delivering them, his senior parishioner was wont to say aloud, "He got this from Luther," "This is from Moody," "Now he's quoting McCheyne," et cetera; but whenever the young preacher coughed or cleared his throat, his senile critic informed his hard-of-hearing neighbor, "That's his own!"
Quotations can make or break sermons. The following suggestions are offered as an aid in making the most of quotations that speakers might wish to use in their pulpit discourses:
1. Do not apologize for quoting. Spurgeon told his students that the man who never quotes will never be quoted. Of course no true minister of the Word prepares his sermons to obtain publicity, but certainly he need not feel apologetic for using statements original with others. They may be better than his own! The inspired penmen of God were not ashamed to quote and give credit, so surely uninspired men should not hesitate to follow in their footsteps. Above all, it is a good spiritual therapeutic for the preacher to tell his congregation that at least not all the brilliant gems sprinkled through his discourse are his own.
2. Avoid the opposite extreme of entering the pulpit during the preaching service with an armful of books. There are better ways of letting your people know that you open a book once in a while! Carrying half your library to the sacred desk will, however, kill your congregation's interest before you open your mouth or your books, for few indeed prefer to hear long readings to sermons delivered spontaneously. There's much truth in the old adage, Better a poor sermon well delivered than a good sermon badly delivered. And converting a pulpit into a book depot converts an eager audience into one that is bored. So why kill interest in a sermon before it is delivered?
3. Read the quotations well. If you stumble over words you don't know, or fail to recognize by the tone of the voice that the end of a sentence is at hand, it will be obvious that either you are not well prepared or not sure what you are talking about. What's worth reading is worth reading well; carefully study and read the quotations you are going to use.
4. Don't try to embellish your quotations by giving them lengthy introductions. Chances are your congregation will be interested neither in how you found your quotations, why you are using them, nor why you think they are so especially important. If you do want to say something about them, give their references.
5. Don't give several quotations in too close sequence. Better ten quotations in half an hour's time than five in five minutes.
6. Don't read any more material from your quotations than you have to. It is impractical to read a whole paragraph for the sake of a sentence. If it is necessary to know the setting in order to understand the material that is to be quoted, why not avail oneself of the mental discipline of preparing to give it in one's own words?
7. Never quote the obvious. It may insult the listeners' intelligence and reveal the lack of it on the part of the preacher.
8. Don't quote the same author too much. It tells the world that you are in a rut, and that's bad. Preachers should pull folks out of ruts; how can they hope to fulfill their mission if they are caught in a rut themselves?
9. There should be a smooth transition of thought between the quotation and what has gone before. If this is impossible to achieve, the contemplated quotation is a misfit. And perhaps the most frequently committed sin when it comes to quoting is the use of other men's writings as interest stimulants rather than because they belong and contribute to the continuity of thought of the sermon. But every digression for the sake of injecting a shot of interest into the discourse defeats its own purpose. It only shows up by comparison the insipidity of the rest of the sermon.
10. Quotations should be self-explanatory.
11. Don't quote thoughts out of their context in order to make them mean what they were not intended to mean. "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to" any author, listener, or to God Himself. And only in being true to Him, far more even than being true to the rules suggested above, can the spokesman for God expect the benediction of Heaven.
