"Commenting and Commentaries" was a work of great labor, showing his students and others what to use. "If I can save a poor man," he wrote, "from spending his money for that which is not bread, or, by directing a brother to a good book, may enable him to dig deeper into the mines of truth, I shall be well repaid. For this purpose I have toiled, and read much, and passed under review some three or four thousand volumes." Twenty-seven volumes of the _Sword and Trowel_, Mr. Spurgeon's magazine, have had an enormous circulation. This is also true of "Lectures to My Students," abounding in sensible suggestions. To those about to become ministers he says:-- "Avoid little debts, unpunctuality, gossiping, nicknaming, petty quarrels, and all other of those little vices which fill the ointment with flies.... "Even in your recreations, remember that you are ministers.... His private life must ever keep good tune with his ministry, or his day will soon set with him, and the sooner he retires the better; for his continuance in his office will only dishonor the cause of God and ruin himself." Spurgeon urged private prayer upon his young men, and related this incident from Father Faber: "A certain preacher, whose sermons converted men by the scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one of the conversions was owing to his talents or eloquence, but all to the prayers of an illiterate lay brother, who sat on the pulpit steps, pleading all the time for the success of the sermon." The great John Knox used to say he "wondered how a Christian could lie in his bed all night and not rise to pray." Of public prayer, Spurgeon said, "Do not let your prayer be long.... 'He prayed me into a good frame of mind,' George Whitefield once said of a certain preacher, 'and if he had stopped there, it would have been very well; but he prayed me out of it again by keeping on.'" Of the sermon he said, "Preach Christ always and evermore. He is the whole gospel.... Your pulpit preparations are your first business. A man great at tea-drinkings, evening parties, and Sunday-school excursions is generally little everywhere else. "The sensible minister will be particularly gentle in argument," said Spurgeon. "He should take care not to engross all the conversation," and at the same time, "do not be a dummy." "Have a good word to say to each and every member of the family,--the big boys and the young ladies and the little girls and everybody. No one knows what a smile and a hearty sentence may do. A man who is to do much with men must love them, and feel at home with them. An individual who has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living." "Be cool and confident. As Sydney Smith says, 'A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.' ... When a speaker feels, 'I am master of the situation,' he usually is so."