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Robert Lewis Dabney QUOTES

Robert Lewis Dabney QUOTES

21 " Surely, the minister of a divine Redeemer should mount his pulpit with a more holy dread, by as much as he discusses a more sacred theme and more everlasting destinies. To preach a sermon is a great and awful task. Woe to that man, who slights it with a perfunctory preparation and a careless heart. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

22 " The public prayers of the pastor are apt to be the models of the devotions of his people; when he leads them in prayer he is really teaching them to pray. Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath. Prayer is the appointed channel of his whole redemption. How mischievous is that man who by his coldness, inappropriateness, irreverence, vagueness, unbelief, chills the aspirations and obstructs the access of a whole multitude which he should have led up to the mercy-seat! "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

23 " If this work has any peculiarities to which value may be attached, they are these: that the necessity of eminent Christian character is urged throughout as the foundation of the sacred orator’s power, and that a theory of preaching is asserted, with all the force which I could command, that honours God’s inspired word and limits the preacher most strictly to its exclusive use as the sword of the Spirit. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

24 " Good expository preaching is always permanently attractive, and always most attractive to those whom it is most important to attract. It meets the great appetite of the human mind – the desire to know; it instructs. No man who has any intelligent sensibility toward sacred things can fail to make the reflection that, if the Bible is our authoritative rule of faith, then it is a matter of transcendent, of infinite concern to him to get the right meaning of that book. But all popular readers of the Scriptures have a strong consciousness of their own blindness of mind to much that they read there. They feel that in many places they have not the key of knowledge. Hence, he who proposes to open the meaning of the Scriptures meets the most serious desire of their religious nature. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

25 " The falsehood of that man is full of impiety, who, avowedly standing up in a sacred place to declare God’s message to perishing souls, says that the Holy Spirit has said what he has not said. I would impress you with a solemn awe of taking any liberties in expounding the word. I would have you feel that every meaning of the text, other than that which God expressly intended it to bear, is forbidden fruit to you, however plausible and attractive – fruit which you dare not touch on peril of a fearful sin. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

26 " If you would induce your hearer to adopt a given course, you must not only prove to his wisdom that it is the proper means to its end, but you must show to his heart that the end is desirable. Hence all suasive discourse, whatever its particular topic, may be reduced to two elements: that which places the proposition in the category of the true, and that which shows it in the category of the good. Both elements are essential to the oration. The latter may be present only by implication, but unless it is virtually present there is no rhetorical discourse. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

27 " there are three stages through which preaching has repeatedly passed with the same results. The first is that in which scriptural truth is faithfully presented in scriptural garb – that is to say, not only are all the doctrines asserted which truly belong to the revealed system of redemption, but they are presented in that dress and connection in which the Holy Spirit has presented them without seeking any other from human science. This state of the pulpit marks the golden age of the Church. The second is the transition stage. In this, the doctrines taught are still those of the Scriptures, but their relations are moulded into conformity with the prevalent human dialectics. God’s truth is now shorn of a part of its power over the soul. The third stage is then near, in which not only are the methods and explanations conformed to the philosophy of the day, but the doctrines themselves contradict the truth of the Word. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

28 " It is usually wise to extend this fidelity to the text, not only to its abstract doctrine, but to its imagery. Let the sermon wear, in the main, the same figurative drapery with the passage on which it is founded. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

29 " Unity of discourse requires, then, not only singleness of a dominant subject, but also singleness of practical impression. To secure the former, see to it that the whole discussion may admit of reduction to a single proposition. To secure the latter, let the preacher hold before him, through the whole preparation of the sermon, the one practical effect intended to be produced upon the hearer’s will. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

30 " Thus, if the low grade of intelligence, virtue, and civilization of the African in America, disqualified him for being his own guardian, and if his own true welfare, and that of the community, would be plainly marred by this freedom; then the law decided correctly that the African here has no natural right to his self-control, as to his own labour and locomotion. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Systematic Theology

31 " An insuperable difference of race, made by God and not by man, and of character and social condition, makes it plainly impossible for a black man to teach and rule white Christians to edification. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney ,

32 " Every hope of the existence of church and of state, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of negro suffrage. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney ,

33 " For the African race, such as Providence has made it, and where He has placed it in America, slavery was the righteous, the best, yea, the only tolerable relation "

― Robert Lewis Dabney ,

34 " In other words, in order to be capable of any power of persuasion, you must be men of ardent and genuine religious affections. You must be men of faith and prayer; you must live near the cross and feel “the powers of the world to come.” We thus learn again the great truth that it is divine grace which makes the true minister. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

35 " He is not the true preacher who sends his hearers home exclaiming, “How eloquent the minister to-day; how beautiful his imagery; how artful his arrangement; how skilful his argument and his persuasion!” But he is the true sacred orator, who dismisses them so possessed and overpowered by God, that they have forgotten the creature who was the channel of the truth. The message should hide the messenger. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching

36 " The end, I repeat, of every oration is to make men do. But the things which the sermon would make men do, are only the things of God. Therefore it must apply to them the authority of God. If your discourse urges the hearer merely with excellent reasons and inducements, natural, ethical, social, legal, political, self-interested, philanthropic, if it does not end by bringing their wills under the direct grasp of a “thus saith the Lord,” it is not a sermon; it has degenerated into a speech. "

― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching