John Albert Broadus (1827–1895) was a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Charles Spurgeon called him the “greatest of living preachers.” "The great appointed means of spreading the good tidings of salvation through Christ is preaching — words spoken whether to the individual, or to the assembly," writes Broadus. "And this, nothing can supersede. Printing has become a mighty agency for good and for evil; and Christians should employ it, with the utmost diligence and in every possible way, for the spread of truth. But printing can never take the place of the living word. When a man who is apt in teaching, whose soul is on fire with the truth which he trusts has saved him and hopes will save others, speaks to his fellow-men, face to face, eye to eye, and electric sympathies flash to and fro between him and his hearers, till they lift each other up, higher and higher, into the intensest thought, and the most impassioned emotion — higher and yet higher, till they are borne as on chariots of fire above the world, — there is a power to move men, to influence character, life, destiny, such as no printed page can ever possess. "