Literature about Right, Wrong, and Truth

him purchase the very best. If he cannot spend much, let him spend well. The best will always be the cheapest. Leave mere dilutions and attenuations to those who can afford such luxuries. Do not buy milk and water, but get condensed milk, and put what water you like to it yourself. This age is full of word-spinners —professional book-makers, who hammer a grain of matter so thin that it will cover a five-acre sheet of paper; these men have their uses, as gold-beaters

have, but they are of no use to you. ¹ Congregations must be the better for their ministers having a fresh store of mental food[,] … for if preachers are supplied with sound literature, which they

value, their ministry must be influenced for good. ² A ll literature has the natural tendency to influence the mind. From the most trivial poetry and banal novel to the most thoughtful biography or provocative essay, time and intellectual energy consumed in reading will create impressions of some sort, for good or ill, for increasing serious maturity or justifying flippant and selfish immaturity. Spurgeon, on that account, often ignored and sought by pure silence to minimize the impact of some, sought to ridicule the point of others, and sought to encourage the public knowledge of those worthy of such important mental stewardship. Another kind of literature, and that upon which he spent the largest portion of his time, was designed by its very nature to form one's views of right and wrong and truth and falsehood. For that reason, CHS gave himself to a rigorous perusal of multitudes of volumes of this genre. His own soul was in the balance and the spiritual well-being of his readers could often flourish or wane through a word of his fitly, or unfitly, written.

He Advocated Literature that Argued for Elevated Morality

Spurgeon felt so strongly about the level of morality in society and appreciated company in this crusade so much that he even found a comrade in a man that had ridiculed him early in his ministry, Canon Wilberforce. The book was The Trinity of Evil. Indulging his love of punning, his ability to extend an image, and his talent for alliteration Spurgeon welcomed a "canon in cannonading against such gigantic foes as infidelity, impurity, and intemperance. The shot seem to have been made white-hot in the heart-fires of the author, and then fearlessly and

forcefully hurled with powerful precision at each pernicious practice." ³ He went on to evoke churches to erect such batteries until these monster evils were all destroyed.

At the same time Spurgeon demurred at the genre's tendency to meddlesome faddishness. He found much good and some silliness in a book entitled, rather ostentatiously, The Practical Moral Lesson Book. The book claimed to embrace "the Principles which, as derived from the Teaching of Scripture and the Writings of the most eminent Authors, should regulate Human Conduct."

Spurgeon was specifically solicitous that fathers have their sons read a chapter concerning masturbation, couched of course in proper Victorian circumlocutions: "Fathers would do well to make their boys read the chapter concerning chastity, where in a very delicate, veiled manner a certain secret sin and all other uncleanness is solemnly spoken of." Spurgeon also found good advice in chapters on food, pure air, light, clothing, exercise, opium, alcohol, and mental excitement. When it came to experimentation on tea and coffee, however, Spurgeon had had enough. Running experiments involving the distillation of certain constituent elements of tea, an American scientist found that in certain proportions it would kill rabbits and cats. Spurgeon concluded that it was more "calculated to alarm rabbits and cats than to influence anybody else," and issued the warning with obvious decrepitation, "There you tea-drinking reader, tremble for yourself and your rabbits, and your tabbies!" He also advised the editor to "let our tea-tables alone, or if he must assail them, to do so without the help of

this American doctor and his ¹⁰,860 cats." ⁴ In crusading against wrong, one must not misrepresent one's perceived opponents. Tapley Ward wrote a book on Temperance Tales, and after his name placed the initials I.O.G.T. Spurgeon asked, "What, in the name of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and all the rest of them, is the meaning of I.O.G.T? Does it mean, "I object to Grog in toto?" Spurgeon confessed that he had no admiration for sensational stories at any time, and even less for these. "Why did not Mr. Tapley keep to his tap?" Spurgeon was all in favor of the vindication of

"teetotalilsm" but it did not have to involve the abuse of the hyper-Calvinists.

Among them dwelt some of the most ardent teetotalers in England. Though he had issues with those brethren, he was sorry to see them misrepresented. In a subtle vein of facetious humor, he criticized Tapley for being so little acquainted with the "Hypers", not only on their habits of abstinence, but to fault them for "preaching too arousingly to sinners." Spurgeon quipped, "We thought that

Satan himself would never have accused Hyper preachers of this." ⁵ In his notice of Cruel Wrong, Spurgeon blasted the double standard often involved in the devastation left in the wake of fornication. "Where the sins of young 'gentlemen' are winked at, and poor women alone are made to suffer the shame of sin, incalculable misery must follow." Amusement at the sowing of "wild oats" on the part of men, as if fornication were a natural and pardonable folly necessary to developing maturity, must be stopped, and the "age must be made to see unchastity on the part of men in the fair, truthful light, as being in every way as evil, and in some respects more evil, than the same offence in women." Merely waging war against the foul practice, however, and exposing the sorrow and cruelty it generates, will do little good unless the brightness and beauty of holy purity be cherished. Nevertheless, books that "reveal the hidden

things of darkness, have their appropriate ministry." ⁶ Sometimes Spurgeon indicated his irritation at the zeal some demonstrated against the consumption of anything alcoholic. "No man has a right to deny another his Christian liberty in this matter," he contended, "but," he added, "it is safest to feel quite free to do without." A majority of his own students, as well as students in other denominational colleges, had pledged to be total abstainers.

This was not true of those in Wales. Though not a crusader, at this time, on the radical side of this issue, Spurgeon reminded his readers that "we never hear of characters being ruined, and dishonour being brought upon the cause of Christ,

through a man's drinking water." ⁷ A writer from America chronicled briefly Spurgeon's personal bout with the issue of alcohol consumption. "By a strange providence I was permitted to see him in 1868." At thirty-four Spurgeon had once taken the pledge of abstinence, according to the writer Fulton, but had "gone back to his wine and beer, and smoked to an alarming extent." Men wept over this and pleaded with him, and according to this American teetotaler, "the battle was fought and the victory was

won" and Spurgeon "became a total abstinence champion." ⁸ Though Spurgeon became a clear advocate of abstinence from alcohol, he maintained some ambivalence on how aggressively one should impose that view on others. The pressure brought to bear on him from many quarters was never

far from his mind when this subject arose, and the freedom, circumspectly claimed by some, to partake discreetly he could not condemn. As an example of this personal tension, he commended Fireside Homilies by Henry Alford as "full of good wholesome teaching" that must have made the good man's household "a little heaven." Spurgeon wondered, however, how the "total abstaining friends" would respond to the Dean's remarks on Christ's turning water into wine.

Spurgeon quoted a long paragraph of Alford's words to his daughters. God has given a lavish and abundant creation to be enjoyed upon which his creatures may exercise much discretion by divine grace, and find it a source of joy, or "which man's evil way may turn into mischief." Had some of "our present philanthropists been guests at that wedding we should have had them beseeching the Lord of bounty and grace not to create wine that might inebriate, as we have them now trying to fain credence for the fiction, that what he did create was not wine at all." Then in a tender irony to his daughters he advised, "Well, darlings, let us be thankful in our bodies and our souls that God knows better, and that we are in his hands." Spurgeon gives this particular comment of Alford not to refute him, but to allow the word to be said without it coming from him. Peculiarly sensitive to how the public regarded words from himself, Spurgeon wrote, "If we had been guilty of such an utterance we should have had half the Templars in England writing to us, and as we are already the best advised, instructed, lectured, bullied, persuaded, threatened, warned, denounced, berated, and scolded man in England, we are happy that it is Dean Alford, and not C. H. S.

who has committed himself in this way." ⁹ It was too late, however for the Dean to take on himself some of the attention with which Spurgeon had been favored, for the book was by the "late" Henry Alford.

In August 1880 Spurgeon announced that the companion volume to John Ploughman's Talk was about to be published. He believed that John Ploughman's Pictures would "amuse and interest our friends." Its publication would be accompanied by a new edition of Talk which would bring the number in print to 300,000. Though some thought such books were of small utility he had "received continual evidence to the contrary." "Persons who read the quaint proverbs of John Ploughman are induced to read Spurgeon's sermons, and by this means are led to Christ, while others are helped on in the paths of

temperance and thrift." ¹⁰ Though he chafed under the pretensions and absolutistic claims of the "teetotalers" for some years of his ministry, Spurgeon overall was their friend and advocated a lifestyle of sobriety and thrift realizing that intemperance was the ruin of many a household. In 1865 he spoke at the organizational meeting for

the "United Kingdom Bank of Hope" and saw W. R. Selway, a member of the executive committee of the National Temperance League, place medals around the necks of his twin sons and heard them pledge in their first public utterances,

"I hope to be a teetotaler all of my life." ¹¹ The object of the League was the "promotion of temperance by the practice and advocacy of total abstinence from

intoxicating beverages." ¹² The specimen, therefore, that he gave of the new Ploughman was entitled "He had a hole under his nose and his money runs into it." Among its choice and pithy sayings of wit, stated in the style of proverbs: "If a pot of beer is a yard of land, he must have swallowed more acres than a ploughman could get over for many a day, and still he goes on swallowing until he takes to wallowing." In fact, if the convictions of John Ploughman are identical with those of Spurgeon, in this article he sided with the teetotalers when he lamented, "Certain neighbors of mine laugh at me for being a teetotaler, and I might well laugh at them for being drunk, only I feel more inclined to cry that they should be such fools. O that we could get them sober, and then perhaps

we might make men of them." ¹³ Spurgeon indicated that he had received some harsh treatment for efforts to reduce the opportunity for drunkenness that he saw

so frequently in the Southwark district.

Now, if we try to do anything to shut up a boozing house, or shorten the hours for guzzling, we are

called all sorts of bad names, and the wind-up of it all is— "What, Rob a poor man of his beer?" The

fact is that they rob the poor man by his beer. The ale-jug robs the cupboard and the table, starves the

wife and strips the children; it is a great thief, housebreaker, and heartbreaker, and the best possible

thing is to break it to pieces, or keep it on the shelf bottom upwards. 14

Spurgeon's language is reminiscent of the claims of the temperance movement when it pictures a man that has signed the pledge. "In a short time a decided improvement takes place in their circumstances; they, with their wives and families, are soon better clothed and better fed, and needed articles of furniture are brought to their dwellings; the children are sent to school; attendance is

given to the house of God, and teetotalism is praised to the skies." ¹⁵ No later than 1882, Spurgeon had become convinced that "teetotalism" should be "praised to the skies." He reviewed The Drink Problem and its Solution and approved its suggestions that "the only true solution of the drink problem is to be found in the total legislative prohibition of the manufacture, importation, and sale of intoxicating liquors as beverages, or articles for dietetic use." Spurgeon did not condemn this as an impractical suggestion; moreover, when he looked at the possibility of legal means being taken to curb the insane abuse of alcohol he solemnly stated, "Most devoutly do we hope such a measure will soon be upon the statute-book; together with a Sunday-closing bill for England; and act for the

abolition of grocers' licenses, which have been the means of a frightful increase of drunkenness, especially among women; and any other legislation which will prepare the way for the final overthrow of the power of alcohol in these realms."

16

This strong language coincided with Spurgeon's election as president of the "Metropolitan Tabernacle Total Abstinence Society." Due to sickness, he was unable to preside at this first meeting, and his General Baptist friend John Clifford performed that duty. He did, however, manage to send a letter espousing unequivocally the goal of the total abstinence movement. After apologies for his absence due to sickness, Spurgeon expressed his conviction that "next to the preaching of the gospel, the most necessary thing to be done in England is to induce our people to become total abstainers." They should not strut with peacock feathers or putty medals and assault the moderate drinkers but go after the real drunkards in order to bring "the poor enslaved creatures to the

feet of Jesus, who can give them liberty." ¹⁷ He was glad that, at the Tabernacle, the temperance work was in the hands of men that loved Jesus and would not be satisfied with sobriety alone but looked also for the initiation of genuine piety.

They saw anything "short of the new birth as short of that for which they live and labour." For himself, Spurgeon would help in the movement where he could, but "our own work lies in the preaching of the gospel, and by that work all our

energies are absorbed." ¹⁸ At a prayer meeting in September 1882, the congregation prayed for a woman's husband, addicted to drink now but formerly a gospel proclaimer.

Spurgeon commented, "It is a dreadful thing that so many hopeful spirits, bright spirits, loving spirits, who were beloved by all who knew them, should fall by little and little through the insidious habit of drunkenness." Determined not to take too much, but lured on by appetite, they destroy themselves and those dearest to them. "This withering sin touches the character as with a hot iron, and all the beauty and the joy of life fade away." Elevating the intensity of his rhetoric with a question, "How can this plague be stayed?" he lamented the possibility that "those who have preached to others should themselves fall short of the kingdom." Drink, in slaying its millions, "has dragged down men who stood like angels in their brightness, and quenched them into degradation and misery till they were like to devils in wickedness and fury." The doing and undoings of drunkenness made one despair, for, though all sins are deadly "this is a sword with which men play till it cuts them to the heart." Spurgeon wanted

to blunt the sword and pray for the wounded. ¹⁹ Baptists developed an aggressive approach to the temperance cause and Spurgeon fully approved of it. Spurgeon reviewed Volume ¹ of its periodical

The Bond of Union: the Organ of the Baptist Total Abstinence Association in March 1885. After congratulating the workers on their vigorous labors, he urged all Baptist ministers to "fight the demon of our country with all their might."

Such almighty work could not fail to drive them to "total abstinence." From personal experience he could say, "Whatever a man's views to begin with, he is not long in personal contact with the evils of drink before he resolves to be quit of the vile thing, root and branch." He likened it to the embrace of an octopus.

None would be satisfied that a few of its arms and suckers should remain, but "he tugs and tears, right and left, to be rid of every particle of the loathsome thing." Once free from it, no one desires to return for "the rest and refreshment which come of being free from alcohol far exceed any which its presence can bestow." He included himself among the number of those that had been "on the teetotal spree for years" and would be sorry to have to fall back to "the terrible

self-denial of habitual imbibing." ²⁰ Spurgeon had become a full convert to the principle of total abstinence.

Though not as visible and destructive in England itself as drunkenness, no less devastating to human life in general and no less severe an evil was the IndoBritish opium trade. It brought millions into the budget of the British government of India, but was done so at the cost of myriads of Chinese. "If war is slaying its thousands, the opium trade is slaying its ten thousands." Abolition of this, in Spurgeon's estimation, was as essential as the abolition of slavery in the first part of the nineteenth century and just as urgent a moral issue. "Well would it have been if the virtuous and tender-hearted Queen of these realms had refused the title of Empress of the Indian Empire so long as this self-inflicted curse upon itself and other nations remained." One could not look, however, to the government for the initiative in getting rid of this curse. Like all great measures for public welfare, this must come from the people. "General sympathy must be awakened, and agitation upon the subject must be continued and increased until some Wilberforce or Clarkson shall force it upon the attention of the Government." He advocated participation in the Anti-Opium Society until such agitation of the subject can make this outrage a matter of national conscience. The loss of £5-6 million in revenue would be more than compensated for by the moral gain "to the honour of the English nation," and the

credibility of the witness of Christian missionaries. ²¹ In light of the implications of such issues as drunkenness, illicit trade, and slavery for human life and especially the integrity of gospel witness, Spurgeon felt that awareness of political issues was especially incumbent upon Dissenters.

Not only did these social/moral issues demand some immediate solution by legal

means, but the massive struggles Dissenters had endured to attain religious freedom and political equality demanded knowledge, so that Englishmen might know how to execute both their duties and their freedoms. He recommended that fathers see to it that their boys were aware of the facts contained in The Roll Call which condensed the political record for the years 1775 through 1880. "The record is well written," Spurgeon commented, and is calculated to feed the minds and rouse the spirits of young Liberals. Conservative youth will not be pleased with the unwelcome truths here set in order; but it might do them good to see history as others see it." ²²

Theology and Apologetics Designed to Aid the Minister and the Believer

Spurgeon looked for works of scholarship that defended the faith once for all delivered to the saints and aided believers in giving a solid defense of Bible truth. He had little confidence, however, in the true efficiency of such apologetics to make a dent in the fabric of unbelief. In a brief commendation of a book that displayed in forensic form the evidences for the resurrection, Spurgeon consented that "we should like to see this pamphlet in the hands of our young men of to-day, that they may not be seduced by the demon of 'modern thought.'"

23 At the most emotionally transparent level, however, he wished that "these defences were no longer needed," for theologically he had "no great faith in their

efficacy, good as they are." ²⁴ The source of unbelief lay more profoundly in the heart, though confusion of mind could serve as a source for the heart's resistance. "The blindness," he said, contemplating this issue in 1878, "is upon the heart as well as upon the mind, and men grope at noonday as the blind feel

for the wall." ²⁵ He held the same position in 1886 but had even greater skepticism about intellectual honesty in an unbeliever. A discussion of Doctrine and Doubt Spurgeon found convincing, but only "convincing to the candid."

Who can turn from their doubts those that resolve to disbelieve? Aids in seeking to do such are welcomed, but "chiefly we look up to the Holy Spirit, and beseech him to create saving faith in men; for there is not upon the earth one grain of it which is not of his working and there never will be." He was more and more of the conviction that "all who accept the truth are under a divine anointing, and that while men remain in their natural blindness the clearest reasoning will never

make them see." ²⁶ A solid defense of revelation, if it did not indulge too much in advertisement of the arguments of infidels, but proposed a "discreet advocacy of the claims of Christ" and positive exposition of the "bulwarks of our holy faith", was always

welcome. ²⁷ Such a book was The Truth of Scripture in Connection with Revelation, Inspiration, and the Canon by James Given. He called in an "armoury of weapons of defence against skeptical objections—weapons which intelligent men may handle to purpose." The writer furnished not only the right kind of ammunition but guided to other sources from which appropriate weapons could be gathered. Given did this with boldness, assuring his readers that the loud voices of infidelity had no stronger arguments than had already been put forth and put down, and would not be a whit more successful than in the past. It was a "masterly piece of apologetics, and we have had the utmost pleasure in its perusal." Spurgeon planned to spend more time with it "for it is plainly worthy

of no ordinary reading." The way in which the author removed apparent discrepancies and difficulties makes "faith to laugh at her assailants, and grow

rich on their spoils." ²⁸ A cohort of three apologetic works he reviewed in April 1882: The Logic of Christian Evidences by G. F. Wright, The Great Problem by "a student of science," and The Resurrection of Jesus Christ by John Kennedy. Each of these volumes showed the "reasonableness of Christianity in reply to those who affect to regard it as a phenomenon of human fabrication" and ignore its own claim to be a system of divine revelation. If answering unbelief could be condensed to a pure matter of sound argument, then all caviling against the gospel soon would cease, Spurgeon reaffirmed, and the deference shown infidelity by Christian apologists should "rebuke the defiance of those who persist in treating the gospel as a fable." These three works will help believers to admire the beauty of Christianity from every perspective and will strengthen them in many ways against all attempts to discredit that which has been implanted in their hearts.

Christian teachers have urgent need for Christian knowledge so that they can form a true "salvation army" made up, rank and file, of "something better than raw recruits who rely on anecdotes to attract attention." So impressive, in fact, is the evidence of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, "to doubt it were to discredit all the classic literature which has fostered the civilization of the human race."

But for those whose hearts are as yet unchanged and who revile Scripture as pious legend, who think miracles are a mirage of the mind, "ascribe doctrines to pious dotage, and resent precepts as puerile" no amount of logic [or alliteration!] will reach them, and such books as these are "not very likely to be the means of converting many infidels." That thought, however, should not disconcert believers, for the savants "fight with feathers against the citadel of our faith." In a sentence that captures Spurgeon's confidence in the self-authenticating power of the gospel as clearly as any, he contended, "The living power of the gospel of the grace of God gives us such lively satisfaction every day that if the evidences of the past could be effaced, our experience of the present would amply suffice to confirm us in their credibility." The evidences are useful and encouraging to minds that love the beauty of divine truth, to those to whom the word has been the means of the new birth, and will help equip them for faithful and effective service; but the converting power still is God's alone. In these matters, the mind

will be convinced only of what the heart has seen, heard, and tasted. ²⁹ He did appreciate A Popular Handbook of Christian Evidences, Part II. "Amid the scoffs and sneers of savans and simpletons, it is well for our young men to know how compact the historical proofs of the gospel really are." Though

evidences do not convince the unbeliever, such books still perform no small service in the light, strength, confidence, and intellectual certainty they set before the saints. Spurgeon, in fact, thought the evidences so coherent that he used Job's description of the scales of Leviathan metaphorically for the compelling nature of whole field of proofs. "They are shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another that no air can come between them. They

are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered." ³⁰ Even though an unbeliever cannot be brought to believe by Christian evidences, he certainly should be.

A review of The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes by Geerhardus Vos, a fellow at Princeton, carried the dual theme of appreciation and regret combined with his own pride of detachment from some of the modern fights over the biblical text. Carting away rubbish was a good exercise for schoolboys, Spurgeon reflected, and added that "training in metaphysics is about the best qualification for a Reviewer of the new theology." He did appreciate the contribution of his transatlantic brethren for their "scathing criticism of modern Teutonic literature." For himself, however, often he only learned of the existence of a new theory when someone declared it exploded. Perhaps he was behind the age and his library similar to an old directory, but his books nevertheless were the "survival of the fittest." He confessed never to have read a line of those renowned scholars Graf, Kuenen, and Wellhausen "who affect to find traces of forgery in the Books of Moses." He never intended to read a line of them "and we smile as we are informed that they have been duly refuted and disposed of."

31 Had he been able to see the future, Spurgeon probably would have regretted having the edge of condescension in his pen as he dismissed Geerhardus Vos as a "schoolboy."

A similar admission comes in a review of a Critical History of Philosophy by Asa Mahan. The book was a "popular survey... readable and refreshing all the way through." He confessed that he was "out of court" as a critic, for "the Vedas or the Shasters we have never read. Neither Kant nor Comte are on the shelves of our library." He noted that all his knowledge of these subjects and writers was

second-hand. ³² Second-hand knowledge, however, in his case was quite profound as he had traversed the territory a number of times from the perspective of many expert writers. His own schedule of reading, preparation for sermons and lectures, editing, writing, and speaking made it necessary for him to trust others to do the original work in these areas remote to his own primary calling. He was always happy to have access to essays that would keep him abreast of the times, to have

the suggestion of ideas upon which he could expand by his own fertile imagination and critical faculties, to get a supply of arrows for his armory, and to continue to develop arguments against the modern infidelity growing like weeds on this philosophical soil.

Not only was it impractical and impossible for everyone to have a firsthand knowledge of the vast array of philosophical and critical literature produced since the seventeenth century, for the clear approval of truth and assurance of a genuine knowledge of God it was unnecessary. Spurgeon believed that Christian experience itself served as a credible apologetic for the truth of Christianity. In a review of a book by R. W. Dale, Spurgeon commended his appeal to the power of true religion and added, "we feel sure that the effect of the gospel is its best evidence, and the phenomenon of conversions its surest proof." Scientists arrayed their supposed facts against the gospel, but Christians have "personal contact with God" which puts an end to the superstition of priestism and "the

unbelief which rejects the Scriptures." ³³ Years of reading apologetic literature only confirmed his basic conviction that "experimental proof of our holy religion is the best and most readily available" evidence. This he had sought to develop briefly in Clue of the Maze and he welcomed its further investigation in Doctrine and Doubt; or, Christ the Centre of Christianity.

When books took positions that Spurgeon strongly affirmed but did it without sufficient coherence or credibility, he had to be careful not to dissociate himself from the true assertion or approve an insufficient foundation for its defense.

Such was the case with a new translation of the New Testament ( The New Testament Translated from the Purest Greek ) that used the words "immerse" and "immerser" instead of the foreign word "Baptist." Spurgeon admired the translator's honesty in using the true translation instead of the circumlocution involved in transliteration. He hoped that the present revisers of the Authorized Version would have as much honesty. Either they should translate it fairly, or "confess inability for the work at hand." Nonetheless, he felt compelled to question the overall scholarship and judgment manifest in the present translation of John Bowes. "The task undertaken in this book is evidently a delicate and difficult one, demanding much learning and great discretion: we cannot, however, find these manifest here, and therefore, while admiring the translator's

honesty, we think he has failed in his attempt." ³⁴ Occasionally books appeared that had such a straightforward purpose and executed it so clearly and well that Spurgeon felt no need to provide a caveat.

Writing on the Trinity, George Paterson in Scripture proof for the glorious doctrine of the Trinity handled the subject so impressively that Spurgeon said it

was "fitted to be a class-book on the subject for students, and a standard book of

reference for ministers." ³⁵ He commended the Meyer Commentary series on the New Testament as "scholarship of the highest class" and by "universal consent"

the most dependable for "accuracy of criticism and exegesis." ³⁶ Normally Spurgeon did not like books of comparative religion, for they implied too much compromise and at times sought to show that people all over the world were searching for God. He eschewed the term "comparative theology" as misleading and did not "believe in the theory that fallen men are

seeking after God and truth." ³⁷ George Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World was quite to his taste because Rawlinson vindicated the orthodox position that "there is one true revelation, and that other religions are the result of the

depravity of man's nature." ³⁸ Moreover, he found one by James Wells, not the hyper-Calvinist, to be quite helpful and relating the right tone about comparison of other religious teachers to Jesus. Wells milked all he could out of the heathen religious thinkers in order to compare their insights to the revealed truth of Christianity. As he wrote in the last chapter, "We can thus hope to read off the highest water-mark which unaided human speculation and virtue have reached,

and we may then compare it with the Christian standard." ³⁹ In his preface, Wells told why he decided to publish such a book, the study for which had been a mere curiosity and avocation in earlier days. "He is naturally disposed to think that others, especially young men, may be helped by a study which broke for him the spell of non-Christian thought, and which has

strengthened his own Christian convictions and desire for Christian Service." ⁴⁰ Nearing the end of his discussion of Aeschylus, Wells observed, "Like all heathen writers, our poet does not clearly distinguish between sin and crime, nor has he any conception of the spirituality and universality of moral law. He does not brand with guilt the evil motives and wishes which do not proceed to action.

It has been truly said that crime and criminal belong to every language; but that sin and sinner belong to the Christian vocabulary only. Aeschylus does not hold, as some of our scientific men do, that sin cannot be forgiven and that the past is

irreparable. Even in his gloomy theology he finds place for pardon" ⁴¹ Spurgeon certainly liked the subtle subversion of modern theology by Wells' preference for Greek heathenism over them. Following an astute, and at times moving, account of how Dionysius the Areopagite might have heard the preaching of the Apostle on Mars Hill informed by the haunting natural theology of Aeschylus,

Wells closed with an intriguing, if not compelling, proposition.

Aeschylus, unconsciously and in ignorance, reveals the profound affinities between Christ and the

natural conscience. He proves, to borrow a phrase from the Church Fathers, that the divine book and

the human breast agree. We point to him as a proof that there abides in the inmost soul of man an

indestructible Christ-need, which asserts itself to a thoughtful pagan, even when entangled with a

contradictory theology, and belonging to an age and race intoxicated with materialism and sensuality.

The pacification of the conscience and the purification of the soul which Aeschylus sought, and in the

reality of which he firmly believed, the Gospel offers to every man under heaven. What was but a dim

and fleeting shadow to the great Greek is an historical reality to the Christian. The fancies of the Greek

tragedian, corresponding in some respects so strangely in general outline with the faith of the

Christian, may help us to believe that the Maker of our hearts is also the Author of the Gospel, and that

in Christ Jesus He has made exquisitely complete provision for all the needs of sinning and perishing

men. 42

After similarly insightful discussions of Socrates and Plato, Wells discussed Epictetus and Stoicism. Stoicism challenged the cruel and unbridled immorality of Rome, made adamantine men, and riveted specific virtues in the souls of its followers. Epictetus emerged as the saint of heathenism. Its weaknesses, however, were found in its immutable pretensions to strength. Wells quoted Cicero the Stoic saying, "We boast justly of our own virtue, which we could not do if we derived it from the Deity, and not from ourselves." Stoicism would view a religion of grace as a contradiction in terms, for "the essence of virtue lay in its being an unaided achievement, and grace thus spoiled all goodness."

Living in light of forgiveness of sin merely insulted the Stoic, who would have to "renounce every virtue he prized before he could receive the Gospel." Wells argued that stoicism robs men of necessary solace from without and drives the soul in upon itself. When sorrowful, the Stoic points to the resources in our own heart, forgetting that "it is the heart which is overwhelmed and most needs succour." The soul must be invictus within and without, exterminating Godgiven emotions and creating of its devotee, not more of a man but less of a man, and in the process destroying the feminine in woman. Spurgeon would gravitate toward Wells' discussion of grace and suffering emotion. Even in these two points, Wells had shown the religious superiority of Christianity to Stoicism, and thus the highest of heathendom.

His carefully crafted language finally led him to a strong affirmation of the necessity of divine revelation as present in the Bible and the superiority, and peerlessness, of Christ. "They who say that we owe more to modern culture than to the Bible, are like the countryman who maintained that we are more indebted to the moon than to the sun, because the sun shines by day, when we don't need its light; or like the boy who, surveying himself in the looking-glass, declared that his father took after him. The Gospel has greatly lessened its own evidences by having lessened the surrounding darkness." Because of the improvement in culture in every aspect due to the influence of the Bible, Wells claimed, "It may thus easily happen that some modern sages light their taper at a torch which they

scorn, drink of a stream whose source they ignore, and feed on the fruits of the tree they would fain cut down; they would rob the mother of her own children,

and preserve the sunbeams while destroying the parent sun." ⁴³ With Christ, moreover, Wells saw no possible comparison in the heathen world. The gap is so wide as to challenge even the idea of comparison. "I contrast Christendom with Heathendom, and Christ with the sages," he reminded the reader, "and I discover that He is utterly beyond all competition or comparison, and that as there is a heavenwide difference between Him and the foremost of them, the phrase, 'comparative religion,' is scarcely correct. Thus I

am able to give to the unbeliever a reason for the faith that is in me." ⁴⁴ When Christians are challenged by the spirit of modern culture to make concessions on the absolute and exclusive worthiness of Christ in his teaching and in his work of reconciliation, Wells urged one to maintain the confidence implicit in the evidence—"When we place Christ and the sages side by side we shall feel more than ever that the Christian thinker is not required to make concessions, for by the aid of the law of contrast we shall gain the fullest persuasion of the peerless

excellences of Christ as the Light and Life of men." ⁴⁵ In one section, however, Wells discussed the idea of knowledge of God by an operation of the Spirit outside the parameters of a proclaimed gospel or a read Bible. He firmly consented to the Bible's teaching that "all who are saved are saved by Christ only, and that men who know the Gospel are saved through the Gospel only." At the same time he did not think that the Bible taught "that the merit of Christ cannot overflow the ordinary means of grace, or that there can be no salvation outside the visible Church." In our just certainty that Christ is the only way, "We must have a care not to narrow the area of the Spirit's power, for He is ubiquitous as the wind, and 'worketh when, and where, and how He

pleaseth.'" ⁴⁶ He believed that the apostle worked toward leaving this door open in Romans 1 where "his words certainly seem to imply that some of the sages walked with God according to their light, and that they were accepted of Him."

47 The confidence in reason that had gradually inundated Anglicanism through the seventeenth century influence of Archbishop Tillotson found fresh expression in Wells' confidence in the congeniality, though rarely acquiring a positive response, between reason and revelation.

Spurgeon said that Wells displayed great skill in "charming minds into attention, and then instructing them most solidly." The readers acquainted with the heathen thinkers would "peruse these pages with satisfaction." For once, Spurgeon acknowledged, he had become tolerant of the science of comparative religion for Wells' use of it was most admirable. "Those who talk of our divine

Lord as one among many teachers may here learn how far the best of those many are removed from him." They are like glow worms, and he is the Sun. Spurgeon did not mention his reaction to the concept of the believing God-fearer among

the heathen. ⁴⁸ The strange omission of any comment about this matter might have two or three explanations. One, Spurgeon relied too much on another reviewer before he made his own comments and his helper did not see Wells' hesitance to "narrow the area of the Spirit's power." The beauty of Wells' discussion in every place else in the book and the clear affirmation of the absoluteness and revelatory foundation of Christianity in comparison to all other religions and philosophies might have created such a disposition in favor of the book that it was not read critically enough. Second, if Spurgeon did all the work on this book and merely sampled pivotal places he himself might have missed the opportunity for his usual caveat on problem passages.

Third, Spurgeon himself might have been open to such a possibility. In an exposition of Romans 1:1-25, commenting on verses ¹⁹ and ²⁰, Spurgeon said, "Men who never heard the gospel can see God in his works if they open their eyes. There is written upon the face of nature enough to condemn men if they do not turn to God. There is a gospel of the sea, and of the heavens, of the stars, and of the sun; and if men will not read it, they are guilty, for they are wilfully

ignorant of what they might know, and ought to know." ⁴⁹ Did he hold the possibility that, by the aid of the Spirit, some men might read the gospel of the sea, the heavens, and the stars rightly? This seems unlikely for Spurgeon is clear in an exposition of John 1 that "There is no way of knowing God, and being reconciled to God, except as we receive Jesus Christ, his Son, into our hearts, and learn of him, through the Holy Spirit's teaching, all that he delights to reveal

to us concerning his Father." ⁵⁰ In an exposition of Romans 10 he clearly stated that the word of faith that is to be believed for salvation is "wherever Christ is

preached, and wherever his Word is read." ⁵¹ In a sermon on "Gospel Missions," Spurgeon urged zeal in the enterprise by presenting a scene of "tens of thousands of spirits who are now walking in outer darkness; could I take you to the gloomy chambers of hell, and show you myriads upon myriads of heathen souls in unutterable torture, not having heard the Word, but being justly condemned for

their sins." ⁵² There does not appear to be any facet of Spurgeon's theology that would support option three. His understanding of human depravity, the bondage of the will, the relationship of regeneration to the means of preaching the word— all these do not give room for some one apart from the gospel to read the "gospel of the sea" rightly. Instead, either he let down his guard or he felt that the

loophole was inconsequential.

Books of Sound Theology combined with Spiritual and Experimental Power

"From a dry unspiritual scholarship may the Lord deliver us! It is as destructive as the heat of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace," Spurgeon wrote in his review of J.

Hawker's Unpolished Gems of Scripture. Spurgeon found wonderful entertainment in the "deep spirituality of his tone, the graciousness of his

doctrine, and the freshness of his thought." ⁵³ Each of these three things attracted Spurgeon, and their intertwined presence in one volume obviously gave him lasting pleasure. He labored for those traits in his own work. In his extensive labors, including his writing, editing, and publishing, he kept pressing for fresh gospel application to the spiritual life of the Christian and the conversion of the sinner. He did not write secular works, and did not even advocate the reading of novels. Most attempts at poetry were worse than vain, in his opinion, and wasteful of energy. He did "not feel the influence of poetic zephyrs" but stood in need of "at least a Miltonic hurricane to make us sensitive to the power of poesy." He delighted in trying his hand at hymns, for one could express Christian experience, doctrinal truth, and urge sinners to believe, but his attempts were comparatively few and prompted by special occasions or urgent situations.

In his reviews, he gave himself to "the piety, the doctrine and the experience" of

the volumes sent him, "for these we may aspire to know something of." ⁵⁴ He felt no compunction, however, in reviling, sometimes with great subtlety, books that trifled with devotion, that offered pious titles with little substance. His comments on Quiet Words for Quiet Moments simply stated, "Very quiet,

quietude itself." ⁵⁵ In reading William Louge of Wykeham he admitted that he "dozed off sweetly while trying to read it, and therefore we can strongly recommend it as restful." He wandered among monks and other medieval personages until he "dropped off into dreamland," but still could not discover why the story was written. "Never mind," he closed, "it did us good. We are the

better for the nap." ⁵⁶ His one object in his own pen-work was to spread the gospel as clearly with the quill as with his pulpit.

Spurgeon often showed a playfulness in dealing with a book that he intended to recommend with gusto for its fiery and contagious spirituality and religious fervor. In a book of Welsh preachers, he wrote, "Moreover, as their language is according to their own judgment—and they ought to know—so heavenly, so divine, it is no great marvel that those who use it are able to produce extraordinary results. As we see it in print, we feel that our friends are right; it is an unearthly language, and to us unutterable. Ll and a w, double l again and a y, and then the rest of the alphabet shot down like a load of coals. What can this

muddle mean? The man who can pronounce these jumbles of consonants must be a born orator." With all mirth aside, Spurgeon, recommended the volume as one that would make the reader "fall in love with Welsh piety, and to long for its

like in our English villages." ⁵⁷ Throughout his ministry, from the first days of preaching as a teenager, Spurgeon had placed great value on works that combined doctrine and experience. Doctrine, well blended into human experience and expressed plainly in literature, formed the surest path to true spirituality for the reader. A person could absorb the doctrinal truth and contemplate its spiritual application and power, its provocations for conviction and assurance, and by such mental work and spiritual meditation eventually make those experiences his own. This healthy blending of truth and experience that constituted true spirituality were formed into the soul by the work of the Spirit in a multitude of ways throughout the life of the Christian pilgrim. Carlile commented on the usefulness of

Spurgeon's early acquaintance with this kind of godly literature:

The rustic congregations knew the ring of sincerity. They might gape at displays of rhetorical

fireworks, but they were not moved by them. As they listened to the youth of seventeen they were

amazed at the depth of his experience. Many of his utterances bore indications of his industrious

reading of the Puritan Fathers. But Spurgeon made the experience his own; in truth, it was amazing

how deep and varied his spiritual experience appeared to all who knew him. It was not simply that he

read experimental theology with unflagging interest and profit, but that he himself was so sensitized in

spirit that he took on the experiences of others and lived them until they became his own. 58

Spurgeon, on the basis of that sort of deep personal benefit, enjoyed and had the highest recommendation for books that showed the "anointing with fresh oil" in

which "life, fervour, and joy" would gleam on each page. ⁵⁹ He showed his lifelong commitment to the true integration of revealed truth, its systematic arrangement into comprehensively developed doctrines, and the consequent life altering, life building, spirit enriching, God-honoring power in such arrangements. He never found any books that rivaled the Puritans for their combination of biblical doctrine and spiritual health. In reviewing a volume by F. Godet, Studies on the New Testament, after some mild commendation of it, he stated the standard by which he judged all spiritual literature: "In truth, good as this volume is, it is nothing comparable in weight of thought and depth of instruction to the grand old Puritan writings, which, to us at least, are ever new

and full of suggestiveness." ⁶⁰ At the top of the Puritan standard for spirituality, creativity, and practical theology—the book that rendered all mere novelists as pretenders to literary art —was Pilgrim's Progress by the tinker from Bedford, John Bunyan. An allegory

entitled The Voyage of Life by "a Sea Captain" conveyed good gospel truths for sailors, but the lengthened allegory "would have required the genius of a Bunyan

to have sustained with unfailing interest to its close." ⁶¹ The library at his grandfather's house had introduced him to the adventure of Pilgrim's Progress, a story he never outlived. "We cannot have too many editions of this work," he commented on reviewing an inexpensive but nicely produced edition of "the

incomparable dreamer's great work." ⁶² He sought to review every edition of the dreamer's Pilgrim and, if possible, commended it for a particular audience appropriate to the binding, type-press, and price. He thought that a polyglot version was a brilliant idea; when English and French were printed side by side, it would greatly benefit those "learners of the French tongue." The version he reviewed, however, was "worse than useless for such a purpose." Though wellpresented and nicely illustrated, "the French does not tally with the English, and is misleading." He refused to call it a translation but a "mere bash with the force and beauty of the original altogether cut away." Bunyan's poetical expression, pithy phrases, and even the form of the dream are either left out, mauled, or travestied to such a degree that Spurgeon concluded "We never knew a good

idea so badly realized." ⁶³ An edition that appeared in 1885 with large print, notes by Robert Maguire, and illustrations by H. C. Selous and M. Paolo Priolo, captured Spurgeon's fancy. "We shall lay this volume by," he began rather inauspiciously, "till our eyes force us a second time to the spectacle-maker."

Then the large letter volume would be a precious pearl. "Father Honest himself could not have found fault with it, and Christiana would have danced for joy if she had possessed it." He advised Harry and Alice to get their shillings "and buy

one for dear old Grandpapa." ⁶⁴ A book by A. Tholuck translated from German by Robert Menzies pleased Spurgeon greatly, both for its robust and sincere spiritual power and for its provenance. Evidently Spurgeon considered Tholuck in the same spiritual category as E. Lehmann about whom he wrote, "Written with that child-like faith which we see to perfection in Germans when the Lord sweetly leads their

subtle intellects to the Redeemer's feet." ⁶⁵ Tholuck met Spurgeon's most important standard. "To us," the plural for me, "estimating books by the standard of the heart, this is the book of the season," he judged, for the portion that he read was "marrow and fatness." Tholuck entertained no "dry theorizing or dead philosophizing" but went straight toward "vital truth glowing with every charm of grace. The pages are rich, pre-eminently rich with unction, and full of experimental truth." This was not a book to be done with quickly, but contained sustaining spiritual power for the believer, "if he be of our mind," the standard of

measure to which Spurgeon often referred. And it arose from Germany, an opportunity for "rebuilding what it once laboured to destroy." Spurgeon did not like the chapter on baptism, and certain other blurs. Perfection characterizes only

those things that are altogether of the Lord. ⁶⁶ A book by James Paton containing twelve meditations on the twenty-third Psalm, Spurgeon recommended as "fraught with experimental matter" and "rich with the Erskine and Rutherford vein of spirituality. Full-grown believers will delight in the deep doctrines and high experience of the author." Rev. H.

Tarrant's book Times of Refreshing chronicling the history of revivals, "some real and some questionable," was "earnest" but incomplete, yet breathed "a

gracious fervent spirit." ⁶⁷ His friend, James Grant, produced one that could be the title for a Spurgeon biography, Sources of Joy in Seasons of Sorrow; with other help on the Homeward way. Aptly titled, this book had matter "so rich and choice that sad hearts must be encouraged." From his own experience Spurgeon knew that nights of grief needed reminders of the divine purpose in suffering as well as the genuine sympathy of Christ in such. Out of Grant's fifty volumes, none excelled this, according to Spurgeon. "The more spiritual the reader," Spurgeon wrote, in the kind of intimidating judgment to which he gave himself on occasion, "the

higher will be his estimate of the mighty truths compressed into this volume." ⁶⁸ The spiritual ecstasy that Spurgeon seems most often to have been conveyed by a deep contemplation on the personal nature of the doctrines of grace—that special regard that the Father has for all those given to the Son in the covenant of grace. In the circumference of that circle of special, immutable, eternal redemptive blessings Spurgeon found himself enrapt in amazement and lost in wonder. "The antiquity of the covenant of grace demands our grateful attention," he encouraged his hearers; "it is a truth which tends to elevate the mind." He continued by expanding the intensity of his recommendation: "I know of no doctrine more grand than this." His own experience in giving attention confirmed his recommendation affirming, "It is the very soul and essence of all poetry, and in sitting down and meditating upon it, I do confess my spirit has

sometimes been ravished with delight." ⁶⁹ He knew that this meditation was too high for many, but, nevertheless, he recommended it as the most profound and direct cure to spiritual darkness when it descends on the saint. Only God can give a "song in the night" to the deeply distressed Christian. God himself must speak to his soul: "But let God come to his child in the night, let him whisper in his ear as he lies on his bed, and how you see his eyes flash in the night!" No human can do such a thing but "it is marvelous, brethren, how one sweet word of

God will make whole songs for Christians. One word of God is like a piece of gold, and the Christian is the gold-beater, and he can hammer that promise out for whole weeks." Spurgeon, at twenty-three, claimed that he "lived on one promise for weeks" and hammered it so finely that he plated his "whole existence with joy from it." The matter for contemplation in its purest proof went back behind time to the reality of "electing love and covenanted mercies." What beyond this could be filled with more sublimity and a more profound source for undying and ever-increasing fullness of joy. Spurgeon teased out this matter of contemplation before he surrendered to other truths fit for giving song for those

that could not maintain so high and intense a vision.

When though thyself art low, it is well to sing of the fountain-head of mercy; of that blessed decree

wherein thou wast ordained to eternal life, and of that glorious Man who undertook thy redemption; of

that solemn covenant signed, and sealed, and ratified, in all things ordered well; of that everlasting love

which, ere the hoary mountains were begotten, or ere the aged hills were children, chose thee, loved

thee firmly, loved thee fast, love thee well, loved thee eternally. I tell thee, believer, if thou canst go

back to the years of eternity; if thou canst in thy mind run back to that period, or ere the everlasting

hills were fashioned, or the fountains of the great deep scooped out, and if thou canst see thy God

inscribing thy name in his eternal book; if thou canst see in his loving heart eternal thoughts of love to

thee, thou wilt find this a charming means of giving thee songs in the night. No songs like those which

come from electing love; no sonnets like those that are dictated by meditations on discriminating

mercy. … In our darker hours it is our joy to sing;

Sons we are through God's election,

Who in Jesus Christ believe;

By eternal destination,

Sovereign grace we now receive.

Lord, thy favor,

Shall both grace and glory give. 70

In April, 1871, Spurgeon discovered a work by Maritius Bohemus, written in 1654. It was entitled, a Christian's Delight; or, Morning Meditations upon One Hundred Choice Texts of Scripture. Spurgeon included a selection from this book to encourage Sabbath reading for his congregation. He found these meditations "instructive and suggestive." These texts are precisely the kind that Spurgeon loved and that he himself produced in articles of spiritual comfort.

Lines from one entitled "Christ's Power in our Weakness" demonstrates the deep Reformed spirituality so enthralling to Spurgeon. "When we are most sensible of our own impotency, then we must infallibly look for his omnipotency … Christ's sufficiency will supply all thy deficiency; Christ's blood is valid enough to satisfy for thy sinful defects, and his power strong enough to rescue thee out of all thy infirmities. If thou art insufficient, Christ is all-sufficient. " Christ is neither a baby, unable to do anything for us, nor a bungler,

incapacitated by lack of wisdom to use the material he has chosen, but "Christ's power is the power of God, and thy weakest weakness is not too weak to be

strengthened by him." ⁷¹ The deepest spirituality lay within the depths of a profound abandonment to the sovereignty of God.

Among his contemporaries Spurgeon commended F. B. Meyer to his readers.

He saw Meyer's "earnest, faithful, evangelical ministry" as a "fitting protest against the error which abounds around him." His voice was "clear for the gospel" and his people heard him with gladness. From the Pit to the Throne by Meyer showed the parallels between Joseph and Jesus, a highly attractive and much discussed theme, but one whose treasure has not been exhausted. "Our friend," Spurgeon called Meyer, "still brings forth from the old mine many

nuggets of new gold." ⁷² Spurgeon greeted the Hodder and Stoughton reprint of William Jay's eight volumes with enthusiastic approval. Printed from old plates that were "a good deal battered" the publisher kept down the price and sold each volume separately if procurers so desired. All the better in Spurgeon's opinion, for then one could pick the "Morning and Evening Exercises," an incomparable guide to prayer, "so clear, so pithy, so rich, so evangelical, they must ever retain a firm hold upon the hearts of Christians." Spurgeon longed for more Jays. "We would give some two or three dozen of the general run of doctors of divinity for one such a Master in

Israel as William Jay of Bath." ⁷³ Spurgeon liked Octavius Winslow as "good, sound, and spiritual," but believed that his book on the130th Psalm missed an opportunity to be much better. Showing his own massive acquaintance with bibliography, Spurgeon commented, "We wish our excellent author had appreciated John Owen more fully, and if he had also studied Andrew Rivet's Meditationes, Sibbes' Saints' Comforts, being divers sermons on Psalm 130, George Hutchinson's forty-five sermons on the same theme, and Archbishop Leighton's Meditations, he might have put himself into a position to have achieved the work which his title set

before him." ⁷⁴ In spite of Winslow's lack of literary breadth, Spurgeon was sure that the work was good for edification, and that was the true aim of the author.

Strength Perfected in Weakness, a memorial of Mary Richard, gave Spurgeon opportunity to reflect on the spiritual power of suffering. He recommended that it be put into the hands of a suffering Christian to "show the peerless value of the school of affliction, and the high degree to which the apt scholar in that college may attain." Mrs. Richard, for twenty-six years in bodily anguish, became one of the "ripest of believers." Spurgeon included a few choice quotations from her experience, such as, "It is no matter to me what comes, so long as it comes

through my Saviour's fingers, and all is mixed with heaven." Other theologically grounded observations from the sufferer prompted her fellow sufferer, Spurgeon, to note, "In the school of affliction the Master gives the lessons practically. The learner is carried beyond the sphere of oral explanation, and compelled to exercise himself at his task; and his proficiency becomes proportionately great."

75

This deeply experimental element of Spurgeon has been misinterpreted.

Carlile included a chapter entitled "Spurgeon the Mystic." He rightly defined Spurgeon's spirituality as fully harmonious with his activism in benevolence, evangelism, and earthy personality, his times of deep distress, and his endless stream of personal contacts each week. True mystics, Carlile rightly contended, dare greater deeds than most normally healthy people ever would attempt. He included appropriate quotations from Spurgeon's sermons about the exhilaration of the presence of Christ and the ecstasy of intimate communion with Christ. He showed convincingly that Spurgeon had an emotional and mental openness to powerful experiences of the felt presence of Christ. That which contorts his description of Spurgeon as a mystic is his abstraction of Spurgeon's spiritual profile from his doctrinal commitment. Carlile presented Spurgeon as a mystic in harmony with those great spirits through the ages that not only did heroic deeds but in whose "contemplation of the vision beautiful" they maintained the "unspeakable preciousness of the Presence." He presented Spurgeon as one that "proclaimed Christ the Son of God, the historical and spiritual reality, the abiding Presence made known to all who tread the mystic path." ⁷⁶ This

message, Carlile claims, was born in "Spurgeon's own experience." ⁷⁷ That in itself is true enough, but from that intensity of personal presence advocated by Spurgeon, Carlile deduced that a commitment to inspiration was non-essential to the "mysticism" he described. While Spurgeon found "solemn delight in the consciousness that he walked with the Lord in the light of His Word," and would "appeal without hesitation to the very words of Scripture, taking the promises at their face value," Carlile could conceive of such delight accompanying any view of inspiration as long as there is solid confidence in the presence of Christ. "Whatever views may be held concerning inspiration," he reasoned, "it will be admitted that it is no small gain to the man who faces ridicule or is received with raptures of applause," both true in Spurgeon's experience, "to realize that he is not only doing the will of his Lord but that his

Lord is really present with him." ⁷⁸ In the same vein he could quote Canon C. E.

Raven, "The grandeur of the Epistle to the Romans lies not in its formulae, which like all metaphors are often inadequate, but in its passionate testimony to

the reality of Jesus and to the power of His love." ⁷⁹ Spurgeon's spirituality would never tolerate an exaltation of experience at the expense of the adequacy of the inspired metaphors of Pauline theology. Carlile judged that Spurgeon's mysticism infused his soul with a catholicity born of experience. "He knew there was a unity of substance in Christian experience," Carlile reasoned, and though a variety of theological systems and ecclesiastical paths mark their external ways, "they tread the same mystic road."

One writer, William Herbert Crook, was thoroughly convinced by Carlile's presentation of Spurgeon as a mystic. In a seminary dissertation on Spurgeon, Crook began his development of this subject with the sentence, "Spurgeon was a mystic." He pointed to Carlile alone as the biographer of Spurgeon to have given the idea "respectable consideration," and viewed Carlile as "his most discerning

biographer." ⁸⁰ Many have missed this side of Spurgeon, so Crook claimed, because they were more impressed with his frank and often rude roughness of exterior in speech and his life of feverish action. Crook pointed to the diary, the Autobiography, hymns and sermons, and the evidence provided by Carlile, to show that mysticism did not characterize only a phase of Spurgeon's life, but pervaded it from youth to death, formed the most intense and enduring aspects of his life as a Christian and a minister, and "mellowed stern Calvinism and transcended narrow concepts which would otherwise have greatly limited his

influence." ⁸¹ Spurgeon's "desire for intimate communion with God," his yearning for "personal sanctification," and his desire "to be chosen as an effective servant of God," fueled his mysticism and led to an ongoing series of ecstatic religious experiences. Once Spurgeon's intimacy with Christ was

established, "he was not dependent upon the revelation of Scripture alone." ⁸² Carlile, preceding Crook in rendering neutral the revelatory and regulatory status of Holy Scripture in mystical experience, pointed to each mystic's awareness of the Presence and called that Presence, Christ. Spurgeon would never have diminished his expectations of the doctrine of Christ for a testimony of an awareness of the Presence. But Carlile in 1933 was interested in rehabilitating Spurgeon for acceptance by the increasingly liberal Baptist Union.

Many things about Spurgeon were controversial and puzzling and only of passing value, so he noted. Much was of eternal good. "The passing must not be allowed to obscure the abiding," Carlile asserted, but there still is something that "rings true across the years." Spurgeon's most important contribution may be "the spiritual enrichment of the life of the time and all time, found in the eternal truth of the Divine Presence." Carlile found little to recommend to his age of

Spurgeon's doctrine, but believed he was valuable for his honesty, his work ethic, his sense of individual worth, his tenacity of purpose and his serenity of spirit. He could celebrate a Spurgeon that "kept close to the centre in spite of a

theology that was somewhat the worse for wear." ⁸³ The kind of spirituality that Carlile, and Crook, distilled from Spurgeon was not the kind that Spurgeon advocated in his sermons, his reviews, or endorsed in any form. Spurgeon's spirituality was inseparable from his confessional orthodoxy and Calvinist soteriology.

One illustration of Spurgeon's doctrinally grounded discernment of spirituality undergirds his critique of Phoebe Palmer. For her school of "Perfect Holiness" Spurgeon could only generate warning. He found little in it to attract him or to make him recommend it to others. "The higher life spoken of here seems so near akin to self-righteousness and spiritual pride that we look on it with fear and suspicion." The holy persons that he knew mourned their imperfections while those of the Palmer version "who have spoken in raptures about their full consecration have hardly attained to common morality." David and Paul hardly would have recognized this new order of spiritual paragons and "yet, who knows? These older saints may not have been so very inferior—eh?"

84

Carlile's desire to rehabilitate Spurgeon for his generation skewed his judgment of particular themes in Spurgeon's writing and preaching. Detached from their rigorous doctrinal and biblical framework, certain discussions in the Spurgeonic corpus could well have provoked Carlile's categorization of Spurgeon. He was not therefore, completely baseless in characterizing Spurgeon's view of spirituality. Spurgeon often indicated that some aspects of experience were so intense and beyond the normal that only a graced few could know them. A book by "F. M." spoke to Spurgeon so deeply that he shared it with friends at his Mentone retreat. Pastors would find suggestions for sermons, devout laity would find sweet simplicity, the heart-felt experience, and benefit from the holy tone of the writer. All would benefit from the female author's depiction of the "fullness of Christ, and of his supreme love." But it is not a book for everyone, not even for every Christian, "but for those who dwell in the inner

circle, and know the marrow and fatness of secret spiritual meat." ⁸⁵ In a rare recommendation of poetry, Spurgeon called The Lost Blessing, a book of sonnets by Anna Shipton, a "precious gain to the church of God." He surmised, because of the genuine intimacy of dialogue that served as the poetic vehicle, that the "authoress lives at the feet of Jesus, or rather in his bosom, and she receives intimations of guidance which none but such can know." The sonnets were "mines of richest experience." Such a book must be fenced from

most Christians, however, for there is "too much of the fanciful and impulsive in some of the chapters." If nine out of ten readers followed her lead in trusting their impressions to be true spiritual guidance, they would "go wrong, perhaps very wrong, for they would mistake their own day-dreams for the voice of the Holy Spirit." Babes in grace, therefore, would not find the book a safe guide. But for those that "really dwell in the inner circle it will be very dear." Some, Spurgeon surmised, fancy that they live close to God, but "it is quite another thing actually to do so." "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," Spurgeon quoted, but immediately warned strangers "not to intermeddle." In spite of this warning, he included fifty-six lines of her poetry including the

following:

Lord, I would be nigh thee,

Looking in thy face,

Listening for thy whisper,

Feeling thy embrace.

From all other refuge

To thine arms I flee:

Spirit, soul, and body,

Consecrate to thee. 86

This was not the only time that he encountered Shipton in his reviews or in recommending her lines as useful poetic literature, or in issuing gentle caveats about the experiential orientation of her content. Five years earlier, in 1866, Spurgeon reviewed a book of her poetry entitled Whispers in the Psalms, Hymns, and Meditations. He called them "charming in style, spiritual in matter, heavenly in tone." ⁸⁷ In 1882, in reviewing River Among the Rocks, he gave a mild

warning that "this may lead to a mysticism that is misleading." ⁸⁸ Shipton, Spurgeon opined in reviewing The Upper Springs and the Nether Springs; or Life Hid with Christ in God, "has a very sweet, tender vision of truth, and abounds in love for a personal Christ." Since she had proved to be useful to the

"weak and suffering ones," he hoped for a large sale for the volume. ⁸⁹ In January 1884 he reviewed God With Us; or The Believer's Portion by Shipton.

He noted that those who knew her style would find "all the tender, personal love for Jesus, and the power to interpret his truth that springs therefrom." "Afflicted Christians" would particularly find "sympathy and understanding of their

needs." ⁹⁰ Spurgeon's spirituality savored of an Edwardsean aroma. Mere speculative or notional understanding did not bear the same weight as a sensible knowledge of Christ's presence. One cannot embrace a true sense of this kind of truth through

a bare grammatical and syntactical understanding of the words alone, though it does not rise above or come apart from the actual content of Scripture. Words give true cognitive communication of the reality but only the Spirit infuses the spirit with the experience. One cannot describe the sweetness of honey so as to give genuine knowledge of that reality. It will not be known in truth if one has never tasted its sweetness. So it is with the genuine presence of Christ. It is beyond the assurance of salvation, and beyond a fertile contemplation of Christ as exceedingly fair and majestic. We desire the actual, though spiritual, coming

of Christ to visit us and inflame our souls with the rapture of his presence.

If now, with eyes defiled and dim,

We see the signs, but see not Him,

Oh may His love the scales displace,

And bid us see Him face to face! 91

Doctrines of real presence in the Eucharist, whether Catholic or Lutheran, are not helpful for they miss the point that the real physical presence is currently only in heaven; but his spiritual presence is not less real. "I believe," Spurgeon affirmed, "in the real presence of Jesus with his people; such presence has been real to my spirit." Just as surely as he came physically to Bethlehem and Calvary, so surely does he come by his Spirit to his people in their times of communion with him. Spurgeon was as sure of "that presence as of our own existence." He contemplated no "emotional excitement rising into fanatical rapture," but of sober fact when the "Lord's great heart touches ours." Spurgeon described it as a "delightful sense of rest" invaded by no "thought of foes, or fears, or afflictions or doubts." Such a presence induced a "laying aside of our own will" for a state in which "we are nothing, and we will nothing." In the throes of this Presence "Christ is everything, and his will is the pulse of our soul.

We are perfectly content either to be ill or to be well, to be rich or to be poor, to be slandered or to be honoured, so that we may but abide in the love of Christ.

Jesus fills the horizon of our being." ⁹² Covenant blessings come sometimes "even when we have not got the Bible with us," Spurgeon preached. Immediately following a strong defense of meditation on Scripture as a mean feeding the soul "with choice morsels of royal dainties" he spoke about bringing Jesus Christ to one "without the use of the word; simply in meditation and communion." He does not mean to propose an isolated experience ungoverned by biblical truth, but a time of communion separate from the time of preaching or the time of actual Bible reading and contemplation of a particular passage. The soul does not feed on externals or emblems or propositions, but on Christ himself. We do not eat doctrine, but

Christ. All that the Christian loves in the faith—truth, the word, preaching, ordinances—he loves for the sake of Christ. Our food is not the implements of the tabernacle but the paschal lamb. "And are these not most sweet and happy moments, when the spirit is carried aloft in blessed communion, when Jesus Christ seems very pleasant and very precious, when we place our head on his bosom, when we seem to feel his heart and know his love for us, when we lose ourselves in him and almost forget that we have a separate existence, being

'Plunged in his Godhead's deepest sea, And lost in his immensity.'" ⁹³ But such communion in the reality of Christ was, for Spurgeon, to be separated from all fanciful notions and ungrounded perceptions. True, the person of Christ himself constituted the joy and exhilaration of the experience, but only when the Christ enjoyed was the Christ that was God and man in one person, the righteous man and holy God conjoined to view sinners through that one face and that singular act of obedience, the propitiatory substitute for his elect, and their present advocate and mediator. Without these attributes and actions he is not the Christ that may be enjoyed in a consuming experience of love, and the consuming experience may be enjoyed only because all these historical, legal, and moral requirements have been answered fully and once for all; but the exalting delight itself comes from being enwrapt in the warmth of Jesus as the one through whom we may enjoy an immediate fellowship in the glory of the triune God now made sweeter by our having been brought there at such infinite cost. Carlile grasped the intensity of Spurgeon's spirituality, but mistakenly abstracted it from Spurgeon's doctrinal and biblical roots.

While Spurgeon called for an elevated morality, separation from worldliness as an element of true holiness, and an intense intimacy with the triune God, he looked askance at claims to perfection. Spurgeon approved a Methodist preacher's observation that "there is nobody who can stir up so many church rows, and keep them boiling so long, as your brother or sister who has received the 'second blessing' and is living the 'higher life.'" Spurgeon added his own comment to this brother's note, that "the most unsatisfactory members we have

ever had have been those who were most satisfied with themselves." ⁹⁴ One man became so sanctified that he could no longer live with his wife, and another member had "so clean escaped from sin" that he left the church in disgust.

Observing an even more radical bent, Spurgeon detested the claims of some that they participated in attributes of the deity and were "no longer sinners or liable to sin." The error, in some an "amiable delusion," could rapidly progress to a blasphemous imposition. It is an ill day when Christians "take to bragging and boasting, and call it 'testimony to the higher life.'" He loved, promoted, and

zealously sought true holiness and a right perception of union with Christ, but eschewed that "boastful holiness which had deluded some of the excellent of the

earth into vain-glory." ⁹⁵ He commended a book entitled Scriptural Holiness: not sinless perfection by Charles Graham. If the "holiness" people meant no more by their views than Graham explained, Spurgeon did not know why so much noise had been made over the matter. Graham's explanation "wheeled away much fanatical rubbish" and affirmed the "commonplaces of experimental divinity." Spurgeon gave his whole heart to anything that would promote true holiness, but when he heard boasts of sinless perfection "we get out of their company as quietly and quickly

as we can, making double haste if the moon happens to be near the full." ⁹⁶ Sinless perfection not only insulted his theological integrity but appeared just a bit loony.

A biography of Asa Mahan prompted the remark, "He differs as much from our theology as if he were a Pelagian, and meanwhile he is a strong perfectionist." The eighty-two-year-old Mahan described how wars were won, as well he should, and though Spurgeon did not "accept much of his testimony," he was glad to admire the "good man's frankness, courage, and directness, and we think none the less of him because his mind and ours would never run in harness

together." ⁹⁷ Courage and real spirituality Spurgeon could commend, but he deeply regretted their connection to a misleading doctrinal matrix.

Spurgeon had a personal appreciation for careful scholarship and its usefulness to the church. He always longed, however, that scholarship and orthodoxy be suffused with the pulsation of spiritual life. In a new translation of the last German edition of Hagenbach's History of Christian Doctrine, Spurgeon endorsed the flowing style of the translation and the usefulness of its material to "metaphysical thinkers" as well as a "select circle of scholars." The vast work done by Hagenbach opened up the massive history of many theologies from the patristic era to the present and "may sometimes prove useful for reference."

There is, however, an intelligent constituency that finds this kind of subtle enquiry and expression "very repulsive" and looks elsewhere for instruction. The doctrinal developments through the ages weary them and seem to produce an endless variety of competing systems. Technical knowledge of this dizzying variety of competitive systems may aid spiritual growth for some, but "Pastors and teachers who aim at the perfecting of the saints, the work of the ministry, and the building up of the body of Christ, generally prefer to get their cisterns

replenished higher up the river, above the bridges, and nearer the springs." ⁹⁸ The Bible must be the purest source from which one studies the works of God in

redemption and from which one finds the power for spiritual growth. Historical theology aids when it leads to clearer views of Scripture, but deceives when one seeks in it a substitute for direct knowledge of the mind of God through Scripture.

Commentaries

While Spurgeon had reservations about some of the subtleties of historical theology, he knew that it could help if it led to positive insight into the history of interpretation of Scripture. Commentaries, especially the old ones, were simply slices of historical theology concentrated into the biblical text. Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, Gill, and Clarke all made commentary directly on the text, but reflected some of the peculiarities of the historical conflicts and developments of their age. In his Commenting and Commentaries Spurgeon gave immense help to the contemporary minister through recommending a vast variety of types of helps in books new and old. "You are not such wiseacres," he told his students, "as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have labored before you in the field of exposition." He had no wish to bother with those that thought otherwise because

he had no hope of shaking them from their pretension to infallibility. ⁹⁹ Spurgeon knew the historical and theological provenance of the hundreds of commentaries he annotated and could give the most engaging and informative of comments in the greatest economy of language.

Universally and perennially helpful were Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, John Calvin, John Gill, Adam Clarke, and a host of commentators on single books. He could not hide his deep admiration for Calvin as a man ("that prince among men") or as a commentator ("Of all commentators I believe John Calvin to be the most candid."). Calvin pushed forward the light in every text "with fairness and integrity", given its words and context, and has less tendency of any commentator to press texts to fit a doctrinal system "which he feels to be important, or some theory which he is anxious to uphold." This was one of

Calvin's prime excellences. ¹⁰⁰ Though Spurgeon greatly respected Gill, a former pastor of his congregation, as a Hebraist and a master "cinder-sifter" able to find the few nuggets of gold in the midst of "perfect dunghills and dustheaps" of rabbinical learning, he was too addicted to Arminian hunting, and in giving too many options as to what a text did not mean, when no man of sense ever thought of such. When free of this overly sensitive polemicism, he was full of "good, sound, massive, sober sense in commenting," but on some passages "not congenial with his creed," he could be found hacking and hewing in order to bring the word into a more systematic

shape. ¹⁰¹ A new edition of Adam Clarke's commentary on the whole Bible received a notice with a caveat, "We greatly appreciate the exposition for its learning,

though we do not accept all its theology." ¹⁰² No Methodist should be without his Adam Clarke, for, as Spurgeon had observed in Commenting and Commentaries, "Adam Clarke is the great annotator of our Wesleyan friends; and they have no reason to be ashamed of him, for he takes rank among the chief

of expositors." ¹⁰³ Just to maintain peace in his library, however, he made sure that he inserted Doddridge between Clarke and Gill. Spurgeon showed his remarkable capacity for gleaning what was good and leaving what was unhelpful in recommending Clarke for certain advantages peculiar to him while also maintaining, "I do not find him so helpful as Gill, but still from his side of the question, with which I have personally no sympathy, he is an important writer,

and deserves to be studied by every reader of the Scriptures." ¹⁰⁴ He issued a personal perspective less larded with encomiums, but more discreetly, by writing on the title page of his own copy under the name of Clarke, "Arminian Perverter

of Scripture." ¹⁰⁵ As the market continued to grow, however, Spurgeon sought to keep up himself as well as aid his pastor readers in knowing how to invest their meagre incomes or encourage more wealthy members to treat their ministers to books that would help their preaching and thus the whole church. Spurgeon gave the highest marks to the Pulpit Commentary. "In our judgment their value to the preacher far exceeds that of any other modern commentary." As he commented on the Old Testament, he looked forward to the New, for "if all the books of the Bible are treated in the same manner with equal devoutness and freshness, the Pulpit Commentary will become the standard book for ministers." He judged it as far superior to Lange, and he was very positive toward Lange. He never used the Pulpit Commentary without receiving great benefit and his praise of it was

hearty and conscientious, not cold and formal. ¹⁰⁶ The errors of D. Whedon in his Popular Commentary on the New Testament were so abundant that Spurgeon began the review, "One of the weakest commentaries ever issued. It is from our point of view, unsound in doctrine, and the author seems to us to have an utterly confused mind upon everything he touches." Among his errors were his attempt to prove that "new wine" was the unfermented juice of the grape, and that infants were baptized as "virtual" as opposed to "actual" believers. The man, so Spurgeon surmised, "had been riding on a whirligig and had unsettled his brains." Such a confused head dealing with the Word of God is a tragedy for, since his gross misjudgments have actually made their way into a book, "many will follow blindly these hare-brained interpretations." Whedon "runs against the doctrines of grace like a bull at a red flag," an egregious example of which is his erroneous declaration in dealing with

Romans 8:8 that "faith is the precedent condition in order to regeneration." ¹⁰⁷ For Spurgeon, obviously, the carnal mind was such that apart from a sovereign action of regeneration, no faith could arise for "if we have not been regenerated

... our carnal mind is still at enmity against God." ¹⁰⁸ Spurgeon appreciated etymological and syntactical work in a commentary, but if all that labor produced a theologically defective view of the message of the Bible, he saw little ultimate value in the work.

Theological Observation with Warning

Second only to Spurgeon's desire to give hearty and positive encouragement to readers to take advantage of books that had the beautiful combination of theological soundness and spiritual meatiness was his calling as a watchman wielding the sword of the Spirit to ward off unedifying theological ideas. He did this in two ways. First he gave clear warnings against books that contained or led to theological error. Second, he advocated books that exposed theological error; sometimes he advocated them without reservation, but often with a caveat.

Of the second sort Spurgeon found Bible Truth and Broad Church Error much to his liking. His wielding of the sword necessitated the laying bare of the ideas and the holders of those ideas that were dangerous to the people of God.

While this book is discussed in the chapter on controversy, here the point is Spurgeon's advocating the literature that would expose damaging error. "The opposing theories investigated and refuted are those of Colenso, Bushnell, Maurice, Robertson of Brighton, Ward Beecher, and Dr. Young. We would advise all those, and their name is legion, who have been captivated with the aberrations of these writers to give ear to the instructions of this book, and give glory to the Lord their God before they cause darkness, and before their feet stumble upon the dark mountain." He commended the book as "an uplifted standard against a flood of error." He particularly noted that those troubled with doubts "upon the eternity of future punishment" will here find such plain teaching of Scripture upon the subject as leaves nothing further to be desired."

109 But just in case some needed more than that one book, Spurgeon also advocated William Reed's book Everlasting Punishment and Modern Speculation. It included the whole Scripture proof of the eternity of future

punishment, refuted all the arguments that could be adduced against it. ¹¹⁰ Completely distasteful to Spurgeon was the task of giving even negative notice to works of infidelity. He knew that they were false and would, therefore, in due time fall apart of themselves if they were not helped along by some adventuresome dragon-slayer. F. L. Steinmeyer took up the sword to do the nasty task in The Miracles of our Lord in relation to Modern Criticism.

Spurgeon pointed to it as a work that demonstrated "how the infidel observations of Strauss and others of that school can be met by a man of equal thought and learning." Steinmeyer had also the "faculty of suggesting trains of thought, and hence he will be of use even to those who take no interest in what Strauss may have said or not said." Though Spurgeon admired Steinmeyer for jumping to the fray, such an engagement would never interest Spurgeon, so he claimed. He preferred instead the "marrow of the gospel" but had little appetite to compete

with "the snarling of dogs over the bones, or even in the whips of those who lash the dogs away." A critic like Strauss and those of his school that are so brazen as to "rob us of the miracles of our Lord our only relation towards him is that of an intercessor, praying the great Lord to open the blind man's eyes, or cast the devil

out of him." ¹¹¹ Matthew Henry Habershon ventured into the wasteland of skepticism to search out a few dragons also. He displayed an impressive bit of erudition in his The Wave of Scepticism and the Rock of Truth, lectures delivered to the young men of Highbury Park Church. Spurgeon expected great things from them if they could "listen to such lectures as this and enjoy the argument." Habershon's design was "to show how the influence of German anti-Christian literature can be withstood and neutralized" by supplying an antidote to the German poison.

Spurgeon viewed it as a noble design, but advised that those of his readers who were unacquainted with the skeptical work "need not take the poison for the sake of appreciating the antidote." The evil in all these replies resides in the necessity of bringing "bad books and their blasphemies under the notice of many who otherwise would never be defiled thereby." The consequence cannot be avoided when the reply is urgent, but Spurgeon suspected that "nine times out of ten all skeptical books had better be allowed to rot of themselves." Without the replies,

they would starve for publicity. ¹¹² An excellent example of the absurdity, according to Spurgeon, of publicizing infidelity through seeking to answer it came in Joseph Parker's interaction with the American skeptic Robert Ingersoll. Spurgeon shoved aside Parker's Ingersoll Answered with a gruffness that showed Spurgeon's utter disdain for the supposed intellectual respectability of Ingersoll as well as his suspicion of the trustworthiness of Parker's orthodoxy. He was amazingly short in his onesentence dismissal of Parker: "We neither care for Ingersoll nor the answer to him." Spurgeon found "enough to do in England with cutting up our own brambles; nine out of ten of our people know nothing of this American briar, and there is no need they should." End of review. Spurgeon grudgingly gave approval even to the most orthodox answers to infidels and critics, but he felt no obligation to give encouragement to what he thought was a compromising approach to apologetics.

Spurgeon's befuddlement with Parker went along the lines of his evaluation of Henry Ward Beecher. Doing as well as he could to respect and honor the great God-given gifts so obvious in many of his contemporaries, and yet coveting their talents for a more steady and trustworthy defense of received confessional Protestant orthodoxy, Spurgeon seemed verbally to throw up his hands in

bewilderment. Beecher, Spurgeon admitted, was "for versatility of genius and wealth of illustration altogether peerless; our regret is," he continued," that he is far from being as spiritual as he is spirited, and is more a model for an orator

than for a divine." ¹¹³ Later he gave the same kind of accolade followed by his serious reservation. "We consider Mr. Beecher to be the greatest genius of the age," Spurgeon wrote, "and we only wish we were quite sure as to where he is,

or will be, in theology." ¹¹⁴ So it was with the dazzling Joseph Parker. Parker's published lecture clearly showed that he grasped every issue introduced by Ingersoll with a philosophical

profundity and seriousness of purpose not even dreamed of by Ingersoll. ¹¹⁵ Spurgeon was bound to have appreciated a certain element of every opposing argument presented by Ingersoll and would have entered wholeheartedly into the experiential aspect of Parker's refutation. At one point on Scripture, Parker testified, "The mystery that is in the Bible corresponds precisely with the mystery I have found in my own heart. It searches me as no other book does, and puts into language the thoughts for which I find no other speech."

Spurgeon might have wondered when Parker mentioned others that "basely abused" the Bible, for he did not think that Parker would have meant by abuse the same thing that Spurgeon meant. That which would have made him see Parker's answer as incomplete, and finally inadequate, was the reticence of Parker to press his advantage to a full blown proclamation of orthodoxy and the gospel. Parker's stinted approach coincided with his truncated view of the gospel, in Spurgeon's outlook. Spurgeon would have approved the earnestness that made Parker blast the uproarious laughter that punctuated Ingersoll's speech. "Clowns and mockers are never consulted on great occasions," Parker affirmed, and "any man who answers the gravest questions of my heart with gibes and sneers, with puns and quirks, and seeks to turn my agony into an hypocrisy, and my sin into an occasion of displaying his own powers of ridicule," he would resolutely refuse to take as a counselor. He gave good advice when he said, "Believe me, young men, he is not necessarily your wisest guide who can make you laugh most uproariously, and find fun for you amid the most strenuous inquiries of the mind."

But, when Parker had gained the advantage in showing Ingersoll's lack of seriousness and puerile misunderstanding of historic Christianity, he used this ascendancy for his own idiosyncratic faith, and not for historic orthodoxy. "I have nothing to do with what the lecturer vaguely calls 'orthodox religion,'" Parker boasted. He did not undertake to defend any particular sect and asserted that "creeds of human making... have done more harm to Christianity than has

ever been done by any form of speculative infidelity. No theological creed has ever received my signature." He considered his theology "too sublime to be fastened to any form of unchangeable terms, and my faith too transcendent to be chained by propositions which value their form rather than their inspiration."

Spurgeon, satisfied with the faith once delivered to the saints and condensed in the historic creeds, had no difficulty in affirming their theology, and suspected foul play where anyone considered himself above them. Parker, like Spurgeon, eschewed priestcraft and sacerdotal magic, but found Christ's deity in the character of his teaching and vital goodness, a man who introduces us to the knowledge of God. Spurgeon could not help but be suspicious when Parker's exalted celebrative language insisted on stopping short of the language of the creeds. Parker found in Jesus "security in His almighty strength" and regarded "Him as the Son of Man, the Son of God—God 'the Son,' above all others in intellectual force, in moral heroism, in personal righteousness, and in every attribute of mind and heart." None else could be "the Priest of humanity, the

S AVIOUR of the world." ¹¹⁶ Again Parker's language seemed exalted but suspiciously consistent with the liberal Christ. "I call you to Christ," Parker proclaimed. "The more deeply I study His character the more do I see that He is the only Saviour of the world." In Parker's mind this "working Peasant, a carpenter's Son, a root out of a dry ground," stood "above all other men in the clearness of His insight, the range of His outlook, the heroism of His courage, and the splendour of His sacrifice." To Parker, Jesus was "none other than Emmanuel—'God with us'," for "when I want Him most He is most to me; when the wind is coldest His touch is warmest; when heart and flesh do fail He

is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." ¹¹⁷ Parker would call the Athanasian creed "venerable" without any specific affirmation of its contents, but rather warned against ridiculing the " truth that

may be overlaid by error." ¹¹⁸ And though Parker again gained the advantage over Ingersoll in disposing of the infidel's pointless shallowness on issues of sin and the present moral propensities of humanity, he fell far short of Spurgeon's views of the need for radical and effectual intervention by God for the redemption of humanity. Ignoring his historic confessional position, Parker stated the case solemnly; Christianity utters no weak whine about "circumstances" nor treats life as a series of clever or clumsy tricks but is full of original vitality. Made in God's image, man was "endowed with freedom of will" with the "terrible power of disobeying his Creator." "In the exercise of the functions which made him a man, he lost his first integrity, and his heart went astray from God." God went after him, loved him, "called him home, offered

him forgiveness and restoration, redeemed him with unspeakable price, and now surrounds him with all helpful and restorative influences." In this quest, however, "even God cannot interfere with the moral independence of manhood.

The human (such is the mystery) must always have the power of rejecting the divine. In the end every man will be judged according to his works, whether they be good, or whether they be bad."

Parker's insightful remonstrance against Ingersoll falls short. His defense of Christ's deity is more alarming than reassuring. He tackled Ingersoll's jokes about the new birth, faith, and damnation with a withering reprimand, but his did not follow with a biblical presentation of the new birth, the relations between faith and the substitutionary death of Christ, and the sobering reality of eternal punishment. As an unusual piece of irony, Spurgeon gave greater commendation to an answer to Ingersoll by a Roman Catholic priest than he did to Parker's interaction. Father Lambert "hugged him to death with arguments from which there is no escape." In the Roman Catholic priest "the champion of atheism has

found his match." ¹¹⁹ The next month Spurgeon reviewed Parker's three volume work on The Inner Life of Christ as revealed in the Gospel of Matthew. Spurgeon reminded his readers that he differed from Parker but also admitted that he felt the "great value of thoughts so fresh and original." He described Parker as "a man by himself, after no class, and belonging to no school." Probably for that very reason Spurgeon went on to say, "he is not all we could wish, but he is a man, a

man of genius, and a man of power." ¹²⁰ Spurgeon could admire the strengths of an individual but had no truck for a prideful isolation from the historic witness of the church.

A book by Samuel Ives Curtiss about the Levitical priesthood interacted with [sigh!] German higher critics. Spurgeon recommended it for those who "are at all troubled upon the subject whereof it treats." For himself, however, he again reiterated that too much attention to skeptics and infidels is not a good or necessary thing. "We confess," he wrote, "that we are not so constituted as to have patience with the nonsense which breeds in the minds of German dreamers, nor do we personally value the learned works which are meant to counteract their maunderings." A dose of Kant, Schleiermacher, or Hegel made him "more ready to laugh than to reason" because he found their wonderful philosophies like "wretched cobwebs that the practical mind walks through" without knowing they are there. Sadly, these nightmares influence unstable minds and it is well to have them chased away. "Follies of the learned may thus be fairly overturned by the wisdom of the learned." ¹²¹

J. C. Ryle stood tall in Spurgeon's estimation as a thinker and trustworthy theologian, except when he defended the peculiarities of Anglicanism. Old Paths was sound and orthodox throughout and even bold enough to affirm election and the perseverance of the saints. The writing indulges in no obscure, high-flown language soaring into "sublime nonsense," but is simple and plain so that even the poorest may understand. Spurgeon hoped that Ryle would live long and continue to point to the old paths, and that at the next Church Congress would be a "little less tolerant of those new roads which he very well knows lead down to

death." ¹²² Spurgeon's personal warnings against destructive publications abounded both in number and variety. He cared not for books that were thin in instruction, and could be frank and candid in his lack of appreciation for their imposition on the public. "I have seen enough of the writings of one or two evangelical bishops not long deceased to wonder how they came to be printed," Spurgeon protested, "even much less sold; for there is really nothing in them." He supposed that printing them was proper and their appearance on the shelves naturally resulted in some sales. "But what an imposition on the public!" He asked his college men to tell him "why Archbishop Sumner's comments were ever submitted to the press. Did weakness of thought ever reach a deeper degree of imbecility?" Such production, mere pap and milk and water, made the evangelicals lose ground to

the ritualists in the established church. ¹²³ Mere displays of learning, although containing no theological danger held little fascination for Spurgeon. Henry Julius Martyn's book The Christ of the Gospels dealt with the incarnation, miracles, teachings, and resurrection of our Lord, gave evidence of wide reading and impressive knowledge of heathen mythologies, philosophical writers, and the classics but little else. "One can scarce see 'the apple tree' for the overshadowing 'trees of the wood.'" A certain order of readers might find great value in it, "but to that order we do not belong."

124

A treatment of the kingdom of God by James S. Candlish also had little value in Spurgeon's estimation. Candlish minimized issues such as incarnation, atonement, and church in his discussion. For Spurgeon, the idea of kingdom in its relationship to sacrifice dominated the prophetic materials, and both the beginning and ending of the "gospel." The four Evangelists entertained incarnation at the beginning, two of them with specific birth narratives, and sacrifice and resurrection at the end. Does it not seem that these would be the leading indicators of the kingdom in the Baptist's proclamation of repentance in light of the inaugurated presence of the kingdom, and then that which Christ himself continued: "Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the

kingdom of God, and saying: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel." Spurgeon saw the kingdom as unfolding in three scenes: the revelation of the righteousness of God in the incarnation and passion of Christ; second, as a growth like a seed planted or a tree growing; and third, "as a predicted manifestation of unrivalled sovereignty that puts down all other rule and authority, when the Son of God shall reign in our nature, King of kings, and Lord of lords; of whose kingdom there shall be no end." Imagine his regret, therefore, when Candlish, after giving some hope that his insights could prove beneficial, unfolded his driving concern by pressing the kingdom into a form of social idealism as presented by such thinkers as Leibniz and Kant. This concluding lecture Spurgeon considered a "disastrous failure" which Candlish sought to salvage by the brilliant move of adopting a German word "Aufklarung" to express it. Those who seek an ideal social condition are workers with God, so Candlish claimed, and soon such an ideal social state would be reached in which we glorify God by developing a perfect human society. Spurgeon's understanding, though, focused on a kingdom that cannot be shaken, not an ideal to work for, but one that would be given that is eternal in the heavens. "Probably our author does not see where he is going, but we have seen these speculations about a mythical kingdom of God used by others to conceal determined attacks upon the cross of Christ." Even though the honored Free Church of Scotland had given its imprimatur, Spurgeon felt no motivation on

that account to give it the least countenance. ¹²⁵ Candlish was shocked. He wrote Spurgeon about the review, the substance of which was written by another but edited, approved, and endorsed by some personal contribution of Spurgeon. Spurgeon saw no reason to alter the judgment upon the book itself, but was glad to have Candlish's response, which he printed.

Candlish recognized that there would be differences between evangelicals on any number of issues, but he could not understand "how anyone who has read it with any care could fail to see that I maintain the kingdom of God to be a supernatural divine institution, founded on the great facts of the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ, and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, and that my references to philosophical systems are designed to prove that none of them can secure the realization of that perfect state of society which is made possible and certain by the kingdom of God proclaimed and established by Christ." If the book were injurious to any great Scripture truths, Candlish regretted it and would reconsider. He wanted Spurgeon to know, however, that the review

presented its design and meaning "the very reverse of what they really are." ¹²⁶ Spurgeon saw no reason to alter his published understanding of the book itself,

but was glad to have and to share Candlish's explanation of his meaning.

The Expositor, a periodical edited by Samuel Cox, did not rank well with Spurgeon. When the editor called the story of the long day of Joshua a "childish blunder," Spurgeon did not "believe him one bit" and proclaimed himself as "among the simple people who believe that when Joshua bade the sun stand still there was a real prolongation of the day." The new periodical contained "substantial and scholarly articles" but he did not believe it would live; it had taken on a task that was self-defeating. The presentation of weighty biblical subjects in piecemeal fashion was sure to gain scant readership, but longer

articles would soon send a periodical to its long home. ¹²⁷ The collected fascicles appeared as Volume ¹ and Spurgeon reviewed it in September 1875. No one can read The Expositor without gaining instruction and finding his mind awakened to thought, but he had need be on the alert against a "tendency to new senses, by which miracle is frittered down." He hoped that his service to his brethren in ministry would make Cox "more attracted to those oldfashioned views of things which are not less reasonable than the new." Spurgeon did not think The Expositor the kind of literature that could be used profitably by revival preachers, but a "more quiet, educated order of ministers will read with interest; and, if these brethren add discretion to their interest, they will, upon the

whole, read with profit." ¹²⁸ The next time Spurgeon examined the publication he reiterated that "the serial is sometimes a little too broad to be quite to our mind," but, remembering his prediction of a short life, Spurgeon expressed his pleasure to know that "Mr. Cox is encouraged to continue it." "Our fear," he reminded the reader, "was that it would shoot over the heads of the bulk of our ministers, and so would fail to

find a constituency, and we are delighted to have been mistaken." ¹²⁹ When Spurgeon reviewed Volume ⁴ in 1877, he called it "fresh and full of interest" and though he often differed totally with the opinions of the writers, he was glad to see their opinions clearly stated for "they are thoughtful and weighty." The work would be useful to men "whose discriminating faculties are in healthy

exercise." ¹³⁰ In reviewing Volume ⁸ of The Expositor, Spurgeon, continuing the same ambivalence toward the monthly publication, remarked that much that was admirable was mixed with a subtle unbelief. In the exposition on Balaam's ass, the writer introduced a defence of the "plain statement of Scripture" that brought forth a principle that "virtually deprives us of every revelation worthy of God, for it leaves us no perfect and infallible declaration of the divine mind." There is no such thing with God as an imperfect revelation, but the same light that shines

in John also shone in Genesis, though in "another manner." "How greatly we wish," Spurgeon sighed, "that men would not try to rob us of the infallibility of

Scripture, for it is the anchorage of Protestant and Christian faith!" ¹³¹ Spurgeon's opinion that the periodical would be short-lived was wrong for it was published from 1875 through 1884 with Cox as the editor. The publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, continued with W. Robertson Nicoll for the years 18851923. James Moffatt became editor in 1924.

Spurgeon's instincts about its tricky theology however, were right. Its editor, Samuel Cox (1826-93) was a Stepney graduate in 1851, and in 1877 published a book affirming universalism, Salvator Mundi: Or, Is Christ the Saviour of All

Men? ¹³² Cox was not at all bashful in setting out what he thought was a helpful position for the advancement of Christian truth. He began his preface, "The main object of this book is to encourage those who 'faintly trust the larger hope' to commit themselves to it wholly and fearlessly by showing them that they have ample warrant for it in the Scriptures of the New Testament." He believed that the more serious, intellectual, and spiritual part of each congregation would respond with relief and joy to hear their minister state plainly this case. This is a truth that makes God "a just God and a Saviour to us and the gospel veritable

good news." ¹³³ In Cox's large circle of acquaintance he knew of none of the more "thoughtful and cultivated preachers of the gospel" that held the "dogma of everlasting torment." Cox closed his preface with an earnest invitation to

preachers:

Of those teachers and preachers who honestly retain the dogma which attaches an endless torment to

the sins of time no man can ask more than that, while they preach it with sincerity, they also keep their

minds open to any more light which may break out upon them from God's holy Word; but of those

who have seen that light and yet will not suffer it to shine through their teaching, what can one say but

that they are less worthy of their high calling than those that still walk in darkness. 134

Now that Spurgeon knew that he walked in darkness and was only marginally worthy of his calling, he felt justified in informing his readers, "We cannot write in unqualified commendation of the later writings of Mr. Cox." Though much of their popularity was due to the literary talent and taste displayed in them, Spurgeon submitted that still more interest arose from "their adaptation to the sceptical tendencies of modern times." Puritan theology had been gradually put aside with its robust grasp of human sin and the commensurate answer given in the atonement of Christ. Cox demonstrated personal evangelical feeling but had a lofty view of human nature "irreconcilable, without much hypercriticism and forced interpretation, with the inspired record." Cox accepted the premise that every person had some earnest desire for the Lord God of Israel, even the

prophets of Baal. By such an assumption, a "roseate hue is thrown over the worst of men," minimizing the vast morass of evil resident within each human and humanity as a whole, and brings into question that God made so vast a provision for its cure. "From the author of Salvator Mundi we differ widely, but our

esteem for him renders it painful in the highest degree to do so." ¹³⁵ Nor until six years had passed was Cox removed from his editorship of The Expositor as a result of the position taken in Salvator Mundi. Almost five years after the publication of Salvator Mundi, Spurgeon reviewed a book that provided a trenchant critique of the "larger hope," including a few blows at Salvator Mundi. "Surely it is time to leave it alone now," Spurgeon opined, "and it will die out of

its own weakness." ¹³⁶ Spurgeon found Marcus Dods' "rational principle of interpretation" productive of some very dry and unspiritual fare in his interpretation of the Judges in Israel's Iron Age. The authors that Dods commended ran a bit too close to the border of heathenism. When Dods compared them to the seamen that "must lift the misty veil of the horizon and penetrate its mystery," Spurgeon

proposed agreement if he would change the metaphor to pirates. ¹³⁷ In The Gospel for the Nineteenth Century Spurgeon found no gospel such as was proclaimed in the first century and hoped earnestly that no other century would be contaminated by that propounded in this book. The example theory was set forth as the "remedy for all human woes," while the "life giving doctrine of an atoning sacrifice is left out." What is implied in the book Ecce Homo and in Dr. Farrar's Life of Christ is explicitly and unhesitatingly argued. Justification means God receives us for our approval of Christ's blessed life; our desire to be like him is sufficient for God's receiving us as such. When this is received, so the book argued, none need ever talk again about substitution, or a wrathful punishment of Christ on our behalf, for these two views cannot co-exist. Christ's deity is maintained, so the author argued, for if the perfect example is to be effective it must be adored. None but the Son of God should be adored.

Spurgeon believed the reasoning to be fallacious, for Adam was a sinless man and would have been justified by keeping the Law simply for righteousness' sake. So if Christ were a perfect man that inspired us to righteousness simply for the beauty of that righteousness, would not this suffice without pushing us into idolatry. "It is marvelous to us," Spurgeon remarked, "that any one can so thoroughly admire and endeavour to imitate the moral beauties in the life of Christ and suppose this to be all that is meant by 'the glorious gospel of the blessed God.'" Deity and blood atonement cannot be sundered in the biblical gospel. ¹³⁸

Some writers might be helpful in one area but dubious in another. Each should stick to his strengths and not write under the delusion of omnicompetence. He had commended a book by James Frame as a delightful exposition of Psalms.

When he put his hand to straightforward theology, however, Spurgeon felt compelled to warn his readers that Frame's book on original sin contained views

"generally known as Morrisonian, or Ultra-Arminianism." ¹³⁹ A book entitled The Four Gospels and the One Christ gave Spurgeon the opportunity to insist that only one gospel existed because there indeed was only one Christ. "The title is an impossibility," he reminded the readers, though he knew very well that no argument for a multiplicity of gospels ever entered the mind of the author. Spurgeon, encouraging care and doctrinal concepts as wedded inextricably to the words employed to convey them, spoke of the "fourfold narrative of the life of the One Christ" and credited the author with demonstrating the value accrued to our understanding through the four accounts.

Unique themes characteristic of each gospel establish a better authentication than could have been achieved with a single narrative, "however complete that one narrative might be." The book contained a harmony, a study of Old Testament quotations in the New and other pleasing features, but "we should have liked the book more if the one great design of the life of Christ, as preparative to his death, had been kept more in view. The one Christ lived that he might die for our

sins, according to the Scriptures." ¹⁴⁰ For no theme did Spurgeon express more urgency than that of the sacrifice of Christ. He took advantage of the publication of Alfred Cave's The Scripture Doctrine of Sacrifice to drive home the importance of defending that doctrine in light of the theological proclivities of the nineteenth century. "That the scriptural doctrine of sacrifice should need to be elaborately stated and defended in the nineteenth century, and in our own favoured land, and that it should be needed in the upper sphere of the theological literature of the present age, is a lamentation,

and shall be for a lamentation." ¹⁴¹ The Spurgeonic lamentation would be extended both in volume and mournfulness in the years to come. A teacher wrong on this doctrine could not be right on anything else because it stood in the front rank of the "first principles of the oracles of God." Cane traced the doctrine through the whole of Scripture showing its truly substitutionary and expiatory character. He then compared the biblical doctrine to those modern views showing them to be "erroneous in proportion as they have departed from the old evangelical faith." R. W. Dale was commended for many of his fundamental principles in his lectures on the atonement, but criticized for not carrying them out to the legitimate consequences. "He has seemed to us," Spurgeon joined in,

"at the close of the Lectures as though half afraid of having gone too far in the

right path." ¹⁴² The elegantly worded Dale made a strong case for developing a theory of the atonement, in spite of many hesitations due to the mysteries of the connections of law, punishment, righteousness and the inter-trinitarian connections with the doctrine—deep and infinite mysteries in one way of reckoning them. He wrote, "It is hardly possible for us to escape a conception of the sacrifice of Christ

which will amount to a theory of the atonement." ¹⁴³ Though many may refuse to speculate on the mysteries involved, "if there is habitual trust in the Lord Jesus, as the propitiation for the sins of the world, we shall have a theory, spite

of ourselves." ¹⁴⁴ He also proposed to show that "there is a direct relation between the death of Christ and the remission of sins, and to investigate the

principles and grounds of the relation." ¹⁴⁵ Rightly, in opposition to some of the dilutions of Frederick Robertson, Dale contended, "The real truth is that while He [Jesus] came to preach the gospel,

His chief object in coming was that there might be a gospel to preach." ¹⁴⁶ Spurgeon also would have complete sympathy with Dale's judgment that, "But for the transcendent work of mercy consummated by Christ on Calvary, God would be not only hostile to sin, but hostile to those who take sides with sin, from the first moment of their revolt against the eternal law of righteousness. For

sin is a personal act, it has not existence apart from the sinner." ¹⁴⁷ Though advocating an orthodox Christology and a real and true connection between the death of Christ and forgiveness, and in some sense explaining it as a vicarious death by which God was enabled both to inflict and endure the penalty of sin so as to justify his not inflicting it on the actual sinner, "the grandest moment in the

moral history of God," ¹⁴⁸ Spurgeon, along with Cane, still felt that Dale withheld affirming the full implications of all that his argument had gained. Not imputation but union with Christ in his original relation to God as our representative constituted the ground of forgiveness. Spurgeon was as strong on union with Christ as Dale, but he saw imputation as fundamental to both atonement and justification and as necessary to our legal union with him in his saving work. It is at this point that Dale seemed to fail. Dale said, "Our own relation to the Father is determined by the relation of Christ to the Father. By no fictitious imputation or technical transfer, but by virtue of a real union between the life of Christ and our own life, His relation to the Father becomes ours. It is ours with the same qualifications with which His life is ours. In Him both the life and the relation exist in a transcendent form." ¹⁴⁹ Again he emphasized this in asserting, "This supreme act

becomes ours—not by formal imputation—but through the law which constitutes His life the original spring of our own. His eternal trust in the Father, His eternal joy in the Father, His eternal love for the Father, are the root of the

trust and joy and love of which we are conscious in the Divine presence." ¹⁵⁰ Though Dale spoke freely of the infliction of penalty he avoided the idea of an infliction of wrath. Spurgeon appreciated what Dale had done, but hoped for more, and was glad that Cane had raised the issue.

Dale's Lectures on Ephesians provided the same experience of interrupted hope for Spurgeon. They were "worthy of thoughtful and candid consideration," but also provided the inevitable conflict with Calvinism. Spurgeon affirmed clearly his endorsement of a positive Calvinism and found Dale, "though assuming at times a defiant attitude," more "in accordance with us than his words might seem to imply." Dale avoided systematic theology wherever possible in order to give "full scope and play" to his own rich imagination and reason. This propensity led him to unconscious internal conflict in his position.

Though all men are elected and predestinated to adoption as sons, this appointment of God is effectual only in some. Original sin per se is denied while its universal effects are admitted. The death of Christ is indispensable for the forgiveness of sins, but the relationship is obscure. Substitution is discarded, but Dale dances so close to it that his resistance to it seems absurd. He provided an onslaught of nuanced verbosity in order to affirm while denying the necessity of real substitution. Spurgeon quoted Dale: "Unless by a supreme act of humiliation, and sacrifice, and love, Christ descends from his glory, and stands by our side; unless the dark and awful shadow of our sin falls upon him; unless he freely consents to have brought home to his very heart the guilt of the race; unless he submits to some experience of the woe and loss by which the guilt of the race is punished; his moral relations to the Father will not be the perfect expression of the relations which must exist between us and God if we are to

receive the pardon of sin." ¹⁵¹ Surely this was a strenuous task for Dale to labor so much to create a real reason that the sufferings of Christ identified with our guilt and became the reason for our forgiveness, and at the same time avoiding an out-and-out assertion of substitution. Dale seemed to espouse a type of moral government view in saying that "We find in Christ the ideal submission of the race to the justice of the divine vengeance against sin." Spurgeon commented, "We do not see how an ideal submission to the justice of the divine vengeance against sin

could avert the reality either from Christ or from us." ¹⁵² Imputation, so Dale declared, is an intolerable fiction, that is, of our sin to Christ and his

righteousness to us. Transfer of both righteousness and sin, however, in the sense of an "ideal" are admitted. Spurgeon thought that it was strange that Dale would admit effects without a cause and expressed his objection cogently: "The predestination of all men to an ideal righteousness in Christ, which is obtained by some only, and the attainment of that righteousness by submitting to its ideal manifestation in the person of Christ, is surely not less fictitious than the so-

called intolerable fiction of imputation." ¹⁵³ Spurgeon commended the practical part of the exposition as a profit to all classes of hearers.

This same ambivalence toward Dale showed up in his review of Dale's Yale Lectures on preaching. The Lectures themselves were "well worth reading" for they said a "thousand good things." Spurgeon found himself agreeing with most of what Dale said and wondered that it should be so for Dale himself was a "man of original and independent mind, and in some of his teachings he has embraced modern error." Spurgeon felt that his soul's leaning and convictions "bind him to the great evangelical doctrines of the gospel" or he would roam "we know not whither." Dale embodied both evangelical conservatism and spiritual radicalism, but his lectures were "fresh without being wild" and "careful without being

servile." ¹⁵⁴ Horace Bushnell's observations on the pulpit also provided something commendable, but to be searched out with caution. Though hidden in the midst of much that was rubbish there was a "fund of fresh, bright, powerful truth that compels our admiration and respect." His views of qualifications for preaching were "about as fresh and suggestive as anything that could be said on such a well-worn theme; and the student or preacher should be dull indeed who is not quickened thereby." Bushnell's words would do good when taken in by careful

and discriminating reading. ¹⁵⁵ Newman Smith's attempt at defense by retreat Spurgeon found positively distasteful. The Orthodox Theology of Today smelled like an attempt to sell a bit of truth for some honor among men. "The fewer of such defences of orthodoxy, the better," Spurgeon fumed, for "orthodoxy is quite able to take care of itself" if it can just be saved from its feigned friends. "Apparent vindications," so Spurgeon judged Newman Smith's doctrinal explanations, "accompanied with gentle hints of improvement are the sappers and miners which do the preparatory work of the enemy." Distress at being thought old-fashioned has been the ruin of some well-intentioned, but intimidated, men. Finally, Spurgeon had to say, "We

know nothing of Mr. Newman Smith, but we do not care for his book." ¹⁵⁶ Smith had served both Presbyterian and Congregational churches in America throughout the New England area, was a graduate of Bowdoin College and

Andover Theological Seminary, and had imbibed the New Theology influenced by Schleiermacher' romanticism. He also had published The Religious Feeling, a Study for Faith and Old Faith in New Lights. Spurgeon would encounter another production by Smith in 1885 and found it even more distasteful than The Orthodox of Today. In The Reality of Faith there was no reality and no faith.

Enough of this stuff already glutted English life and Spurgeon saw no need to go to America "for more of the rubbish." Smith's work would suit the "modern school of doubt" for it was pretentious, talked about faith without any and nothing for it to rest upon. The 300 pages of "sublime balderdash" could just as easily have been ³,000, for "you have nothing to do but muddle your brain, and

set your tongue going, and the result is unbounded nothing in big words." ¹⁵⁷ As Spurgeon moved closer to the Downgrade the borders within which he tolerated theological nonsense narrowed into a much more straitened path.

A recommendation without reservation Spurgeon gladly accorded to Horatius Bonar. He met perfectly Spurgeon's ideal for theological instruction as "sound, forcible, and free from crotchets." His book The Rent Veil met the criterion of being a "corrective" to false ideas and, at the same time, "a mean of comfort and instruction." The issue of "Perfection" was peculiarly onerous to Spurgeon, and Bonar provided the right touch on that teaching in declaring "there is no day nor hour in which evil is not coming forth from us, and in which the great bloodshedding is not needed to wash it away." Spurgeon proclaimed this is certainly true and then continued with his own comment. "Through the veil, which is the Redeemer's flesh, is our one access to God; not merely when first we believe, but throughout all our Christian experience. No instantaneous faith will bear us beyond the necessity of daily cleansing with the blood." Even more important than that theological idea, though certainly connected with it, substitution.

Spurgeon admired Bonar's defense of "Substitution is righteousness," Bonar commented, as he showed the intensity of the attack on substitution through the years. Had the idea not been so inextricably founded on Scripture images, explanations, and types it could not have survived the poisonous darts cast at it through the centuries. "The Bible and truth of substitution cannot be sundered," Bonar insisted, for the Bible makes no attempt to accommodate objections on this point or to "smooth angularities and make the doctrine less philosophically objectionable." The mercantile nature of the Bible's presentation of substitution hardly yields to any other interpretation, so the method of the objector must be, not to "reinterpret" them, but to eliminate them. "Why are they there," Bonar asked, "if substitution and transference be not true?" Spurgeon could not have found a writer more to his own taste and expression than Bonar when he wrote, "Substitution may be philosophical or

unphilosophical, defensible or indefensible; still it is imbedded in the Bible; specially in the sacrificial books and sacerdotal ordinances. Its writers may be credited or discredited; but no one can deny that substitution was an article of their creed, and that they meant to teach this doctrine if they meant anything at

all." ¹⁵⁸ Giving notice of a book entitled A New Basis for Belief in Immortality, Spurgeon scoffed at the gullibility of intellectuals that fell for the phenomenon of spiritualism. Skeptics of the present day, Spurgeon believed, are often "grievously afflicted with unrest." This book suggests a remedy quite as bad as the disease. "With a delicate pathos, such as we meet with in advertisements that describe the symptoms of sufferers, and prescribe patent medicines warranted to effect an immediate cure, Spiritualism is propounded in this treatise as a sure relief and a safe remedy for this soul sickness that is prevalent among agnostics."

The phenomena of automatic writing, clairvoyance, and trance speaking initiated by Kate Fox in Hydersville, New York, in 1848 has had an attraction among educated people. A strange world indeed. When the Bible is made to support this lying wonder, Spurgeon went from sorrow to horror. "In the hands of some

interpreters the Bible is made to teach anything they like to impute to it." ¹⁵⁹ Though generally impressed positively with A. B. Bruce, Spurgeon found it necessary to warn his readers against Bruce's approach in The Chief End of Revelation. He envisioned such a gradual unfolding of revelation "as to rob the earlier books of the Bible of their force and power, and indeed to reduce the value of the Old Testament generally to a very low point." Bruce does not see in the faith of Abraham the profundity of gospel truth upon which Paul insists, and he seems more intent on pleasing the cynical Matthew Arnold in his view of prophecy than in understanding the true soul of the Old Testament. Spurgeon viewed his work as a compromise with German theology. "To us," Spurgeon lamented, "it is a great ability misdirected, and we feel sure it will produce just the opposite effect intended; compromises do not generally end in the conviction

of doubters." ¹⁶⁰ Spurgeon never appreciated softness on issues of inspiration and revelation.

He resented and opposed as much as possible the liberal pressure brought to bear by German critical studies. For the most part he viewed their work as detrimental to evangelical truth. For the writings of Frederick Godet, however, he made an exception. He considered him "always thoughtfully evangelical" and believed that he consecrated his learning "not to the bewilderment, but to the

enlightenment of his readers." ¹⁶¹ Rev. W. Taylor in his book Freedom of the Will failed to attract Spurgeon's

admiration, not only for his avowed purpose of showing that "the distinctive doctrines of Calvinism are opposed to the freedom of the will," but for his failure to interact with pivotal evidence. He simply asserted that "human volitions are independent of divine decrees." He failed, in addition, to investigate the distinction between natural ability and moral ability but simply uttered a decree denying that any distinction exists. The evidence for the discussion that would be forthcoming by looking at the delivering up of Christ at one and the same time by the Jews and by the counsel of God is ignored. Nor does the reader learn "how prophecies, depending upon the free agency of thousands and in different ages, could have been fulfilled." Taylor admits the agency of the Holy Spirit in conversion, but not beyond that exerted on those who finally resist his operations. Equally, and perhaps more, disturbing is Taylor's affirmation that "there is no natural or moral inability to sin either on earth or in heaven." This position challenges the doctrine of divine immutability. Spurgeon was willing to remain content with the assurance that "he who made the human will knows how to influence it, without destroying its freedom" and how to "make it willing in the day of his power here, and how to secure its voluntary and yet eternal

enjoyment of him hereafter." ¹⁶² Spurgeon's vocabulary showed his awareness of the work of Edwards and the Reformers on these issues.

Distribution of Sermons

A friend with the initials "J. B. U." wrote Spurgeon: "I believe you have little knowledge of the extent to which our Sovereign God and Father, in his infinite grace, has used and owned your sermons in blessing, where the means of grace

were but scant, or entirely wanting." ¹⁶³ He said this in conclusion to a story about the conversion of a man on board a schooner where, each Lord's Day morning, the captain read one of Spurgeon's sermons to the "assembled ship's company." The man in question testified that "his spiritual birth was the fruit of one of those sermons." The moment of new birth came during the reading of the sermon from the text, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." The converted man freely acknowledged "the arm of the Lord and his sovereign grace in his repeated interference with man's purpose, and the saving efficacy of God's truth to his soul's salvation." He had become one of the

"most earnest and devoted of the Christian brotherhood at Dover." ¹⁶⁴ This testimony, plus scores like them, convinced Spurgeon that perhaps even more fruitful than the oral proclamation of the word from Sunday to Sunday was the distribution of those same messages through the press. He followed the advice that he gave his students, "The publishing of the same truth by means of the press is barely second in importance, and should be used to the full measure of

each man's ability." ¹⁶⁵ In 1854, several of Spurgeon's sermons appeared in the Penny Pulpit series by Mr. James Paul. Spurgeon had printed a number of specially written tracts in 1853 called "Waterbeach Tracts" but not until August of 1854 did his first sermon appear in print as number 2234 in Paul's series. Eventually it was printed in volume ⁵⁰ of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit. Spurgeon noted that others had been printed in a small magazine called the Baptist Messenger, the first of

which appeared in September 1854 entitled "The Valley of Weeping." ¹⁶⁶ They were not "regularly reported" but there was "so good a demand for them, that the notion of occasional publication was indulged, but with no idea of continuance

week by week for a lengthened period." ¹⁶⁷ When the effort resulted in the weekly publication of sermons followed by their being bound annually, while the efforts of others sputtered and halted, Spurgeon could only rejoice, and ask others to rejoice, at the gracious providence that had allowed him to sustain such a ministry for so long. The best explanation he could give was—"The sermons contain the gospel, preached in plain language, and this is precisely what multitudes need beyond anything else. The gospel, ever fresh and ever new, has held my vast congregation together these many long years, and the same power

has kept around me a host of readers." ¹⁶⁸ These readers could be found in the most obscure places giving vibrant fellowship to some otherwise lonely and isolated people. A Wesleyan minister wrote Spurgeon from Natal on his way to join soldiers on the Zulu border saying that he had found in "a small wayside hotel in a wild, lonely part of this colony" some copies of his sermons and a copy of The Sword and the Trowel. When he asked the landlady how they got there, she said that she received them every month and added, "They are my best friends in the world." The Wesleyan found her to be a bright, happy Christian that never had an opportunity to attend public means of grace and seldom had anyone with whom she could talk about the Savior. In spite of such isolation, "she maintains a quiet, settled peace." It would have done Spurgeon good, the correspondent was sure, to hear her say, "The good I get out of those sermons is more than I can tell, and, although I have never seen dear Mr. Spurgeon, yet he preaches to me every Sunday, and I love him very, very much." She sent along her sermons to a Christian man in another lonely place, where he read them to his friends and neighbors. Some of them had been soundly converted. The Wesleyan himself read Spurgeon sermons and

periodical regularly. ¹⁶⁹ In September 1879, Spurgeon shared in his "Personal Notes" letters from several individuals that had benefitted from the world-wide distribution of his sermons. A friend in Jersey sent a donation for the Girls' Orphanage with the news that "God has been graciously pleased to bless them to the salvation of my soul." This friend had been able to collect about 600 of the sermons and prized them "above every other means of grace save the book." Another from Glasgow signed himself as "Your living son in Jesus," who explained how he had been led to a deep experience of conversion through reading the sermon "The Search Warrant." He first came to grasp the simplicity of faith and then to see the "beautiful, glorious, altogether lovely form of our wounded Emmanuel." He testified that "Christ was everywhere, and even myself had vanished, for I was a new creature." Another wrote from Manchester to report that her father, a drunkard, had been converted through reading Spurgeon's sermon, "Seven Wonders of Grace." From a missionary with the China Inland Mission a report came that he had translated Spurgeon's sermon, "The Hiding of Moses by Faith," for a native pastor. Together they prayed that Spurgeon might be spared to the church for years to come. An English emigrant to South Africa wrote to say that he first encountered a Spurgeon sermon in 1860 when the Presbyterians' service on board ship read them each Lord's Day. Now he gathered some twenty-five people together each Sunday evening to "read one of your loved and

highly appreciated sermons, and we seem to be as familiar with your name as if we met every Sabbath at the Tabernacle." Such reports constantly cheered Spurgeon, made him determined to keep up the barrage of gospel literature and removed any reticence to recommend to others the distribution of his sermons.

Spurgeon heard of a young man that felt called into missions and applied through the China Inland Mission. This call came through reading Spurgeon's sermon entitled "The Divine call for Missionaries." When asked what his motive was for entering into missionary service the candidate replied "The glory of God in the salvation of the heathen." In what context did this call with such a motive

come? "A sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on 'the Divine Call for Missionaries.'" ¹⁷⁰ The Seventy-Third Regiment in India received, through one of its bandsmen, a Spurgeon sermon each week. They would read nothing else of a religion character but fifty or sixty would pass around the sermon and all read it with profit. A young man from Germany was asked to translate Spurgeon's sermon, "The Seven Sneezes," into German. During the translation, his father noted, "I could plainly see that what I had hoped was taking place, the Lord was touching his heart and showing him his position. When he finished the translation I asked him whether he too felt any signs of life, and he acknowledged he desired from his whole heart to become a Christian." The young German did not yet have full assurance of faith, but his father believed that a work of grace had begun and would be brought to completion. He was very grateful for the gift of "these

splendid sermons, from which I have derived much blessing." ¹⁷¹ Spurgeon probably was delighted to be able to send back to Germany a good dose of pure gospel in exchange for so much German skepticism skipping into England.

A man from Scotland wrote Spurgeon sending a "thankoffering" for the benefit received from printed sermons. For two years before she died, his wife was unable to attend church and the man himself was "so deaf that he cannot hear his own minister's voice." He and his wife read the sermons, passed them on to friends who then passed them on to others. He suggested that Spurgeon might propose to the sermon-readers to "seek out some invalid person who is not able to go to church, and make a present of the sermon instead of allowing it to lie idle on the shelf." Absence from church and scarcity of pastoral attention

made the Scots couple consider themselves "one of Mr. Spurgeon's people." ¹⁷² In April 1881, Spurgeon reported on the positive effect that several printed sermons had. In France, a woman was converted through reading "Compel Them to Come In." A female member of the church started a ministry in another town and committed it to others. Several sermons had been useful in both conversion of unbelievers and restoration of backsliders. The woman wrote, "I

wish those who have any of these precious messengers of mercy lying idle in their cupboards would lend them themselves, or give them to those who would circulate them among those who need the glorious truth that they contain."

Spurgeon nudged his readers, "Will someone take the hint?" ¹⁷³ James Culross wrote from Glasgow that ⁷⁰ young people distributed sermons of Spurgeon to ¹,000 homes per week, rotating four sermons between the homes on a monthly basis. He held a soiree at his church for all that received these sermons each week. Over 600 persons came to the social event, gave testimony to the good that the sermons did them, and sent a letter of gratitude to Spurgeon for his labors with prayer that "you may long be continued in health and strength

to carry on the various departments of your noble work." ¹⁷⁴ Even the most apparently fortuitous and accidental contact with Spurgeon's sermons bore fruit. These remarkable stories Spurgeon loved to share, for, to his mind, they demonstrated that the breath of God would blow in accordance with his own sovereign purpose quite independent either of the intentional or the careless distribution of his simple gospel preaching. The publication Joyful News

carried the following correspondence about an event in Nottingham:

I was asked to go to a public-house, and see a woman who was dying. I found her rejoicing in the

Saviour. I asked her how she had found the Lord. "Reading that," she replied, handing me a torn piece

of newspaper. I looked at it, and found that it was part of an American paper, containing an extract

from one of "Spurgeon's Sermons," which extract had been the means of her conversion. "Where did

you get this newspaper from?" I said. She answered, "It was wrapped round a parcel which was sent

me from Australia." Talk about the hidden life of the good seed! Thank of that. Sermon preached in

London, conveyed to America, an extract reprinted in a newspaper there, that paper sent to Australia,

part then torn off (as we should say, accidentally) for the parcel, despatched [ sic ] to England, and, after

all its wanderings, conveys the message of salvation to the woman's soul. God's word shall not return

to him void. 175

That was Spurgeon's point.