Birth to New Birth

incapable of resistance, was galloping on with hell's wolves behind me, howling for my body and soul, as their just and lawful prey. There came a mighty hand which stopped that wild horse, cut my bands, set me down, and brought me into liberty. Is there power, sir? Aye, there is power; and he who has felt it must acknowledge it. There was a time when I lived in the strong old castle of my sins, and rested on my works. There came a trumpeter to the door, and bade me open it. I with anger chid him from the porch, and said he ne'er should enter. There came a goodly personage, with loving countenance; his hands were marked with scars, where nails were driven, and his feet had nail-prints too; he lifted up his cross, using it as a hammer; at the first blow the gate of my prejudice shook; at the second it trembled more, at the third down it fell, and in he came; and he said, "Arise, and stand upon thy feet, for I have loved thee with an everlasting love." A thing of power! Ah! It is a thing of power. I have felt it here, in this heart; I have the witness of the Spirit within, and know it is a thing of might

because it has conquered me; it has bowed me down. ¹ C harles Haddon Spurgeon engaged the last half of the nineteenth century with the power of his personal experience of grace and the unshakeable convictions that the Bible was revealed, that Christ came, and that the Holy Spirit was sent to make sure that all of the Father's elect would have such an experience. If Spurgeon could not bend the rationalists, the latitudinarians, the modern-thought men, the purveyors of manners and virtue, and the AngloCatholics to his will in this matter, then he certainly would not conform a single degree toward them—and he would keep as many from their clutches as he could possibly reach. If he saw a human need that could be met and in so doing serve the cause of this gospel, he would meet it. If he saw a ministry needed to promote the clear proclamation and wide dissemination of this gospel, he would start it—and maintain it. If he could not keep his denomination resolutely faithful to the power of these truths, then he would die trying.

Spurgeon's Childhood

Born in the Essex village of Kelvedon on June ¹⁹, 1834, his parents were John and Eliza Jarvis Spurgeon. He was the first of seventeen children, only eight of whom survived infancy. Spurgeon's father would die at ninety-one years of age in 1902, having survived his eldest son by ten years. Spurgeon's family moved to Colchester before he was one year old. "Grace does not run in the blood," Spurgeon wrote in 1884 during his fiftieth year, "but it often runs side by side with it." He considered it a high honor to be descended from one that feared the

Lord and particularly one from nonconformist stock. ² Such religious gumption, if not genetic, was certainly environmental, for the Spurgeons had first come to England from Holland near the close of the sixteenth century, refusing to submit their consciences to Philip II, the husband of Bloody Mary and king of Spain, who had sent the bloody Duke of Alva to force the sturdy Hollanders into the church of Rome. A subsequent ancestor, Job Spurgeon, suffered as a Puritan in England during the reign of Charles II, being imprisoned for the sake of conscience. He refused to be released on the promise of good behavior, that is to cease his nonconformity, and suffered as a sick man

through an extreme winter. ³ When Spurgeon characterized his father in his seventies, he could have described these ancient forebears: "There is a strong fixedness of belief in our father's mind, and it would take an eternity of modern

arguing to reason him out of his confidence." ⁴ He was not one to truckle with the inventions of the hour.

Spurgeon was named after two uncles, one maternal and one paternal, Charles Jarvis and Haddon Spurgeon. Four months after the parents moved to Colchester, his grandparents took him to live in Stambourne, in the country between Halstead and Haverhill. His grandfather had been pastor of the Independent congregation there since 1810, was a virtual oracle in the village, and stood in good graces with even the minister of the established church, James Hopkins. Spurgeon noted, "They preached the same gospel, and, without

surrendering their principles, were great friends." ⁵ The tension that existed between Church and Chapel in many places in England was not a prominent

factor in Stambourne. ⁶ The young Spurgeon remembered the "very brown" sugar along with the sugared bread and butter for Monday snack in fellowship with his grandfather, the Rev. Hopkins, and a resident who attended both church

and chapel on any given Lord's Day. ⁷ Spurgeon also recalled a great number of details about the house and its impressions on him, including its picture of David and Goliath, its plastered

windows so darkened to avoid a window tax, and its rocking horse "on which even a member of Parliament might have retained his seat." The foxhunt fascinated him for its pageantry, its speed, and its mystery. Both hymnmemorizing and rat-killing earned him money, the latter more than the former, but Spurgeon knew, as did his hearers, "which employment has been the more permanently profitable." Every event, every item, every conversation, every relationship, every errand resulted eventually in spiritual and doctrinal lessons to Spurgeon. He learned to notice small but astounding elements of nature and marveled in the fascinating wonders all around him. The apple in a bottle, the sparrows in the plaster wall just beside his bed, the kneading trough with a cabinet containing a pastry for "the child," the mangle used by many others in the town, all made pleasant memories for Spurgeon. He liked "all this rural life,"

8 and many of the spiritual and theological lessons he shared through his ministry came out of the way in which he developed analogies between nature and doctrinal truth.

Spurgeon loved to tell stories of the rural life of his grandfather and how God provided for them in, humanly speaking, straitened circumstances. In days prior to Spurgeon's sojourn with him, his main living came from the working of a farm. He had a cow that provided milk for his many children. One day the cow got the staggers and died, leaving them destitute of much of their sustenance. "God has the power to give us fifty cows if he so pleases," John told his distraught wife. On that day, the committee administering a fund for poor ministers met in London, and after distributing all the money to those that had requested it, they were left with £5. None knew him personally, but one knew of him and his integrity and his struggles and suggested that the £5 be sent to the Independent minister down in Stambourne in Essex. Another said that £5 would not do, and added another five; so two others did the same. The next morning, the Spurgeons received £20 in the post from the Lord in recompense for the departed cow. When he opened the note, and saw the money, he said to his wife,

"Now, can't you trust God about an old cow?" ⁹ The immediate dependence that rural village people had on the health of a cow, the balance of sun and rain, the sharpness of a plough, and daily health and pain, all produced a habit of proverbializing and a deep awareness of providence.

Spurgeon's John Ploughman and some other pseudonymous characters arose from a combination of characters he met in rural Stambourne, not least of which was his beloved grandfather, and a farmer given to proverbial sayings called Will Richardson. Sometimes the young man would walk with Richardson when he was plowing. Richardson was well known for his "cramp" sayings which

often would be repeated around the town, particularly his evaluation of a young preacher given to the novice himself, "Ah, young man, you have a good many

stiles to get over before you get into Preaching Road." ¹⁰ The love Spurgeon had for the common man, the confidence he had in good common sense, and the commitment he had for honest and long labor emerged from his observations of rural life and the work required to keep life merely above failure. In reviewing a book entitled Plodding On; or, the Jog-trot to Fame and Fortune by Henry Curwen, Spurgeon commended the book as likely to excite laudable ambition in youth by the narrative of victories of genius. All of the persons were plodders and all succeeded in life. "Working men will here see how they may climb if they will," Spurgeon remarked. With a bit of wise and sad observation in the background, he continued, "If the quart pot and an unwise marriage do not chain them to the lowest round of the ladder, they may mount if they will banish self-indulgence, and put forth their energies." Since the idea of successful plodders had been introduced, Spurgeon decided to add to the review his own concept of genius. "It would be a gross error," he urged, "if it were imagined that men of genius do not work. To our mind, genius generally means that a man has a tendency and an aptitude for double toil in a certain direction, and hence he prospers in it." The genius for hard work was the only genius he believed in. A man that sought to succeed on supposed genius apart from diligent application had no place in Spurgeon's esteem.

His reminiscences of Stambourne came from a collection of them throughout early childhood and adolescence. He relished visits to his grandparents, especially on holidays, even after going back to Colchester to live at home. His

father remarked about these times:

It has been said that Charles was brought up by his grandfather and grandmother. The fact is, that my

father and mother came to see us when Charles was a baby of fourteen months old. They took him to

stay with them, and he remained with them until he was between four and five years of age. Then he

came home to stay with us at Colchester.... Afterwards he often went to spend his holidays with his

grandparents, who were very fond of him.... He was always reading books—never digging in the

garden or keeping pigeons, like other boys. It was always books and books. If his mother wanted to

take him for a ride she would be sure to find him in my study poring over a book. 11

Breathing Puritan Air

Particularly beneficial to Spurgeon during these visits to Stambourne were the numerous opportunities for immediate and positive doctrinal impressions.

Discussions at his grandfather's house, as well as among his father's friends, made Spurgeon pay close attention to the nature of theological argument. "I can bear witness that children can understand the Scriptures," Spurgeon insisted, "for I am sure that when but a child I could have discussed many a knotty point of controversial theology, having heard both sides of the question freely stated

among my father's circle of friends." ¹² In addition, the love for books noted by John Spurgeon reflected an innate intellectual curiosity that Charles Spurgeon maintained all his days, but which was startled to life in his grandfather's room of books. One of the rooms behind a plastered window housed a true book lover's gold mine. Spurgeon met the martyrs of the English reformation and "Old Bonner," the bishop of London responsible under Bloody Mary for the burning of more than 200 of his parishioners. He also made a lifelong acquaintance with Bunyan and his Pilgrim which he read more than a hundred times throughout his life. Most memorably and reverentially did Spurgeon regard the "great masters of Scriptural theology, with whom no moderns are worthy to be named in the same day." He loved even the look of a genuine Puritan book with its margins, notes, type, and especially the "sheepskins and goatskins" in which they were forced to wander.

These volumes were left over from the very day of the Puritans and had been the possession of Henry Havers, a Puritan who left the parish church in 1662 when conscience would not permit him to comply with the Act of Uniformity.

Three straight pastors by the same name, a grandson and then his nephew followed, served the church for its first eighty-six years. After the original Henry Havers vacated as rector of the parish, he continued to encourage the parishioners and teach them in other venues. The legislation of the Conventicle Act and the Five Mile Act brought renewed waves of persecution on his itinerant flock for ten years. Havers himself was once pursued by the authorities, hid himself in the kiln of a malt-house and eluded his pursuers when a spider wove a web over the door to the kiln, leading them to believe that he could not possibly be in there or he would have broken the web.

A long-time member of the congregation composed some loving lines of poetry about the three Havers and included the following verses about the

ejected Puritan.

Havers the first was rector here,

His Zeal for God was warm;

The living not to him so dear

That he would e'er conform.

He left his church and living too,

To keep his conscience clear;

His great concern was good to do,

And much good did he here.

He was far from being a Jude,

He was a star of light;

Yea one of the first magnitude,

And always shined bright.

Yea, he was like unto the sun

In a bright summer day;

Bright he begun and bright went on,

And bright he went away.

The books that so enthralled Spurgeon were a gift to Havers from Thomas Green to be used by him and those that should follow him in the gospel ministry in that

place. ¹³ The man that served as pastor of the congregation from 1776 to 1810, immediately prior to James Spurgeon (1810-64), was Benjamin Beddow, and he was grandfather to the man who aided Charles Spurgeon in the production of

Memories of Stambourne. ¹⁴ Spurgeon's commitment to exposition from early to late in his ministry showed the tenacity of his mental and spiritual attachment to this literary legacy and of his continued preference for it over the developing critical approach to scriptural scholarship and commentary. Preaching on "Faith" from Hebrews 11 in December 1856, Spurgeon set forth the outline using the divisions of the subject suggested to him by the Puritans. "The old writers, who are, by far, the most sensible—for you will notice that the books that were written about 200 years ago by the old Puritans have more sense in one line than there is in a page of our new books—and more in a page than there is in a whole volume of our modern divinity!" The subject he then divided into knowledge, assent. and affiance, "or the laying hold of the knowledge to which we give assent and

making it our own by trusting in it." ¹⁵ Less meat and more pits became common fare from the modern handling of the text in Spurgeon's opinion. Twenty-seven years did not dampen his enthusiasm for the Puritans, for in 1883 he still protested, "If Puritanic preaching filled the pulpits, it would soon fill the pews."

He asked for more "old-fashioned divines like Boston and the Erskines." ¹⁶ He found little in the theological productions of modern times to recommend to his students but was delighted when the Nichols Series of Puritans commentaries

appeared. Though the modern critical approach encouraged some advances in understanding, the value of the Puritans was insuperable. "The Puritan age was one of great erudition, unwearied application, deep-felt experience, and unbounded veneration for the authority of the Divine Word." More breadth may come from the moderns, but not more depth. With the Puritans "we shall have both breadth and depth, and our theology, however, much extended, will still be

the deep, deep sea." ¹⁷ When examining a book on prayer in 1882, Spurgeon noted its thorough thinness and its "tameness of propriety as compared with the force and piquancy

of the Puritans." ¹⁸ He did not want a book to "squeeze soft" but something "solid, substantial, and real." Modern theology was like whipped cream or the soufflé of the confectioner, very pretty but hardly anything at all. "In a cubic inch of Charnock, or Owen," he remarked in 1885, "there is enough matter to

cover acres of the new school of writing." ¹⁹ George Rogers, the first tutor at the Pastors' College, speaking at the 1883 Conference, reflected Spurgeon's heart when he noted, "It is another distinguishing peculiarity of our College, and which accounts in a great measure for its spiritual results, that it adheres to the

Puritanic in distinction from the Germanic theology." ²⁰ As for Spurgeon, he could quote from the Puritans at will, illustrate a point from a variety of Puritan authors, enter into discussion with each character of Pilgrim's Progress, analyze spiritual struggles from the narrative of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and quickly compare the strengths, weaknesses, and local color of numerous Puritan authors. A sample of this brightens Spurgeon's comments on a newly published edition of the sermons of an otherwise unknown figure, Master Henry Smith, of the Puritan era, "the

golden age of religion in England."

He is not so apt in quoting ancient history as Master Brooks, neither is he so rich in figures culled from

nature as Gurnal or Charnock, but his baskets of silver, in which he places his apples of gold, are

mainly of Scriptural workmanship.... Perhaps no better instance can be given of his forcible way of

impressing truth upon the memory and conscience than the famous extract from "The Dialogue

between Paul and Agrippa." It is Smith at his best, simple as Bunyan, sound as Owen, interesting as

Brooks, quaint as Adams, earnest as Baxter, but aptly scriptural in his illustrations as none but himself;

in that one respect he appears as a bright particular star shining apart and alone. 21

An American friend of Spurgeon's mature years, Wayland Hoyt, remembered this love for and inimitable knowledge of the Puritans. "He could repeat pages of them at will," Hoyt recalled, with no reason for extravagance in his recounting. "He knew precisely how this man and that man of them analyzed his text," Hoyt continued. Within the steady diet of Bunyan and scores of other Puritans, Hoyt

located the foundation of Spurgeon's "nervous sinewy, plain, and yet

picturesque Saxon." ²² A fellow-teacher at Newmarket, J. D. Everett, recalled walking on occasions with a fifteen-year-old Spurgeon giving long passages he had heard in open-air preaching and also recalled, "I have also heard him recite

long passages from Bunyan's Grace Abounding." ²³ The suffering of the Puritans, the illustrations in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the bloody strictures of Bonner and his crew, the Pope and his crew, the progress made for truth and the gospel through stocks, prison, burnings, and blood permeated Spurgeon's understanding of mission theology. That they did not count their lives dear to themselves in comparison to the great calling of working for the defense and propagation of the gospel—such scenes settled in Spurgeon's memory and molded his conscience. God's gospel would make progress when its propagators looked death in the face and did not relent. The issues of eternity overwhelm any temporal and, relatively speaking, momentary suffering that a gospel missionary might endure. When Baptist missionaries returned from Ireland because the Irish hooted them, and threw stones at them, Spurgeon snarled, "Now don't you think you see Paul taking a microscope out of his pocket, and looking at a little man who should say to him, 'I shall not go there to preach, because the Irish hooted me!'" What a small edition of a preacher such an intimidated creature must be. But they threw stones! Tell that to Paul with a face unashamed. But the police interfered, they might put us in stocks, and some might even die. "Our business is to preach the word," Spurgeon responded; "Where is that zeal which counted not its life dear, so that it might win Christ?"

The killing of a few of our ministers would prosper Christianity, he preached; if men die by the hundreds and thousands in defense of hearth and home, so surely it is no great grief to lose a dozen to death in the cause of the gospel. "I would count my own blood most profitably shed in so holy a struggle," Spurgeon affirmed. When the gospel prospered aforetime, it did so because some laid

down their lives for it and others walked "to victory over their slain bodies." ²⁴ In all his exuberance for the Puritans, however, Spurgeon was not ill-informed on the mistakes of church–state relationships in their manner of putting down heresy. Speaking of his detestation of Puseyism, that is, Anglican high church sacramentalism consistent with Roman Catholicism, Spurgeon called for the "God of Gideon to be with the few whom he may make worthy to smite the great host who have covered the land!" He is quick to add, however, that "the Puritans

erred in using carnal weapons, and hence their victory was shortlived." ²⁵ That interpretation of Puritan greatness and weakness persisted throughout Spurgeon's years. Speaking to his College Conference in 1886 he said, "Our

Puritan forefathers raised their walls, and laid their stones in fair colours, building well the city of God." Then came Oliver Cromwell, the "greatest of heroes" who handled the sword of steel as few have ever done. The carnal weapon, however, "agreed not with the temple of the Lord." The Lord seemed to say to him as to David, "Thou hast been a man of blood, and therefore thou shalt not build the house of the Lord." On that error, Puritanism faltered, and "all its exceeding stateliness of holiness, because its sons saw not that the kingdom of the Lord is not of Church and State, not of the law of nations, but purely of the

Spirit of the Lord." ²⁶ Spurgeon would never be reconciled to any system of union of church and state, even a Puritan one; it was entirely antithetical to his understanding of the church as a holy disciplined congregation. That his godly grandfather and the wholesome citizens of Stambourne who were members of the "Dissenters" should be put at a disadvantage by the state for this matter of conscience, citizens that were a step above the common standard at that, never made sense to him and brought from his pen some of the most unvarnished sarcasm and rhetoric of incredulity in his entire corpus of writing.

Both the books and the ethos of Puritanism that permeated the atmosphere of Stambourne established a joyful sobriety in the spirit of the young Spurgeon that kept England from forgetting them for the next fifty years. Specific instruction connected with all the meetings of the chapel imposed a pleasant spirituality and strong conviction on him. While his grandfather studied on Sunday morning for his message, "the child" sat in the room with his venerable grandfather. His silence was guaranteed by the prospect that if he talked, his grandfather might not make a point as clearly as he should for the sake of someone's eternal well-

being. ²⁷ That his silence was the fulcrum between heaven and hell, sobered the occasion for Spurgeon. He remembered how the people "heard a sermon" and how the gospel dispelled superstitions among those church members that "benumbed the brains of too many of the East Anglian peasantry." Prayer meetings and hymn-singing made indelible impressions on his young facile mind. Watts' hymns were valued above all almost to exclusivity. His grandfather, however, tried his hand at hymnody but "paid no attention to the

mere triviality of rhyme." ²⁸ Spurgeon concluded that he could be forgiven for the first volume of hymns only because he determined not to publish a second volume. If Watts' hymns provided a biblical aesthetic for spiritual worship, instruction in Watts' catechism gave a solid condensation of Scripture content

for doctrinal reflection. ²⁹ Above all was the preaching of his grandfather. "The dew of the Spirit from

on high never left the ministry," Spurgeon testified, and "wherever my grandfather went, souls were saved under his ministry." He died in February 1864, when Spurgeon was thirty and in his eleventh year in London; Spurgeon marked the occasion with a sermon on "He that endureth to the end shall be saved" (Matt. 10:22). Remarkably illustrative of the text in his mind, Spurgeon highlighted the faithfulness of his grandfather's life and the doctrinal consistency of his ministry. "In his early days, his sober earnestness and sound doctrine were owned of God in many conversions both at home and abroad." He lived down slander and abuse, lived beyond most of his friends, and multiplied his children and grandchildren in the spiritual realm through preaching not only at home but in many other churches. At his last conversation with his grandson Charles, the venerable James Spurgeon expressed an amazing consciousness: "I do not know that my testimony for God has ever altered, as to the fundamental doctrines; I have grown in experience, but from the first day until now, I have had no new doctrines to teach my hearers. I have had to make no confessions of error on vital points, but have been held fast to the doctrines of grace, and can now say that I love them better than ever." As he continued his words, he spoke, as summarized in Spurgeon's sermonic report, of the "preciousness of Christ, and chiefly of the security of the believer; the truthfulness of the promise; the immutability of the covenant; the faithfulness of God, and the infallibility of the divine decree." Christ's promise is as secure as his throne and "he must cease to be king before he can break his promise, or lose his people. Divine sovereignty makes us all secure." Spurgeon spoke gratefully, "I am thankful that I had such a

grandsire." ³⁰ Twenty years later, Charles Haddon Spurgeon could say of his grandfather that he "was a faithful minister of the New Covenant, whose memory is still fresh and fragrant in many parts of Essex." ³¹

The Prophecy of Richard Knill

The famous prophecy of Richard Knill also had a formative impact on Spurgeon both in his quest for conversion and in his perception of Christian ministry.

Richard Ellsworth Day minimized the importance of this event with the observation that "the importance of the prophecy we are inclined to dismiss with the remark of a contemporary biographer, 'Clergymen on a collecting tour are

always much impressed by the high qualities of the children of the hosts.'" ³² Day's comment may reflect a realistic appraisal of the tendencies of common courtesy toward people upon whom one is dependent for success, but also tends to discredit the sincerity of Knill. All the historic testimony concerning this event should convince even the most skeptical historian that, at least, the milk of human kindness and the honey of human respect was neither soured nor adulterated by cupidity. Whatever the motivation of Knill, Spurgeon always admired him and felt that the words spoken were utterly sincere and savored of the reality of a rare glimpse of future events that God may at times give his saints.

Richard Knill, on deputation from the London Missionary Society, came into

Essex in 1844. ³³ This corresponded with one of Spurgeon's visits to Stambourne. He heard Spurgeon's questions, listened to his comments, treated him kindly and lovingly and, waking "the boy" at ⁶:00 Am, spent three mornings with him in prayer and earnest exhortation. Before he left he predicted that Spurgeon would preach one day in Rowland Hill's chapel as well as to great multitudes. Knill extracted a promise that Spurgeon would memorize the Cowper hymn, "God moves in a Mysterious Way," and have it sung when he preached in the chapel. The things came to pass precisely. Spurgeon viewed it as

fulfilled in the combination of two events.

After I had begun for some little time to preach in London, Dr. Alexander Fletcher was engaged to

deliver the annual sermon to children in Surrey Chapel; but as he was taken ill, I was asked in a hurry

to preach to the children in his stead. "Yes," I replied, "I will, if you will allow the children to sing,

'God moves in a mysterious way.' I have made a promise long ago that so that [ sic ] should be sung."

And so it was: I preached in Rowland Hill's Chapel, and the hymn was sung. My emotions on that

occasion I cannot describe, for the word of the Lord's servant was fulfilled. Still I fancy that the Surrey

was not the chapel which Mr. Knill intended. How was I to go to the country chapel? All unsought by

me, the minister at Wotton-under-Edge, which was Mr. Hill's summer residence, invited me to preach

there. I went on the condition that the congregation should sing, "God moves in a mysterious way"—

which was also done. To me it was a very wonderful thing, and I no more understand to-day why the

Lord should be so gracious to me. 34

Spurgeon knew that many called this a legend, but he testified that "it was

strictly true." ³⁵ The exchange of correspondence on this prophecy and Spurgeon's recollection of it in public ways in subsequent decades should make any biographer pause before dispatching it from his considerations. In 1853, before Spurgeon was nineteen and while he preached at Waterbeach, he wrote Richard Knill to remind him of the words then spoken. Spurgeon's verbal demeanor brimmed with a grateful and deferential spirit. "That one interview," he said speaking of Knill's attempt to lead him to the Savior, "has made my heart yours." Spurgeon said that Knill's words, perhaps not meant so intensely by Knill himself, were now imperishable, had taken on the "reverence of prophecy," and to Spurgeon himself "a sort of stay to my existence." Though not directly responsible for his conversion, Spurgeon believed that Knill's words had helped work in him a "desire to gain true religion." Spurgeon had no penchant for superstition but that event held him fast and he looked forward to the time

"when the whole shall come to pass." ³⁶ Two years later, after Spurgeon had moved to London and had begun at New Park Street, Knill wrote James Spurgeon with news of the positive edifying reports he had overheard on several occasions of the work of young Charles in London. Knill remembered well the visit to Stambourne and the conversations with Charles. "I have prayed much for him and about him," Knill reported, "that God may keep him at the foot of the cross, that popularity may not puff him up."

37

Spurgeon accepted Knill's words as a real specimen of divine interposition.

He recounted the Knill incident and drew the conclusion that the words of Knill, in some sense, helped to bring about their own fulfillment. Beyond that, however, Spurgeon accepted more. "Our ordinary guides are right reason and the Word of God, and we may never act contrary to these," Spurgeon affirmed; "but still we accept it as a matter of faith and experience to us that on exceptional occasions, special interpositions do come to our aid, so that our steps are ordered

of the Lord and made to subserve his glory." ³⁸ That this had been the case with him, Spurgeon freely admitted. His "personal pathway has been so frequently directed contrary to our own design and beyond our own conception by singularly powerful impulses, and irresistibly suggestive providences, that it were wanton wickedness for us to deride the doctrine that God occasionally grants to his servants a special and perceptible manifestation of his will for their guidance, over and above the strengthening energies of the

Holy Spirit, and the sacred teaching of the inspired Word." ³⁹ Sometimes, in Spurgeon's experience this happened at a time unknown to him. He periodically told anecdotes of speaking about specific things in sermons that turned out to be

the exact case of someone listening to him. A merchant who made himself a thief by not giving proper change, a young man who came drunk to service immediately from a gin palace, and a husband whose cruelty had led to the death of one wife and now married to another—these scenarios, and others, used as illustrations turned out to be exactly the case. "What an extraordinary thing it seems," Spurgeon commented, "yet, I can assure you that such extraordinary things are as commonplaces in my experience." He believed that not only in general way, but often in very specific ways, "God does help his servants rightly to divide the word, that is to say, to allot a special portion to each special case, so

that it comes to pass upon the man as if everything about him was known." ⁴⁰ Spurgeon did not point to this phenomenon as a consciously received revelation from God. It was more like a providentially-designed distribution of rhetorical flourishes that Spurgeon often engaged in during a message. Often they were merely fanciful descriptions that Spurgeon inserted for the sake of a pungent illustration without any intention that an actual case of such sat before him. In 1890 he preached, "Over there is a man who has been in a half-a-dozen shipwrecks; and if he does not mind, he will be shipwrecked to all eternity! One here has had yellow fever. Ah sir, there is a worse fever than that on you now!"

Others, he doubted not, had had cases of strange deliverances and had been between the jaws of death. They had "looked over the edge of that dread precipice, beneath which is the fathomless abyss," and vowed that if God spared their life, they would not be what they were before. And, indeed, they were not, for they were worse off than ever. "You are sinning now against light, and in shameful ingratitude. God have mercy upon you!" Some of his descriptions might have met precisely the case of a person, but Spurgeon did not intend them as an immediate revelation. He intended it as a pungent and graphic picture of the sinful tendency of delay and ingratitude in the lives of all sinners when faced with the obvious merciful intervention of God in their lives. He used this device so often, and with a keen knowledge of the way that people live, sin, and die, that he was bound to have described someone's case from time to time. That it did not happen more often shows that it was not an absorption into the paraklete; that it occurred at all, tended to perpetuate an aura of the miraculous surrounding

the life of Spurgeon. ⁴¹ Just as surely, Spurgeon knew that such an idea was open to abundant abuse and Spurgeon spent a good bit of time tearing down idols of inflamed imaginations assumed to be the voice of God. "The most wonderfully wellattested narratives," Spurgeon observed, "seldom bear investigation, they are built up upon hearsay and tittle-tattle, and will not endure a strict examination;

like most rumours, they fall like card-houses as soon as the hand of truth touches them." In a further comment about those who maintain adherence to these "ghost stories", Spurgeon wrote, "Half crazy people come to us in any quantity with such marvels, and we hope we have cured a good many by a little kindly raillery." Even with a withering blast against their unfounded conviction of a vision of divinity, "a considerable number leave us with the impression sadly confirmed in our minds that there are more lunatics abroad than there are in the

asylums." ⁴² "But notwithstanding all the folly of hairbrained rant," he still averred, "we believe that the unseen hand may be at times assuredly felt by gracious souls, and the mysterious power which guided the minds of the seers of old may, even to this day, sensibly overshadow reverent spirits. We would speak

discreetly, but we dare say no less." ⁴³ Early in his ministry in London, he believed that God might sometimes impress a spiritual action on the mind by some moral urge to do good, or consummate the thought that a Christian has to be a blessing to a person with the sense of the immediate appropriateness of action. "I am somewhat of a believer in the doctrine of the Quakers as to the impulses of the Spirit," he preached in 1855, "and I fear lest I should check one of them. If a thought crosses my mind, 'Go to such a person's house,' I always

like to do it, because I do not know but what it may be from the Spirit." ⁴⁴ Yet in 1875 Spurgeon took a position on special revelation outside Scripture that is difficult to harmonize with his acceptance of the spiritual enlightenment of Knill or of others on occasion. "Do not tell me about the Spirit of God speaking to anybody more than is in the Bible," he taught as he spoke about revelations from God as the foundation of warranted faith. "What is in the Scripture the Spirit of God will apply to the heart, but if you want the Spirit of

God to speak to you over and above that, you will never have it." ⁴⁵ A harmonization is possible, but one must also realize that, in this matter, Spurgeon might have contradicted himself. To a Christian concerned about the progress of the gospel in the world, God might give intimations of his purpose in a specific case; to an unbeliever desiring a sign of God's salvific intent, he would receive none except the general but immutably true statements of salvation for believers. None can expect a revelation that he in particular is elect or reprobate, or may seek an actual assurance of God's merciful intention toward him apart from or prior to his obeying the commands and meeting the stated conditions of the gospel, repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. None may expect the revelation, "Christ died for you," apart from believing that which is revealed in Scripture; in him alone, "We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin."

The Religious Tract Society published a biography of Richard Knill in 1879.

Spurgeon noted that the reference to the famed prophecy was included and "the narrative is true." Beyond that he commented that Knill was "one of the most simple, earnest, straightforward soul-seekers that we ever knew." He never had to go out of his way to "lead a soul to repose itself on Christ." He came to such topics in his normal talk so naturally that it never seemed to be a special effort; he came to it as naturally as others come to meals. Though Spurgeon admired the "capital portrait" for the frontispiece, he would have liked it better had the inscription not been omitted: "Brethren, the heathen are perishing: will you let them perish?" ⁴⁶

An Exuberant Spirit, a Fertile Mind, and a Compromised Body

Spurgeon's years in Stambourne were lived in the presence of adults. He had no play with other children, though he was indulged child's play and secret hideaways, the favorite being an empty grave. Also, he remembered great tenderness and coddling and special treatment appropriate to such a formative age. The lack of other children combined with the pastime of sitting with adults to hear conversation meant, however, a very passive life physically for Spurgeon. Though his father noted that Spurgeon "was a healthy child and boy, having a good constitution," he also noted that he never played like other boys and always was studying and reading. J. D. Everett, his fellow tutor at Newmarket, described Spurgeon as "rather small and delicate, with pale but plump face, dark brown eyes and hair, and a bright lively manner, with a neverfailing flow of conversation." Further refining the impression of his physical presence, Everett wrote: "He was rather deficient in muscle, did not care for

cricket or other athletic games, and was timid at meeting cattle on the roads." ⁴⁷ One should not marvel that Spurgeon became chronically sick comparatively early in his ministry; rather, the marvel is that he was able to maintain such a trying and rigorous schedule of travel and preaching for so many years before it became impossible. The early onset of physical exhaustion perhaps made Spurgeon later intent on providing sufficient play space, opportunities, and encouragement for his orphans. At an outdoor meeting, preaching to over ¹²,000 at Hackney in 1855, at twenty-one years of age, Spurgeon, contemplating the rest of heaven, said: "Soon, this voice will never be strained again; soon, these lungs will never have to exert themselves beyond their power; soon, this brain shall not be racked for thought; but I shall sit at the banquet-table of God; yea, I

shall recline on the bosom of Abraham, and be at ease forever." ⁴⁸ Very early, he was yearning for rest.

On his return to Colchester in 1840, Spurgeon entered into a healthy family relationship with three siblings (two sisters and a brother), a deeply pious mother, and a preacher father who served as a clerk to support his family and preached on Sundays nine miles away. His siblings provided fodder for his leadership abilities, his father allowed him to read in the study and to be party to theological discussions that occurred frequently in the home, and his mother provided daily instruction in the way of salvation and earnest prayers for the salvation of all her children. Later, he could write with grateful memory: "I was brought up as a child with such care that I knew but very little of foul or profane

language, having scarcely ever heard a man swear." ⁴⁹ He did not need, however, to see the sins of others or hear the churlish conversation of the

hardened to know that hardness of heart and rebelliousness of spirit came not by imitation, but by native propensity.

The Process of Conviction

Quite impressive and piercing to his conscience was his mother's apostrophe before God that she must bear swift witness against her children before his throne of judgment if they were not converted, for they knew the truth and had sincere admonitions from her to trust in Christ. "Certainly I have not the powers of speech," Spurgeon wrote as he reflected on the deep influence of his mother, "with which to set forth my valuation of the choice blessing which the Lord bestowed on me in making me the son of one who prayed for, and prayed with

me." ⁵⁰ His father recognized the massive weight that the mother's prayers exerted on Charles. During a ceremony in laying the first stone for the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1859, John Spurgeon shared the story of the mother's earnest prayers. "I believe, under God's Grace, his mother has been the means of leading him to Christ," he said with disarming candor. "You are well aware that I go and talk in the best manner I can to a few poor people on the Sabbath-Day and God has blessed my labors. I thought, however, I ought not to go out on the Sabbath-Day, as God's people should train up their children in the best way they can." He believed that his absence was harming the children's religious training at home until "I came home one evening about seven o'clock and went upstairs. I heard the voice of a mother pleading for her boy, Charles, and talking to him and the others and pouring her heart out in prayer in such a

way as I never did in my life and as I never heard before." ⁵¹ After that he never felt that leaving the children in the hands of such a mother was at all neglectful.

Charles also began his formal education when he returned home and was put to school with Mrs. Cook until he was ten. He learned during this venture a lesson that marked him till his death. Having lost his pencils and wanting to avoid a scolding from both teacher and parents, Spurgeon entered into a debt with Mrs. Pearson, the shop owner, promising to pay when his Christmas money came to him. The farthing he now owed seemed like a life-forfeiture, for he was in debt. When his father learned of the transaction, probably from Mrs. Pearson, he gave Spurgeon a lecture on debts being like thievery that was sure to bring a boy to ruin and send him to prison and make his family a disgrace. Straight to the shop they went "like a deserter marched into the barracks, crying bitterly all down the street, and feeling dreadfully ashamed;" the farthing was paid and the debtor was set free. He vowed at that point that nothing would ever tempt him to debt again. He hated debt like Luther hated the Pope. He told this incident in the Autobiography, and also had John Ploughman do a plain-sense exposition of the

experience. ⁵² "Some people appear to like owing money," Ploughman observed; "but I would as soon be a cat up a chimney with the fire going, or a

fox with the hounds at my heels, or a hedgehog on a pitchfork, or a mouse under

an owl's claw." ⁵³ These images surely communicate that Spurgeon could imagine no earthly condition more unpleasant and less desirable than the oppression of debt.

This incident of irresponsibility aside, Spurgeon was able to master whatever was set before him, and he transferred to Stockwell School in 1844. Again his mental alertness made him top of the class and gained for him, in the first year, a prize entitled "First Class English Prize" under the examination of T. W. Davids.

This achievement gained for Spurgeon a book entitled Natural History of Selbourne. In 1848, Charles and his brother James Archer made the journey to Maidstone, southeast of London, to attend the St. Augustine's Agricultural College. Spurgeon was there for one year before he went to Newmarket in Cambridgeshire, where he also served in the capacity of usher, that is, a kind of assistant teacher or tutor. In August, 1850, he moved to another school, both to assist and to study in Cambridge, taught by a Mr. Leeding, a quite adept teacher Spurgeon had known as an usher in Colchester. Pike believes that Leeding, "next to Richard Knill, probably understood his young friend's bent of mind and

developing genius better and anybody else." ⁵⁴ This education came as a result of great sacrifice on the part of Spurgeon's parents who desired the best possible education nonconformity could offer in the England of their day.

At this distance, great difficulties attend any attempt to evaluate the quality of this hands-on education, either in content or pedagogical method. That his teachers felt he progressed well may be inferred from his value to them as an usher. That he felt quite confident in his progress, both in depth and in diversity, is clear from an advertisement he ran in a Cambridge newspaper near the end of 1853, while serving as pastor at Waterbeach and just prior to his moving from the Park Street address in Cambridge to serve the New Park Street congregation

in London.

Number 60, Park Street Cambridge. Mr. C. H. Spurgeon begs to inform his numerous friends that after

Christmas he intends on taking six or seven young gentlemen as day pupils. He will endeavor to the

utmost to impart a good commercial education. The ordinary routine will include arithmetic, algebra,

geometry, and Mensuration; grammar and composition; ancient and modern history; geography,

natural history, astronomy, scripture and drawing; Latin and the elements of Greek and French if

required. 55

When in Maidstone, Spurgeon confronted a reasoned argument on baptism. The Anglican teacher sought to press him into an admission that the Congregational baptism of infants was invalid. The reasoning proved more ingenious than the teacher accounted for. The Bible records that only those who repent of sin and

believe in Christ should be baptized. Infant baptism involves no repentance and belief; that practice, therefore, is not scriptural. The Anglican church, however, provides sponsors for the child to pledge repentance and faith in its stead.

Anglican baptism conforms to Scripture, therefore, and demands the adherence of all nonconformists, so reasoned the clergyman. Spurgeon responded, "Oh no!

I have been baptized once, before I ought; I will wait next time till I am fit for it." In later reflections Spurgeon wryly reported, "It is due to the Church of

England catechism that I am a Baptist." ⁵⁶ While at Newmarket, Spurgeon had confirmed for him the theology that he had imbibed from the books in his grandfather's and father's libraries as well as in their sermons. He befriended a cook, Mary King, who read the Gospel Standard, loved a strong Calvinist theology of experience, and attended the Bethesda Strict Baptist church. Robert Mattingly said she "was a staunch

Calvinist, logical, clear-headed, and had a wonderful knowledge of the Bible." ⁵⁷ Spurgeon often spoke with her of the doctrines of grace as distributed in the eternal covenant of grace and their impact on vital godliness. "I do believe," he said, "that I learnt more from her than I should have learned from any six doctors

of divinity of the sort we have nowadays." ⁵⁸ Some of these discussions took place in the fall of 1849 prior to his conversion "when under deep religious

conviction," ⁵⁹ but those during the second half of the academic year, late winter and spring of 1850, were for mutual edification and spiritual and doctrinal instruction.

The "deep religious conviction" of which Everett spoke plagued Spurgeon for five years. Apparently, it began soon after his initial conversations with Richard Knill during one of Spurgeon's visits to his grandfather's home. The day of liberation for Spurgeon produced such joy that he could write that "one day of pardoned sin was a sufficient recompense to the whole five years of conviction."

60 The Autobiography contains a twenty-three-page chapter entitled "Through Much Tribulation" in which Spurgeon chronicles his convictions and analyzes the progress and nature of such convictions for himself and for all who would be brought to Christ.

Various phrases and images used by Spurgeon to depict this work of God's Spirit are graphic and commanding. "Ten black horses were His team, and it was a sharp ploughshare that He used and the ploughers made deep furrows." "Our own vaunted strength has utterly failed us, and made us contemptible in our own eyes." "He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by

whose blood he has been cleansed." "As soon as infancy gave way to childhood, the rod was exercised upon us. We can remember early convictions of sin, and apprehensions of the wrath of God on its account." "Who can tell how much each of these separate woundings contributed toward that killing by the law, which proved to be the effectual work of God?" "God's law was flogging me with its ten-thonged whip, and then rubbing me with brine afterwards, so that I did shake and quiver with pain and anguish, and my soul chose strangling rather

than life, for I was exceeding sorrowful." ⁶¹ "Our heavenly Father does not usually cause us to seek the Saviour till He has whipped us clean out of all our confidence; He cannot make us in earnest after heaven till He has made us feel something of the intolerable tortures of an aching conscience, which is a foretaste of hell." "Was there ever a bond-slave who had more bitterness of soul than I, five years a captive in the dungeons of the law, till my youth seemed as if it would turn into premature old age, and all the buoyancy of my spirit had vanished?" "Ah, me, how I seemed shut up then! I had offended against the justice of God; I was impure and polluted, and I used to say, 'If God does not send me to hell, He ought to do it.' I sat in judgment upon myself, and pronounced the sentence that I felt would be just." "Then I was brought down to see my corruption, my wickedness, my filthiness, for God always humbles the

sinner whom He means to save." ⁶² How the Spirit withers and blasts the hopes that a sinner has in his own power found expression in Spurgeon's experience. "When I was seeking the Lord, I not only believed that I could not pray without divine help, but I felt in my very soul that I could not." He could not even feel right, or moan or groan, as he wanted to, nor even long more after Christ as he knew he must. "This heart was then as hard as adamant, as dead as those that rot in their graves." He yearned for a tear, but had dry eyes, and wanted to repent, but could not, and sought belief, but found none. "I felt bound, hampered, and paralysed. This is a humbling revelation of God's Holy Spirit, but a needful one; for the faith of the flesh is not

the faith of God's elect." ⁶³ He illustrated this same truth over a decade earlier using a different image. His efforts at self-improvement only revealed a devil within him. His continued effort allowed the entrance of ten more devils. "Instead of becoming better I became worse; I had now got the devil of selfrighteousness, of self-trust, and self-conceit, and many others had come and taken up their lodging-place." While he was busy sweeping and garnishing the place, the original he thought he had expelled brought with him seven others more wicked than he, and took up residence. "Ah, you may try and reform, dear friends," Spurgeon reminisced, "but you will find you can not do it, and

remember even if you could, still it would not be the work which God requires."

For God will not accept our self-righteous reformation, but "he will have renovation, he will have a new heart, and not a heart changed a little for the

better." ⁶⁴ The word pictures that remain multiply with each sermon, each article, each lecture. Spurgeon taxed his own rich vocabulary and imagination to make his convictions and his real sinfulness clear. He even shared, using a vivid image of a rapid sea voyage, an attempt to cast himself into complete infidelity just when his convictions of his need for Christ were close to culmination. "Be thou my captain," he said to his reason as he thrust aside revelation along with any thoughts of God, Christ, heaven, and hell. "I went to the very bottom of the sea of infidelity," but the speed at which he doubted moved too rapidly until he doubted the existence of anything substantial, including himself. This shocked him back to reality and to see the necessity of God and revelation and heaven and hell. "Now, whenever I hear the sceptic's stale attacks upon the Word of God, I smile within myself, and think, 'Why, you simpleton! How can you urge such trifling objections?' I have felt, in the contentions of my own unbelief, ten

times greater difficulties." ⁶⁵ Another image of the experiential history of Spurgeon's conversion he shared in a sermon entitled "The Sum and Substance of all Theology." He supposed one of God's chosen so hardened and steeled against the wooing of God that there appeared no hope for him. Spurgeon proclaimed, "That man shall be arrested by God's grace, and that obdurate, hard-hearted one shall be made to see the mercy of God." He felt that he had been that man and if God could bend his will and bring him to Christ then none are beyond the effectual call of God. He quoted

Josiah Conder's hymn.

Why was I made to hear His voice,

And enter while there's room;

When thousands make a wretched choice,

And rather starve than come?

'Twas the same love the spread the feast,

That sweetly forced me in;

Else I had still refused to taste,

And perish'd in my sin.

The words, sweetly forced me in, were peculiarly relevant to his case, Spurgeon was convinced. "Oh, how long Jesus Christ stood at the door of my heart, and knocked, and knocked, and knocked in vain! I asked: 'Why should I leave the pleasures of this world?' Yet still He knocked, and there was music in every

sound of His pleading voice." Spurgeon resisted further promptings of Christ through the Spirit, described in picturesque language, and set aside even the words of a pleading mother, "Let the Saviour in, Charlie." His actions replied, "Nay, I love thee, my mother; but I do not love Christ, thy Saviour." Black hours of sickness ensued but still he defied God with thoughts of alarming dimensions, "Nay, I fear not sickness, nor death itself; I will still defy my Maker." Then in images drawn from Solomon's Song, Spurgeon increased the drama of the conflict: "But it happened, one day, that He graciously put in His hand by the hole of the door, and I moved toward Him, and then I opened the door, and cried, 'Come in! Come in!'" He found, however with cutting despair, that Christ was gone. This led to search through the streets with weeping for "five long years." Christ could not be found and did not answer Spurgeon's weeping odyssey. "Oh, that I had never rejected Him? Oh, that He would but come again!" Spurgeon envisioned angels watching the mysterious change in his heart: "A great change has come over that youth; he would not let Christ in when He knocked, but now he wants Christ to come." Upon Christ's return with a desire to enter, would Spurgeon's soul again reject him? "Nay, nay; but I fell down at His feet, crying, 'Come in! Come in! thou Blessed Saviour. I have waited for Thy salvation, O my God!'" With such sweet necessity Spurgeon was "forced" and so would be all the elect. "There is no living soul beyond the reach of hope," he summarized, "no chosen one whom Christ cannot bring up even from the

very gates of hell." ⁶⁶ In describing how Christ had divided the spoil with the strong, Spurgeon recounted the internal operations of Christ in his own conversion. "When the Lord Jesus Christ came into my hear—came to battle there—he did, indeed divide the spoil with the strong, for I was strong-willed, and desperately set on mischief, and for a while I was in the hand of a strong despair, out of which it seemed impossible that I should escape." Changing his images from the abstract to the concrete, Spurgeon depicted the bands that held him as "of iron, tough as steel, hardened in the fires of hell." But now Spurgeon was his, for Christ had

won him, "and taken the prey from the mighty." ⁶⁷ The same struggle he described in illustrating the victorious nature of regenerating grace over the spiritual aversion of the natural man. In this short outburst of autobiography, Spurgeon combined both the inveterate resistance to spiritual things with the eventual relenting to efforts of self improvement and fleshly faith. "I must confess I never would have been saved, if I could have helped it," Spurgeon admitted. "As long as ever I could, I rebelled and revolted, and struggled against God." Every realization of spiritual duty met with stern

resistance. "When he would have me pray, I would not pray: when he would have me listen to the sound of the ministry, I would not." Even moments when gospel truth softened his affections, Spurgeon mounted a counter-attack. When tears came to his eyes (something that eventually he sought according to another testimony) he wiped them away "and defied him to melt my heart." Upon the movement of his heart with the pathos of gospel truth, "I tried to divert it with sinful pleasures." As God's pursuit proved relentless, Spurgeon changed his tactic and opted for self-righteousness "and would not then have been saved, until I was hemmed in, and then he gave me that effectual blow of grace, and there was no resisting that irresistible effort of his grace." His depraved will succumbed, "and made me bow myself before the scepter of grace." Then he made universal application of his own experience of conquering grace: "Where God determines to save, save he will. God will have the sinner, if he designs to save him. God never was thwarted yet in any one of his purposes." ⁶⁸

A Memorable Conversion

An evangelical relic was bought and placed in the Stockwell Orphanage by its headmaster, V. J. Charlesworth. That relic was the elevated pulpit and staircase of the Artillery Street Primitive Methodist Church from which an anonymous

preacher spun the sermonic spell that lifted Spurgeon into heaven. ⁶⁹ The events that led him to embrace Christ in the full pardon of sin, in Spurgeon's view of divine operations, were historical manifestations of a divine purpose irresistibly effected. His Autobiography expressed this in language strikingly reminiscent of sermonic accounts. "God gave me the effectual blow, and I was obliged to submit to that irresistible effort of His grace. It conquered my depraved will, and

made me bow myself before His gracious sceptre." ⁷⁰ In a communion sermon at Mentone, Spurgeon summarized the entire experience of conviction and conversion, telescoping it into a single mental and spiritual visit from a holy and offended, but yet gracious, Christ. The range of spiritual encounters in this visitation gave rise to a strikingly intense description of its impact. "The first discovery of his injured love was overpowering," Spurgeon recounted; "its very hopefulness increased my anguish; for then I saw that I had slain the Lord who had come to save me." He experienced the withering effect of the holy scrutiny

to which Christ subjects his people.

I do remember well when God first visited me; and assuredly it was the night of nature, of ignorance,

of sin. His visit had the same effect upon me that it had upon Saul of Tarsus when the Lord spake to

him out of heaven. He brought me down from the high horse and caused me to fall to the ground; by

the brightness of the light of his Spirit he made me grope in conscious blindness; and in the brokenness

of my heart I cried, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" I felt that I had been rebelling against the

Lord, kicking against the pricks, and doing evil even as I could; and my soul was filled with anguish at

the discovery. Very searching was the glance of the eye of Jesus, for it revealed my sin, and caused me

to go out and weep bitterly. As when the Lord visited Adam and called him to stand naked before him,

so was I stripped of all my righteousness before the face of the Most High. Yet the visit ended not

there; for as the Lord God clothed our first parents in coats of skins, so did he cover me with the

righteousness of the great sacrifice, and he gave me songs in the night. It was night, but the visit was

no dream; in fact, I there and then ceased to dream, and began to deal with the reality of things. 71

It happened on January ⁶, 1850. ⁷² School had dismissed early because of an outbreak of fever. Spurgeon's spiritual struggles were not left at Newmarket but clung to him as he made his journey home to Colchester. Unable to go with his father to his church in Tolesbury because of the snow, Spurgeon made his way to a Primitive Methodist Chapel on Artillery Street. According to his recollection the minister that day did not appear, and so an unlearned Methodist exhorter rose to give a brief message on Isaiah 45:22: "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God and there is none else." The man recognized that

a heavy-hearted visitor was among their small number and he expostulated with Spurgeon directly to look to Christ. He asked Spurgeon to obey his text. Christ has bled and died, risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, He alone can save. It is not a matter of lifting a finger, or a foot, or going to college or being rich. Look, Look, Look, the man said, look to Christ and live. Spurgeon looked

and "saw at once the way of salvation." ⁷³ References to this event are scattered throughout the entire corpus of Spurgeon's sermons. The snowy day itself provided reference for sermons.

Preaching on the similitudes and parables of nature and providence, Spurgeon noted, "I remember well, how once God preached to me by a similitude in the depth of winter." Like his own soul in the midst of its struggle, the earth had been black, and there was scarcely a green thing or a flower to be seen. He could see over the landscape nothing but blackness, bareness, leaflessness—deadness wherever one looked. And then, that morning, "On a sudden God spake and unlocked the treasures of the snow, and white flakes descended until there was no blackness to be seen, and all was one sheet of dazzling whiteness." That was the time he was "seeking the Saviour, and it was then I found him." He remembered the sermon in the snow that said "Come now, and let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as snow, though they be red

like crimson they shall be whiter than wool." ⁷⁴ On that day his poor black soul was covered with the spotless purity of the Son of God.

The text used by the preacher seemed an inexhaustible gold mine of riches for gospel issues. The first Sabbath morning of 1856 fell on the day of Spurgeon's conversion six years before. Understandably, he preached on Isaiah 45:22 and entitled the sermon "Sovereignty and Salvation." He began, "Six years ago, today, as near as possible at this very hour of the day, I was 'in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity,' but had yet, by divine grace, been led to feel the bitterness of that bondage and to cry out by reason of the soreness of its slavery." In a fruitless quest for rest, Spurgeon "stepped within the house of God and sat there—afraid to look upward—lest I should be utterly cut off and lest His fierce wrath should consume me." The preacher for the day rose in his pulpit and read his text, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else." Briefly, Spurgeon retold the event in a poignant sentence: "I looked that moment; the grace of faith was vouchsafed to me in the self-same instant." Spurgeon could "never forget that day while memory holds its place", nor could he help repeating the text that was the means of his saving knowledge of God. "How wonderfully and marvelously kind," he marveled, "that he who heard these words so little time ago for his own soul's profit,

should now address you this morning, as his hearers, from the same text." He held a confident hope that "some poor sinner within these walls may hear the glad tidings of salvation for himself also and may today, on this 6th of January,

be 'turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God.'" ⁷⁵ As the twenty-two-year-old Spurgeon recounted the moment in which the preacher shouted for him to look, he stated, "I looked that moment; the grace was

vouchsafed to me in the self-same instant; and now I think I can say with truth,

Ere since by faith I saw the stream

His flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love has been my theme,

And shall be till I die. 76

Later that year, in September, preaching out of doors before ¹²,000 people on the subject of "Heaven and Hell," Spurgeon closed with his personal testimony as a compelling call to escape hell and be found in heaven. He began with a narrative of the severity of his conviction, "when my sins first stared me in the face. I thought myself the most accursed of all men." Though he had not committed great and open transgressions against God, he knew that he had sinned against much greater light than others and therefore "I thought my sins were thus greater than other people's." Cries for mercy were met with doubts of God's willingness to pardon him. "Month after month," he told, "I cried to God, but He did not hear me and I knew not what it was to be saved." He wished to die, but the remembrance of the worse world that awaited halted any action that would make him meet his Maker unprepared. God is a "most heartless tyrant," he thought, "because He did not answer my prayer." Then he would recall that hell he deserved and that to be sent there would be just. In this personal narrative, Spurgeon summarized the sermon's emphasis on the rightness of God's judgment in assigning hell as the destination of sinners. In that state of mind he "stepped into a place of worship and saw a tall thin man step into the pulpit—I have never seen him from that day and probably never shall, till we meet in Heaven." The man opened his Bible and "read with a feeble voice, 'Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God and beside Him there is none else.' Ah," Spurgeon continued, "I am one of the ends of the earth. And then, turning round and fixing his gaze on me, as if he knew me, the minister said, 'Look, look, look.' Why, I thought I had a great deal to DO, but I found it was only to LOOK. I thought I had a garment to spin out for myself—but I found that if I looked Christ would give me a garment." Then to those standing in the twilight hour of evening, having just moments prior endured Spurgeon's ferocious description of God's vengeance standing over

them with all of creation consenting to this glorious display of wrath, Spurgeon called, as he had heard his converting evangelist call, "Look, sinner—that is to

be saved. Look unto Him all you ends of the earth and be saved." ⁷⁷ Speaking on justification in 1857, Spurgeon asked, "Oh! Have you ever seen the justified man when he is first justified?" He reminded them of how often he had spoken of his own first realization of pardon through the blood of Christ. "I had been sad and miserable for months, and even years; but when I once received the message, 'Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth,' verily, I could have leapt for joy of heart; I felt that I understood that text, 'The mountains and hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of

the field shall clap their hands.'" ⁷⁸ When the Metropolitan Tabernacle first opened its doors for worship and its pulpit for preaching, Spurgeon again used his testimony to close a service. On Easter Sunday, at the end of the first week of inaugural services, Spurgeon preached on "Temple Glories," and closed the sermon with a simple gospel presentation, saying, "I do not think that on this first occasion I can do it better

than by simply telling the story of how I was brought to Christ myself." ⁷⁹ The basic outline as well as outcome is the same in each telling but each has emphases relevant to the context of preaching and each gives nuances of details that might be passed over in some other rendition. In this one Spurgeon included a memorable part of the preacher's exhortation, "Do not look to the Father to know whether you are elected or not, you shall find that out afterwards; look to me; look to Christ. Do not look to God the Holy Spirit to know whether he had called you or not; that you shall discover by-and-by. Look unto Jesus Christ; and then he went on in his own simple way to put it thus: – Look unto me; I am sweating great drops of blood for you; look unto me, I am scourged and spit upon; I am nailed to the cross, I die, I am buried, I rise and ascend, I am pleading

before the Father's throne, and all this for you." ⁸⁰ The man looked under the gallery and said, "Young man, you are very miserable." Spurgeon admitted that he was but that he was not accustomed to public remarks made about it. "Ah!, and you will always be miserable if you don't do as my text tells you; that is, look to Christ." Spurgeon, at that moment, stood in the newly finished, beautifully appointed, aesthetically enchanting Metropolitan Tabernacle "to preach in this great building the self-same gospel in the same simple tones.

Sinners, look to Christ and be saved." ⁸¹ Though much has been made of the intricate net of providence that brought about all the details of Spurgeon's moment of looking for life, and although efforts to specify the name of the preacher on that snowy day have met with

frustration, and even doubt has been cast on the accuracy of Spurgeon's recollection of the date, he was abundantly clear in his immediate response that the work was the culmination of a lifetime of nurture in gospel-truth from his mother. On May ¹, two days before his baptism, Spurgeon testified, "You, my Mother, have been the great means in God's hand of rendering me what I hope I am." He recalled the "kind, warning Sabbath-evening addresses" that were "too deeply settled on my heart to be forgotten." Her consistent admonitions "prepared the way for the preached Word, and for that holy book, The Rise and

Progress." ⁸² Through her influence he was ready to follow his Savior not only into the water but into the fire. "I love you as the preacher to my heart of such

courage," he confided, and called her his "praying, watching Mother." ⁸³ The years did not diminish his conviction that "the solemn words of my good mother," the straightforward, earnest and specific application of biblical verses to his spiritual condition finally culminated in his conversion. After applying a verse-by-verse explanation of the Bible to each child, she would read from Alleine's Alarm or Baxter's Call and pry into the conscience of each with questions about how long they would linger in their unconverted state before seeking Christ. At her prayer she would plead for their souls; on one occasion she closed, "Now, Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance that they perish, and my soul must bear witness against them at the day of judgment if they lay not hold of Christ." Those words, that vision of a mother bearing witness against him, so Spurgeon testified, "pierced my

conscience, and stirred my heart." ⁸⁴ The event laid the foundation for a story Spurgeon told very early in his ministry in a sermon entitled "Heaven and Hell", based on Matthew 8:11-12. In the Autobiography, this anecdote focuses on a prayer at the end of an evening of family worship; in the sermon, it is told as a dream that a mother had and shared with her children. It would be quite easy for both accounts to be true and complementary, giving a more detailed picture of how that memorable evening unfolded that so framed Spurgeon's conscience about his culpability. "That was a dreadful dream," Spurgeon began the illustration, "which a pious mother once

had, and told to her children."

She thought the judgment day was come. The great books were opened. They all stood before God.

And Jesus Christ said, "Separate the chaff from the wheat; put the goats on the left hand, and the sheep

on the right." The mother dreamed that she and her children were standing just in the middle of the

great assembly. And the angel came, and said, "I must take the mother, she is a sheep: she must go to

the right hand. The children are goats: they must go on the left."

She thought as she went, her children clutched her, and said, "Mother, can we

part? Must we be separated?" She then put her arms around them, and seemed to say, "My children, I would, if possible, take you with me." But in a moment the angel touched her; her cheeks were dried, and now, overcoming natural affection, being rendered supernatural and sublime, resigned to God's will, she said, "My children, I taught you well, I trained you up, and you forsook the ways of God; and now all I have to say is, Amen to your condemnation." Thereupon they were snatched away, and she saw them in perpetual torment, while she was in heaven. Young man, what will you think, when the last day comes, to hear Christ say, "Depart, ye cursed?" and there will be a voice just behind him, saying, Amen. And, as you inquire whence comes the voice, you will find it was

your mother. ⁸⁵ How could one so well schooled in the details of the gospel be so long in such turmoil over the way of salvation? Carlile remarked about this puzzling phenomenon: "Poor boy, brought up upon books of devotion: Dr. Doddridge's Life and Progress of Religion in the Soul, Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and

yet, not knowing the way. In truth the wind bloweth where it listeth." ⁸⁶ Spurgeon applied the doctrines of total depravity and effectual call to his own experience. In one of his earliest books, The Saint and His Saviour, the first chapter begins with an autobiographical recounting of the advantages of his childhood against which he sinned. "It would not be easy for some of us to recall the hour when we first heard the name of Jesus." He goes on, "In very infancy that sweet sound was a familiar to our ear as the hush of lullaby." He recalled the early impressions of church attendance, family worship, the Bible, hymnsinging, and fervent prayer. Visiting preachers often prayed invoking blessings on his young life, while at the end of such prayer he heard his mother's "Amen," thankful that her only "Amen" was not in confirmation of his condemnation. In spite of all this, being born in sin and shapen in iniquity, "These heavenly privileges did not of themselves avail to give us love to Jesus and pardon by his blood." Spurgeon concluded from his experience of privilege coupled with unbelief that he was a witness to the "fact of innate depravity, the birth-plague of man; and we can testify to the doctrine that grace, and grace alone, can change

the heart." ⁸⁷ The theology with which he interpreted his conversion, that is, the dependence on sovereign grace, was not the contrivance of years of reading and contemplation, but an immediate response to his early training as he reflected on the event. Three months after his conversion he told his father, "This faith is far more than any of us deserve; all beyond hell is mercy, but this is a mighty one.

Were it not all of sovereign, electing, almighty grace, I, for one, could never

hope to be saved. God says, 'You shall,' and not all the devils in hell, let loose upon a real Christian, can stop the workings of God's sovereign grace, for in due

time the Christian cries, 'I will.'" ⁸⁸ He had heard the gospel from his mother, his father, his grandfather, he had read the Bible and many good books; still, however, "when the Word of the Lord came to me with power, it was as new as if I had lived among the unvisited tribes of Central Africa, and had never heard the tidings of the cleansing fountain filled with blood, drawn from the Saviour's veins." Again he states, "It came to me as a new revelation, as fresh as if I had never read in Scripture that Jesus was declared to be the propitiation for sins that God might be just." ⁸⁹

A Paradigm of Grace

This experience remained fresh all of his ministry and gave an instant source for illustration or explanation of an experiential issue concerning a doctrine or text.

Spurgeon was filled to the brim and overflowing with the divine reality of the work of the Trinity for a sinner's salvation, for he knew its truths from divine revelation in Scripture and personal regeneration. His unbearable rebellion and convictions ever loomed horrendously potent. In a message entitled "A Visit to Christ's Hospital," he recounted the pain of recalling "when I was in this way myself; when I poor fool, because of my transgressions and my iniquities was sorely bowed in spirit. By day I thought of the punishment of my sin; by night I

dreamed of it." ⁹⁰ In "The Garment of Praise" Spurgeon described his own rebellion as defiance of the most irrational sort. How could he, he reasoned, "a creature that God has made, which he could crush as easily as a moth, have dared to live in enmity to him for many years"? When told of God's great love,

Spurgeon "turned on [his] heel and rejected it." ⁹¹ He was able to describe in

detail the mental anguish of an awakened mourner, for

I have felt the same, that all hope that you shall be saved is taken away, and that you are utterly

prostrate.... I know what I am saying, that next to the torment of hell itself, there is but one sorrow

which is more severe than that of a broken and a contrite spirit that trembles at God's word, but does

not dare to suck comfort out of it. The bitterness of remorse and despair is worse; but yet it is

unspeakable heart-breaking to bow at the mercy seat, and to fear that no answer will ever come; to lie

at the feet of Jesus, but to be afraid to look up to him for salvation. 92

He illustrated the desperate measures that a sinner in search of an eased conscience will take if hope may be found. He dashes pride to the ground, loses his sectarian spirit, and yearns for the place that he might find solace. "I know it was so with me," Spurgeon emphasized; "I never thought of going to the despised chapel where I was first brought to know the Lord, but it snowed so hard that I could not go to a more respectable place." Once in, Spurgeon related how the blessed message that his conscience craved reached him. "When I got in, the preacher read his text—'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' It was a blessed text and blessedly applied: but if there had been any

stickling as to going into places, I should not have been there." ⁹³ Such distress on the part of a seeking sinner is itself an element of effectual calling. None would so earnestly grasp for forgiveness, in its real sense, but those in whom a divine work is proceeding. Again his experience illustrates the

beautiful contours of the biblical doctrine.

I believe God was at work with my heart for years before I knew anything about him. I knew there was

a work; I knew I prayed, and cried, and groaned for mercy, but I did not know that was the Lord's

work; I half thought it was my own. I did not know till afterwards, when I was led to know Christ as

all my salvation, and all my desire, that the Lord had called the child, for this could not have been the

result of nature, it must have been the effect of grace. 94

Just as vivid in its presence, however, stood the reality of the moment of acceptance. It could be the same for any awakened sinner. "My soul melts in gratitude when I think of the infinite mercy of God to me in the hour when I

came seeking mercy at his hands. Oh! Why will you not also come?" ⁹⁵ That mourning can be turned to joy is proven in his experience of deliverance. "Some of us can never forget the hour of our great deliverance, it was the day of our espousals, the time of love, and it must for ever remain as the beginning of days

unto us." ⁹⁶ That the years did not tend to exaggerate Spurgeon's interpretation of the clarity that comes to the mind about spiritual issues at conversion may be seen from a letter written to his father just three weeks after he looked to Jesus, and lived. Using the language of the senses, Spurgeon marveled that he "should have been so long time blind to those celestial wonders, which now I can in a measure behold!" He wanted to speak freely and unceasingly of the love of Jesus that "has opened mine eyes," and allowed him to say, "Now I see Him, I can firmly trust to Him for my eternal salvation." When he doubted, God renewed his faith and gave him confidence of his saving interest in Christ. He felt he could "give up everything for Christ," but even that would be nothing of a return in comparison to the love of Jesus. "How sweet is prayer!" he could say and lament any tendency to neglect it; "I would be always engaged in it." Moreover, "How beautiful is the Bible! I never loved it so before; it seems to me as necessary food." Such radical change in perception, such genuine knowledge, Spurgeon believed, could never have come without the Spirit's granting of life. ⁹⁷

A Baptist Baptism

One of the earliest fruits of his God-centered and Bible-centered transformation was a conscientious conviction about public profession of union with Christ.

Spurgeon wrote his mother, "I should like to be always reading my Bible," which pleased her much, but the practice led him also to desire the kind of baptism pictured and practiced in the New Testament, a conclusion that confused her. His father and grandfather did not practice believers' baptism, why should he differ from them? The only thing that drove him to this divergence was the necessity of initiating his Christian life by punctilious obedience to revealed truth, as he saw it. "From the Scriptures," an auspicious assertion of foundation, "is it not apparent that, immediately upon receiving the Lord Jesus, it is a part of duty openly to profess Him?" Yes, and how? "I firmly believe and consider that baptism is the command of Christ, and shall not feel quite comfortable if I do not

receive it." ⁹⁸ Spurgeon had developed this conviction earlier, before his conversion, and now followed that early commitment to be baptized as a believer. At Maidstone, under the influence of his Anglican teacher, he had concluded that infant baptism had no support in the Bible. The Bible makes faith a prerequisite to baptism, so his teacher argued, but Independents baptize infants without faith. Anglicans, however, baptize infants with a sponsor that pledges faith for them. The young Spurgeon did not quite follow that logic and concluded that the Anglican was partially right and, therefore, wholly wrong.

Should he ever be converted, he resolved, he would experience the ordinance in obedience to Scripture on the basis of his own faith, not that of another. In February he wrote his mother, "Conscience has convinced me that it is a duty to be buried with Christ in baptism, although I am sure it constitutes no part of

salvation." ⁹⁹ In April, Spurgeon became a member of the Congregational church in Newmarket, writing his father with the news, "You will be pleased to hear that, last Thursday night, I was admitted as a member." This privilege came through some real determination on his part because the pastor had refused to meet with him and thus avoided the issue of membership until Spurgeon himself proposed that he be received at a church meeting. Even at that, he refused to participate in communion because he still was exercised in conscience about the issue of baptism, believing that he should not partake of the ordinance of union with the church until he had publicly submitted to the ordinance of union with Christ. He had come to believe that baptism must precede participation in the Lord's Supper: "I did not sit down at the Lord's table, and cannot in conscience do so until I am baptised." He allowed others freedom of conscience to do as they saw

fit, but for him it would be "to tumble over the wall, since I feel persuaded it is

Christ's appointed way of professing Him." ¹⁰⁰ Spurgeon had learned of a Baptist minister at Isleham named W. W. Cantlow.

He had requested baptism from him, Cantlow had consented, but now Spurgeon awaited the permission of his parents. "As Mr Cantlow's baptising season will come round this month," he reminded his father, "I have humbly to beg your consent, as I will not act against your will." His father might have felt that Spurgeon's strong conviction on this point indicated too much trust in a form of baptism. Spurgeon assured him that he hated the idea of baptismal regeneration, did not entertain it for a moment concerning himself, but only wanted to follow his conscientious belief that the New Testament taught the immersion of believers only. His father's answer was slow in coming. As the date for communion got nearer, Charles wrote an urgent letter to his mother soliciting her intervention in case his father was hardening against his son's wishes. "I have every morning looked for a letter from Father," making no attempt to hide his anxiety over this; "I long for an answer; it is now a month since I have had one from him. Do, if you please, send me either permission or refusal to be baptized;

I have been kept in painful suspense." ¹⁰¹ This deference toward parents Spurgeon recalled in a sermon on baptism he preached in 1890. "I remember in my own case, my parents not believing in the baptism of believers, and I, being between fifteen and sixteen years of age, thought it my duty to consult my father and mother, and ask their counsel and advice." He felt that this was the right thing to do in his case, since he did not expect them "to see with me, but I did expect them to give me their loving concurrence, which they did." He believed that in such a case other young people should do the same, though obedience to the Lord in this matter is always

of urgent necessity. ¹⁰² His father gave Charles permission to follow his own conscience on the matter, but could not embrace that conviction himself. When he served as honorary Chair of a meeting of the Metropolitan Tabernacle at the festivities opening the building in 1861, he said, "I rejoice there is so much harmony between us, even though we may differ, perhaps, in some points of view." By that he meant baptism for, pointing to the baptistery he continued, "I do not see clearly into this water before me, but if I did I would go down and be baptized at once." He then surveyed the crowd and urged them, "If there are any friends here tonight who have duly weighed this matter, and feel that Christ has commanded you to follow him there, it is your sin if you live another week without it." ¹⁰³

On May ³, 1850, his mother's birthday, Spurgeon walked eight miles with Mr. Cantlow to Isleham Ferry on the river Lark. The river divides Suffolk from Cambridgeshire. There he was baptized along with two young ladies. The first baptism recorded at Isleham occurred in 1798 when Andrew Fuller baptized a father and his son and three others. The day of Spurgeon's baptism was cool and the gusty wind made the elements of baptism startling and bracing. One of the aides had started a peat fire for warmth and onlookers stood in boats and on the ferry and on the bank. Spurgeon describes the thoroughly solemn joy he

experienced.

The wind blew down the river with a cutting blast, as my turn came to wade into the flood, but after I

had walked a few steps, and noted the people on the ferry-boats, and in boats, and on either shore, I felt

as if Heaven, and earth, and hell, might all gaze upon me, for I was not ashamed, there and then, to

own myself a follower of the Lamb. My timidity was washed away; it floated down the river into the

sea, and must have been devoured by the fishes, for I have never felt anything of the kind since.

Baptism also loosed my tongue, and from that day it has never been quiet. I lost a thousand fears in

that River Lark, and found that "in keeping his commandments there is great reward." 104

The story has been told often, and as true it bears repeating. Spurgeon's mother remarked that when she prayed the Lord would convert her eldest son, she did not request that he would become a Baptist. Young Spurgeon replied, "Ah, mother! The Lord has answered your prayer with His usual bounty, and given

you exceeding abundantly above what you asked or thought." ¹⁰⁵ All of these events came back vividly to Spurgeon twenty-eight years later when he received a note from the vicar of Isleham that W. W. Cantlow had died.

He reminisced, "We shall never forget rising early that morning at break of day for prayer, and then walking along the lonely country road in quiet meditation from Newmarket to Isleham to the house of Mr. Cantlow." Spurgeon recalled his kindly smile and the holy delight he exhibited when he welcomed the youth "who desired to confess his Lord in the Scriptural fashion." Cantlow encouraged him with many loving words. There in the vestry, for the first time, Spurgeon opened his mouth in prayer in a congregation of adults. "In the extremely gentle and cordial companionship of the pastor we spent a very happy evening, which we recollect was very cold, so that a peat fire, whose white appearance we still

remember, was needed to warm the room." ¹⁰⁶ Cantlow had been pastor of the congregation for thirty-two years when feebleness made him step down to be succeeded, in an unusual providence, by a student from Spurgeon's College, J.

A. Wilson. ¹⁰⁷ This reminder of Cantlow also inflamed Spurgeon's resolute clarity on baptism. "We wish that all other believers were led to make a serious point of

commencing their visible connection with the church by the ordinance which symbolizes death to the world, burial with Christ, and resurrection to newness of life." Reliving that experience, Spurgeon pictured the "open stream, the crowded banks, and the solemn plunge" which continued to operate as a "spur to duty and a seal of consecration." He wanted no controversy on that point for "he who first saved me, afterwards accepted me, spirit, soul, and body, as his servant, in token whereof this mortal frame was immersed beneath the wave." That outward sign continued to serve to "bring vividly before the mind and heart the spiritual meaning, and therefore is it dearly loved, for his sake who both ordained the

ordinance and himself submitted to it." ¹⁰⁸ Christ's own submission to baptism prompted one of Spurgeon's special visits during his Roman holiday in 1871. Going to a catacomb outside the walls of Rome he descended deep into the ground where eight paths converged. Seven were closed but the one he came particularly to see held just what he had desired —a baptistery. He described it as "full of sweet, clear, running water and about four feet deep." A fresco was painted above it of Jesus standing up to his waist in the water with John the Baptist having placed his hand on Jesus' head.

Spurgeon explained the posture as indicating that Christ was to be immersed. "He was not pouring the water on him. Here we stood, and prayed to the blessed one into whose Name we had been buried by baptism. It was a solemn moment."

109

The spiritual power of obedience to the command and example of baptism had an immediate impact on Spurgeon. His Autobiography, under the oversight of Susannah, contains a diary that encircles his baptism, a three-month period of deep spiritual contemplation and comments on his daily activities. He gave it to Susannah soon after their marriage for her safe keeping; he never wanted to see

it again. ¹¹⁰ Its dated entries run from April ⁶ through June ²⁰, 1850. On the day of his baptism he wrote, "Blest pool! Sweet emblem of my death to all the world! May I, henceforward, live alone for Jesus!" Other words of devotion were followed with a vow: "I vow to glory alone in Jesus and His cross, and to spend my life in the extension of His cause, in whatsoever way He pleases. I desire to be sincere in this solemn profession, having but one object in view, and that to glorify God." Then, as an immediate recognition of the only power that could enable fidelity to such a vow, Spurgeon's white heat of excitement erupted in praise and prayer: "Blessing upon Thy name that Thou hast supported me through the day; it is Thy strength alone that could do this. Thou hast—Thou wilt. Thou hast enabled me to profess Thee, help me now to honour Thee, and carry out my profession, and live the life of Christ on earth!" ¹¹¹

Charles the Baptist

Spurgeon did not become a member of the church at Isleham, probably because of the difficulty of attending due to distance. He continued with the Independent congregation in Newmarket and partook of the Lord's Supper for the first time

on May ⁵, "a royal feast for me, worthy of a King's son." ¹¹² His days filled up tightly with class, study, and tract work and his diary filled up with rapidly maturing expressions of spiritual perception combined with theological application. One finds in these months the kinds of thought directed toward himself and his early Christian pilgrimage that colored his sermons for the next forty-two years. He confessed his own lukewarmness and lamented the "joking and levity" in a Sunday School teachers' meeting. After hearing a sermon on 1 Corinthians 4:7 he reflected, "Truly, I have nothing which I have not received; I can boast of no inherent righteousness. Had the Lord not chosen me, I should not have chosen Him." The whole transaction of divine initiative never lost its glow for Spurgeon. "Grace! Grace! Grace! 'Tis all of grace. I can do nothing, I am less than nothing, yet what a difference—once a slave of hell, now the son of the

God of Heaven! Help me to walk worthy of my lofty and exalted vocation!" ¹¹³ His abiding sense of divine sovereignty so engulfed his soul that he could not pass a day of diary entry without an energetic burst of adoration of divine wisdom and mercy. His ability to apply these truths so gracefully and naturally in his preaching emerged out of the depth of his personal persuasion of their saving operation in his own case. "The Lord has visited me from on high.

Rejoice, O my soul, leap for joy, renew thy strength; run, run, in the name of the Lord!" he wrote on May ¹⁹. "Free grace, sovereign love, eternal security are my safeguards; what shall keep me from consecrating all to Thee, even to the last drop of my blood?," he asked on May ²⁵. He confided to his diary on May ²⁹, "How happy am I to be one of His chosen, His elect, in whom His soul delighteth.... Make me Thy faithful servant, O my God; may I honour Thee in my day and generation, and be consecrated for ever to Thy service!" The next to the last dated entry was on June ¹⁹, his birthday, when he noted that his true life

began only at his conversion.

My birthday. Sixteen years have I lived upon this earth, and yet I am only six months old! I am very

young in grace. Yet how much time have I wasted, dead in trespasses and sins, without life, without

God, in the world! What a mercy that I did not perish in my sin! How glorious is my calling, how

exalted my election, born of the Lord—regenerate! Help me more than ever to walk worthily, as

becomes a saint! 114

In an undated addition, near the end of the manuscript, Spurgeon penned a

prayer that distilled the nature of his pastoral ministry, soon to be inaugurated. "May I know the joy and have the faith of God's elect; may I rejoice in free sovereign grace, saving me from the guilt and power of sin! Grace is a glorious theme, above the loftiest flights of the most soaring angel, or the most exalted conceptions of one of the joint-heirs with Jesus." He closed the paragraph with a statement of the confidence that sustained him in the fulfillment of his closing request. "All power is God's, and all is engaged to protect and preserve me. Let me have my daily grace, peace and comfort, zeal and love, give me some work,

and give me strength to do it to Thy glory!" ¹¹⁵ When Spurgeon went to Cambridge in the autumn, he joined the St. Andrew's Street Baptist Church there. Drummond states that Robert Hall served as pastor

when Spurgeon joined, ¹¹⁶ but surely he meant to say that Spurgeon joined the church once served by Robert Hall. Hall served the church from 1791 to 1806 and died in 1831, three years before Spurgeon's birth. Another who served the church was Robert Robinson. Both Robinson and Hall were considered among the intelligentsia of English clergy. Robinson's reputation for orthodoxy declined in his last years and he died claimed by the Unitarians. Hall's theology started with a degree of suspicion and moved in a more orthodox direction. He was noted as one of the greatest orators of the English pulpit and among the most formidable advocates of civil liberty in the history of the English nation.

When Spurgeon joined St. Andrew's Street Baptist Church he wrote his mother

about the excellent preaching of Mr. Roffe. ¹¹⁷ In a letter to his father he remarked, "The Baptists are by far the most respectable denomination in

Cambridge." ¹¹⁸ Early in October he wrote his mother about the fellowship at the church in Cambridge. "I have found a great many Christian friends; last Sunday I had two invitations to tea. I went to the house of Mr. Watts, a coal merchant, and spent the time very happily. We read round with the children, and it seemed

just like home-days." ¹¹⁹ This Mr. Watts probably was the person that Spurgeon hailed as brother after a communion service and received the response, "You have the advantage of me.... I don't know what you mean." When Spurgeon reminded him that they had just taken communion together and he meant it, the man was rebuked gently and amused at the forthrightness of the sixteen-year-old Spurgeon. A friendly conversation resulted in an invitation to tea and eventually a standing invitation for every week.

Spurgeon had unshakeable Baptist convictions. He said, "I became a Baptist through reading the New Testament—especially in the Greek." Baptism was an ordinance of Christ, specifically commanded by him, a token to the believer of cleansing, "the emblem of his burial with his Lord, and the outward avowal of

his new birth." ¹²⁰ Though he refused to be rigidly sectarian in attitude, Spurgeon wanted to leave no doubt that he followed the Lord's command openly. He gloried in Anglicans such as Whitefield and Toplady, embraced certain aspects of the experiential religion of Methodist Wesley, highly respected the Congregational Independents and the old Puritans, found much to admire and emulate in the Scottish Presbyterians, read widely in both Luther and Calvin, and found the Dutch Orthodox very edifying in much of what they wrote. In 1853, in fact, he wrote a letter to his uncle encouraging him to be baptized at a baptism he was holding at Waterbeach on October ¹⁹. He said in his ingenuous style, "I should like to see my uncle following his Master in the water. I am almost afraid to mention the subject lest anyone should charge me with giving it undue prominence." To put a punctuation mark on his wide affections he emphasized near the close, "I wish to live in unity with every believer, whether Calvinist, Arminian, Churchman, Independent, or Wesleyan; and though I firmly believe they are tottering, I do not like them well enough to prop them up by my

wrangling at them." ¹²¹ Almost three decades later he still would testify after having been chastened for his "undenominational" remarks at a Ragged-school meeting consisting of Bible teachers from several church affiliations, "The whole truth is dear to us; bodies of men formed into denominations cannot enslave us so as to make us prefer them to the truth of God, or confine our Christian love within lines which are faint indeed compared with the life of the

Spirit, whereby the saints are made one in Christ." ¹²² None of their doctrines or practices that he endorsed, however, contradicted the doctrinal foundation of Baptists. He agreed with the Particular Baptist confessional history and defended Baptist views of the church until his death. In his Autobiography he wrote very

candidly.

If I thought it wrong to be a Baptist, I should give it up, and become what I believed to be right. The

particular doctrine adhered to by Baptists is that they acknowledge no authority unless it comes from

the Word of God. They attach no importance to the authority of the Fathers—they care not for the

authority of the mothers—if what they say does not agree with the teaching of the Evangelists,

Apostles, and Prophets, and most of all, with the teaching of the Lord Himself. If we could find infant

baptism in the Word of God, we should adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would

take away from us that reproach which is attached to us—that we are odd, and do not as other people

do. But we have looked well through the Bible, and cannot find it, and do not believe that it is there;

nor do we believe that others can find infant baptism in the Scriptures, unless they themselves first put

it there. 123

Spurgeon's commitment to baptism by immersion never wavered; every opportunity to espouse the view, he took. Book reviews, baptismal days in the Tabernacle, numerous articles against any aspect of ritualism—all these

provided opportunities for defense of baptism of believers only by immersion. In a strongly positive review of The Theology of Consolation; or, an account of many old writings and writers on that subject, Spurgeon nevertheless took exception to some harsh treatment that the writer dealt to John Gill and himself on the issue of baptism. "We are sorry," Spurgeon began, "that the author should, in writing of Dr. Gill, have grown so angry about his distinctive Baptist principles as to go out of his way and make it the occasion of a savage attack upon the worthy doctor and ourselves." The writer, Rev. D. C. A. Agnew, was upset that Gill in the past, and Spurgeon in the present, included even in some otherwise helpful consolatory material "a vein of insinuation against all Christians who practice infant baptism." Spurgeon gave a gentle reminder that "in a commentary written by a member of the sect of the Baptists, it is quite seemly and honourable to bring forward before the eyes of hearers, not unprepared for the charge, and in connection with all relevant texts of Scripture, a full and reiterated detail of the commentator's baptismal theory, and its practical application." Agnew resented the unseemly and "unmanly style of warfare" that involved the insertion of "that ritualistic theory before the bewildered eye" of readers earnestly seeking devotional encouragement in eternal realities. Giving only a little slack to the tether on his amazing ability at ironic ridicule, Spurgeon responded, "Of course there is nothing unseemly and unmanly in thus dragging in an attack upon ourselves in a brief sketch of Dr. Gill and his work. Nothing unseemly and unmanly in calling what is to the Baptist a solemn spiritual ordinance a 'ritualistic theory.' Why this sensitiveness to our speaking out our principles as he speaks out his? And if so confident of the truth

of his own teaching on Baptism, why grow so wrathful about ours?" ¹²⁴ To an extended defense of infant baptism filled with ad hominem ridicule of the Baptist defense of believers' baptism, Spurgeon concluded, "The Pedobaptists, we fear, will hardly thank Mr. Malcolm for really demonstrating that their cause is indefensible, and that our position is simply impregnable. The more the subject

is agitated the better for us." ¹²⁵ Spurgeon, in fact, seemed to think that other evangelicals, particularly those of the paedobaptist type, needed the watchful eye of Baptists. "We fear," he stated, "that the tradition of infant sprinkling has a distinct tendency to foster

sacramentarian views of an almost Popish character." ¹²⁶ He stated this after pointing out a poem illustrating the purpose of infant sprinkling in a manual by Robert Steele expounding the Westminster Shorter Catechism. He asked his

Presbyterian readers to assure him that they did not believe the following verses.

Sprinkle, sprinkle now,

Blessed Saviour thou!

From thy white hands sweetest water

On this little baby daughter;

On her fair brow Sprinkle, sprinkle thou!

Not by works of right

Sin-stained souls come white;

Not till thou from pit abysmal

Raise them, and with wave baptismal

Wash them clean and bright,

Sin-stained souls come white. 127

Spurgeon did not want his love for evangelicals broadly and those that embraced the doctrines of grace particularly to be interpreted as a willingness to dissipate the strength of his conviction about baptism.

Wayland Hoyt presented Spurgeon as a true Baptist to the American audience hungry for any word about Spurgeon. "Mr. Spurgeon was a Baptist," he assured them. "He believed that the New Testament read toward the Baptist faith. He had little patience with the great irregularity and looseness which play such havoc amid too many churches called Baptist on the other side of the water." He admitted that Spurgeon was "not one with us in the practice of restricted communion," but took solace that "he was utterly one with us in a persistent demand for immersion as a prerequisite to church membership." Hoyt made the portrait even more pleasing by confiding to his readers, "Talking with him on, I think, the last day I ever saw him, he said to me that were he a pastor in this

country, he should not clash with our practice of restricted communion." ¹²⁸ What he evidently consented to in a private conversation, Spurgeon never indicated sympathy for in public. He started with a commitment to open communion and practiced it, no reservations evident throughout his ministry, and no hesitations to state publicly that he differed with his more strict Baptist brethren.

The spirit of Baptist independence governed only by Scripture and not subject to human regulations Spurgeon also protected and noted with pleasure. In a review of a book about the Methodist class system, Spurgeon expressed hope that such instruction would continue to be helpful to the "young and halfinstructed." As a principle, however, "to make a cast-iron rule for all is a stretch of authority for which we can imagine no apology." Then with an undercurrent of denominational pride, Spurgeon remarked, "We are sure that no congregation of Baptists would ever submit to the class-system of Methodists; our people are both too good and too bad to be so readily controlled; they are too fond of freedom, and perhaps too little amenable to discipline." Then, as a commendation of a bit of this good freedom to the Methodists, Spurgeon issued

a gentle admonition and word of counsel to his Methodist brethren: "calm consideration, candid judgment, deliberate action, and profound regard both for

Scripture and the consciences of good men." ¹²⁹ The Reformation was established on Scripture and conscience, and Baptists had constructed a theology and ecclesiology more radically consistent with both, in Spurgeon's way of looking at it, than any other Protestant group. He gloried in every gift given to the church catholic through all his beloved evangelical heirs of Reformation theology and Puritan devotion, but he could be nothing but a Baptist.

The Child is Father of the Man

Immediately upon his conversion Spurgeon began manifesting several characteristics that would be prominent throughout his entire Christian pilgrimage.

First, he interpreted his life and all its events, his emotions, and reactions in theological terms. He saw everything in light of the divine purpose and measured his response externally and internally in light of biblical doctrine.

Second, his clear conviction concerning the doctrines of grace and God's covenantal pursuit of his people alone gave security to the tender Christian conscience and guaranteed a harvest of souls in evangelism.

Third, while yearning for edification from the pulpit he continually gave close and critical observation to every aspect of the art of preaching.

Fourth, he engaged in evangelism through any means that came to his hand.

Fifth, he showed his tendency to sickness and despondency.

Sixth, he had a propensity for self-analysis that resulted in universalizing his personal experience as a canon of judgment in a variety of situations.

Seventh, he committed himself to a position of no-compromise with the destructive influence of modern thought, nineteenth-century liberalism.

Finally, his commitment to Scripture remained the final touchstone in all of these other traits and created a habit of independence of judgment that was startling, refreshing, maddening, perplexing, and enraging to his contemporary churchmen and Christian thinkers.

Concerning the first trait, Spurgeon's letters during the twenty-two months between his conversion and his call to the church at Waterbeach consistently weave transcendent purpose into the fabric of his daily actions. He wrote his mother on May ³, 1851, one year after his baptism reminding her that we should be aware of the secret operations of providence every day. We should know that natural things do not control our lives; our position in the covenantal purpose of God does. His mother's year in "the vast howling wilderness" was lived leaning "on the arm of your Beloved." No step should she wish to retrace, for "Glorious, wondrous, has been the grace shown to all of us, as members of the mystical body of Christ, in preservation, restraint from sin, constraint to holiness, and perseverance in the Christian state." His blessings today are pledges of blessings tomorrow and forbid one to think that he shall ever leave them. "Mark the providences of this year; how clearly have you seen His hand in things which others esteem chance! God, who has moved the world, has exercised His own vast heart and thought for you. All your life, your spiritual life, all things have worked together for good; nothing has gone wrong, for God has directed,

controlled all." He then quoted passages from Isaiah 40:27 proving that "we may

have confidence that we, His own people, are secure." ¹³⁰ Second, Spurgeon's commitment to the comforts bound up in the doctrines of divine sovereignty never faltered during these months and established a pattern for his discussions in years to come. A sickness that normally would have been accompanied by despondency left him encouraged rather than distressed because he was able to draw on the security of doctrinal truth. "Since last Thursday, I have been unwell in body," he told his father, "but I may say that my soul has been almost in Heaven." He had seen his title clear and knew that "sooner than one of God's little ones shall perish, God Himself will cease to be, Satan will conquer the King of kings, and Jesus will no longer be the Savior of the elect." If his Father ordains doubts and fears, he will "not dread to meet them" since, even above the temporal doubts of his people, "the foundation of the Lord standeth

sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His." ¹³¹ Third, Spurgeon could hardly conceal his passion for preaching and his frustration with bad preaching. Even before his baptism, he yearned for God to call him to preach. He loved his tract work, he coveted the times of spiritual conversation with his "tract people", and looked forward to greater usefulness. "How I long for the time when it may please God to make me, like you, my Father, a successful preacher of the gospel. I almost envy you your exalted

privilege." ¹³² In April 1850 he wrote his mother about the man that she heard preach regularly, "I often think of you poor starving creatures, following for the bony rhetoric and oratory which he gives you. What a mercy that you are not dependent upon him for spiritual comfort! I hope you will soon give up following that empty cloud without rain, that type-and-shadow preacher, for I

don't think there is much substance" ¹³³ In 1875, Spurgeon recalled, "Before I had ever entered a pulpit, the thought had occurred to me that I should one day preach sermons which would be printed." He read the printed sermons of Joseph

Irons and conceived that one day "I should have a penny pulpit of my own." ¹³⁴ His growing awareness of the compulsion to preach heightened the pressure on his conscience about the necessity of making public his faith in Christ by a public baptism. He wrote his mother on May ¹, two days before he went with Mr. Cantlow into the river Lark, before many witnesses, "I hope you may one day have cause to rejoice, should you see me, the unworthy instrument of God, preaching to others,—yet have I vowed in the strength of my only Strength, in the name of my Beloved, to devote myself for ever to His cause. Do you not think it would be a bad beginning were I, knowing it to be my duty to be baptized, to shrink from it?" ¹³⁵

Fourth, Spurgeon found his chief joy in the work of evangelism, the propagation of the gospel by tract or by word with the expectation that those words would become a link to eternal life for a perishing sinner. His younger brother, who would later become his assistant pastor, had made no profession of faith in Christ. Spurgeon sought to evangelize him through the mail. "Oh, that the God of mercy would incline Archer's heart to Him, and make him a partaker of His grace! Ask him if he will believe me when I say that one drop of the pleasure of religion is worth ten thousand oceans of the pleasures of the unconverted, and then ask him if he is not willing to prove the fact by

experience." ¹³⁶ "I think I never felt so much earnestness after the souls of my fellow-creatures as when I first loved the Saviour's name." He wrote texts of Scripture on slips of paper and dropped them anywhere. He carried tracts and handed them out on the street or dropped them from the window of a railway carriage. He confessed that some methods might have been imprudent but he wished always to have the zeal arising from a sense of pleasure in doing

anything to serve God. ¹³⁷ Fifth, a tender conscience combined with heightened desires for holiness led to frequent journeys through the slough of despond. A delicate physical condition responded negatively to this consistent upturn of emotional pressure and in turn exacerbated his tendency to depression. Frequently one finds his physical and mental distress coinciding. He often gave words to the clarity and severity with which he judged his sinful residue: On February ¹⁹, 1850 he wrote his mother that he had "been in the miry Slough of Despond." He told her that his grandfather had sought to bolster his spirits, "but is that what I want? Ought I not rather to be reproved for my deadness and coldness?" He prayed, heard and read, without doing any of them heartily but in "deadness and coldness." When he recovered from this bout with despondency, he described the extreme depth of it, as well as the remedy to escape it, a remedy that remained with him through his ministry, "In the blackest darkness I resolved that, if I never had another ray of comfort, and even if I was everlastingly lost, yet I would love Jesus, and endeavor to run in the way of His commandments: from the time that

I was enabled thus to resolve, all these clouds have fled." ¹³⁸ He always found action, filling his time with work for Jesus, to be the best remedy for despondency. Eventually, however, the load of work had the reverse effect and contributed to his sense of entrapment in the fog of an energy-less funk. Weeks, often months, of rest was the only thing that would do. Sometimes he begged his friends not to write him expecting a response or to ask him to speak. He had no energy for correspondence, nor enough spiritual reserve to go beyond that

demanded by the immediate responsibilities of the Tabernacle.

Sixth, at times Spurgeon's focus on himself startled even him. Interpretations of this trait have run from heightened self-centeredness to self-forgetfulness, a willingness to be bared and humiliated for the sake of others. Both his view of the radical nature of grace and the overwhelming perversity of sin found expression in self-analysis. "But," (say you,) "he keeps talking all about himself," he acknowledged in a letter. "True, he does; he cannot help it," he continued. "Self is too much his master." Then with a startling image, the kind that filled his sermons and writings, he lamented, "I am proud of my own ignorance; and, like a toad, bloated with my own venomous pride, proud of what I have not got, and boasting when I should be bemoaning." Whether sinful or mere spiritual transparency, one must become accustomed to Spurgeon on Spurgeon.

Seventh, Spurgeon's resolve against theological shift from the Puritan heritage, whom he considered the purest heirs of the Reformation, who were the purest heirs of Augustine, who was the purest [early] interpreter of Paul, never changed from the earliest days after his conversion. In November of 1850 he wrote his aunt and uncle, "Let the whole earth and even God's professing people, cast out my name as evil; my Lord and Master, He will not. I glory in the distinguishing grace of God, and will not, by the grace of God, step one inch from my principles, or think of adhering to the present fashionable sort of religion." He might be called a "tree-top antinomian" but he would endure the slander rather than endorse a covenant that was a mixture of works and grace, a strange combination something like linking a snail to an elephant, to use an image of Berridge. In his resolution never to be moved from truth, Spurgeon also recognized that a more desperate enemy still lurked in his heart. "May we be enabled to go on, brave as lions, and valiant for the truth and cause of King Jesus, and by the help of the Spirit, vow eternal warfare with every sin, and rest

not until the sword of the Spirit has destroyed all the enemies in our hearts." ¹³⁹ Finally, Spurgeon would bow to no authority but Scripture, that sword of the Spirit by which he would wage warfare, not only against the enemies of his heart and mind, but against the enemies of truth. Modern critical attitudes toward the Bible, in Spurgeon's view, were attacks upon the majesty of God himself. If the gospel, that most mysteriously profound and exhaustively godlike of all the works of the triune Jehovah, had commended itself by the work of the Spirit so perfectly to his deepest need and his most thorough knowledge of himself, then nothing in all of its pages could be untrue. Nothing in it could be unnecessary for communicating, and accomplishing, the full work of God for redemption. One that dared dismiss Scripture as erroneous in any part not only attacked the

veracity and reign of God, but slit his own throat, leaving himself without light from above to guide into the treacherous shoals of death regnant with the wrath of God apart from the ransom to which Scripture alone bears witness. It is the book that God wrote and to deny it is to charge him with error. Spurgeon, therefore, felt fully warranted to proclaim, "This is the book untainted by any

error!" but like its author was "pure unalloyed, perfect truth." ¹⁴⁰ Thus his own judgment was freed from the oppressiveness of human opinion and the shifting theologies of modern thought or even the inherited traditional theologies of the past. Augustine was right on many things, but wrong on some important ideas.

Calvin was unsurpassed as a theologian and expositor but transferred debilitating errors to his posterity. The Puritans were models as pastors and Christian thinkers, but held to some indefensible incongruities. Even his grandfather, his mother, and his father missed some of the plain truths of Scripture. Spurgeon loved them all, but departed from them all at points where Scripture set him free to do so. The Bible was his personal declaration of independence. The authority that pushed him beyond his parents in 1850 and that he preached in 1855, still

ruled him on the day he died in January 1892.

There is nothing in God's Bible which is not great. Did any of you ever sit down to see which was the

purest religion? "Oh," you say, "we never took the trouble. We went just where our father and mother

went." Ah, that is a profound reason, indeed! You went where your father and mother did. I thought

you were sensible people. I didn't think you went where other people pulled you, but went of your own

selves. I love my parents above all that breathe and the very thought that they believed a thing to be

true, helps me to think it is correct. But I have not followed them—I belong to a different

denomination—and I thank God I do. I can receive them as Christian Brothers and Sisters, but I never

thought that because they happened to be one thing, I was to be the same. No such thing. God gave me

brains and I will use them. And if you have any intellect, use it too. Never say it doesn't matter. It does

matter. Whatever God has put here is of eminent importance—He would not have written a thing that

was indifferent. Whatever is here is of some value, therefore search all questions, try all by the Word

of God. I am not afraid to have what I preach tried by this Bible. Only give me a fair field and no favor

and this Bible. If I say anything contrary to it, I will withdraw it the next Sunday. By this I stand, by

this I fall. Search and see but don't say, "It does not matter." If God says a thing, it must always be of

importance. 141

Company Limited, nd. Pike was a good friend of Spurgeon who wrote three biographies of the famous

preacher. The last is the six-volume work cited here. One of the interesting and helpful parts of this work is

its record of first hand experiences of acquaintances of Spurgeon throughout his life and even includes

material observations from the Waterbeach friends who survived him. In addition many quotations from

journals of the time, some of them obscure and difficult to find, add to the interest of Pike's account.

manners," said Everett, "and very shrewd in his judgments." Also Pike, 1:39

accuracy of Spurgeon's own recollection of this date, as well as who the preacher was when he was

converted. Drummond discusses both these issues and their controversial points (Drummond, 114-31).