Spurgeon Thursday - The Best Sermon

Charles H. Spurgeon liked to related this story of a young English preacher delivering a sermon before a renown pastor of many years:

Upon finishing his sermon, the young man went to the old pastor to ask how he had done: "What do you think of my sermon, sir?" he asked. 

"A very poor sermon indeed," he said. 

"A poor sermon!" said the young man, "it took me a long time to study it." 

"Ay, no doubt of it." 

"Why, then, do you say it was poor; did you not think my explanation of the text to be accurate?" 

"Oh yes," said the old preacher, "very correct indeed."

"Well,then, why do you say it is a poor sermon? Didn't you think the metaphors were appropriate, and the arguments conclusive?" 

"Yes, they were very good, as far as that goes, but still it was a very poor sermon." 

"Will you tell me why you think it a poor sermon?" 

"Because," said the old Pastor, "THERE WAS NO CHRIST IN IT."

"Well," said the young man, "Christ was not in the text; we are not to be preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the text." 

So the old man said, " Don't you know, young man, that from every town, and every village, and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?" 

"Yes," said the young man. 

"Ah!" said the old preacher, "and so from EVERY TEXT in Scripture there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is CHRIST. And, my dear brother, your business is, when you get to a text, to say, 'Now, what is the road to Christ?' and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis - Christ. And," he said, "I have never yet found a text that had no such road, I will make a road, I would go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my master, for a sermon is neither fit for the land nor yet for the dung hill, unless there is a savour of Christ in it."