Quote by John A. Broadus
“A certain grand-looking obscurity is often pleasing to some hearers and readers, who suppose that it shows vast learning, or great originality, or immense profundity. To treat subjects in this fashion is no new thing. Quintilian says it was not new in his day, for that he found mention in Livy of a teacher who used to direct his pupils to darken the idea. He adds a witticism of some one whose hearers complained that they did not understand, and who replied, “So much the better; I did not even understand it myself,” and elsewhere speaks of men who think themselves talented because it requires talent to understand them.”
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John Albert Broadus was an American Baptist pastor and professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the most famous preachers of his day. Charles Spurgeon deemed Broadus the “greatest of living preachers.” Church historian Albert Henry Newman later said “perhaps the greatest man the Baptists have produced.
Broadus was born in Culpepper County, Virginia, 24 January, 1827. He was educated at the University of Virginia, and from 1851 till 1853 was assistant professor of ancient languages there. He then became pastor of the Baptist church in Charlottesville, and in 1859 professor of New Testament interpretation and homiletics in the Southern Baptist theological seminary at Greenville, South Carolina, now in Louisville, Kentucky As a Greek scholar and New Testament critic.
His quiet conversational delivery brought both critics and imitators. Some men, who equated "real preaching" with soaring in the oratorical stratosphere, accused Broadus of "ruining the preachers of the South" by his example. His students, however, saw his effectiveness and in spite of his warning, many of them tried to imitate his tones, his genuine pathos, his platform manner, failing to realize that they had only a few of his external characteristics and not the qualities of his success.