David H. C. Read

Quotes[edit]

I learned, when a university chaplain, that the student who asked where Cain got his wife could really be wanting to know whether he should sleep with his girlfriend.
- Preaching about the Needs of Real People (1988), p. 71; quoted by Calvin Miller in Spirit, Word, and Story: A Philosophy of Preaching (1989), p. 87, and The Sermon Maker: Tales of a Transformed Preacher (2009), p. 46.

When you pray is there anyone there listening?
- Start of the sermon "What Response to Our Prayers?", as quoted by Eugene L. Lowry in The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form (2001), p. 36

With the best will in the world, I could not bear a second-rate sermon. [...] Now I have found a church where I do not squirm in my seat, but listen in rapt attention from beginning to end. After having heard the first sermon by Dr. David Read, I went Sunday after Sunday, because I was richly rewarded every time. What a feeling of relief to be allowed to come near to God and worship as I always wanted to worship! [...] It therefore became a pleasure to go to church because to be in church was to be near the true spirit of Jesus Christ.
- Lin Yutang, From Pagan to Christian (1960), pp. 237–238; quoted by Rain Yang Liu in "Lin Yutang: Astride the Cultures of East and West", published in Salt and Light, Vol. III (2011), p. 172.