Preface

Spurgeon wrote, "We little thought when we commenced this serial that we should attain to Volume XX." It grew, however, in his mind to be not only a chronicle of the work of the Tabernacle but also "in some sense our

autobiography." ¹ This proved to be the case, because much of the material collected by his wife and his assistant J. W. Harrald for Spurgeon's posthumous Autobiography first appeared in this monthly pastoral missive. While mounds of valuable sermons and addresses from Spurgeon and others appear as the main body of the monthly fascicle, the sections of book reviews and monthly "notes" provide rich sources for understanding Spurgeon's life, opinions, theology, and view of pastoral ministry. It provides an ongoing commentary on the literature of the day, his views on the life of the church, reports on the multitudinous benevolences that he sponsored and supported directly as well as many others with which he had sympathy and sought to encourage others to support. Much of his personal life—joys, conflicts, and suffering—shows up in the notes included in a section noted as "personal." My focus, therefore, in seeking to understand his theology of pastoral ministry, has been on this large body of material, approximately fifty pages of material appearing every month from 1865 through 1892, always with Spurgeon as the editor.

Letters collected by his son Charles move through Spurgeon's life with the personal touch at which he was so transparent, playful, and adept. They are filled with his fears, his earnestness for Christlikeness, his love for family and friends, his intensity about gospel ministry, his candor about pain, and his perplexity with opposition. The soul of Spurgeon was spilled out into his letters.

Obviously Spurgeon's sermons published week by week from 1855 until far beyond his death provide not only insight into his homiletics, exegesis, and theological convictions, but also reflect his mind on the controversies, ecclesiastical relationships, and contemporary events. I confess that I have not read every sermon but have sought to delve into each volume, to some degree, of the New Park Street Pulpit, the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, a sizable number of sermon books that Spurgeon published on discreet subjects, Spurgeon's Expository Encyclopedia, a twenty-volume American edition of Spurgeon's Sermons (which contains many sermons that did not appear in either the NPSP or the MTP ), based on sermons that were wired across the Atlantic and

appeared in American newspapers.

From the biographies that appeared virtually immediately on the death of Spurgeon the one volume by G. Holden Pike, followed by his six-volume The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, is most important as it contains a large amount of primary sources to which only Pike, as a co-editor of The Sword and the Trowel, had access. Pike also wrote From the Pulpit to the Palm Branch, a narrative of the last eight months of Spurgeon's life and the many events and services surrounding his death and funeral.

Another valuable biography that appeared immediately (1892) was Robert Shindler's From the Usher's Desk to the Tabernacle Pulpit, which was a prequel to Pike's funeral volume. Shindler wrote frequently for The Sword and the Trowel and was, in fact, the author of the first series of articles on the Downgrade, the controversy that so altered Spurgeon's final five years and changed the face of Baptist life in England. He spent much time with Spurgeon and had access to many events and personal conversations that help fill in personal details and make his narrative boil with life.

In 1920 W. Y. Fullerton, whose name will appear frequently in this volume, wrote a biography that is valuable. Fullerton, who was the most prominent evangelist sent out by Spurgeon himself, and a trusted friend during some very troubling years, provides some anecdotes that would otherwise have been lost and some personal insight and impressions that are valuable as the careful judgments of a close and admiring friend. Such judgments should not be dismissed as uncritical hagiography, for the evaluations of discerning men that have spent time in tense and distressing situations with prominent personalities should be taken seriously. They perhaps know more of what drives a person than others that are limited simply to written documents.

Russell Conwell, believed at the time to be the closest parallel to Spurgeon in America, wrote in 1892 a book called Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon: The World's Greatest Preacher. It combines his personal contemplations on certain aspects of Spurgeon's ministry that had attained somewhat legendary status with a sane corrective to ideas that had grown out of proportion to reality. His personal acquaintance with Spurgeon again evoked descriptions of him and his ministry superlative in their tendency.

In 1933, J. C. Carlile, another of Spurgeon's students, wrote an intriguing volume with the title C. H. Spurgeon: An Interpretative Biography. Carlile never fails to surprise with his tremendous affection for Spurgeon on the one hand and his attempt to place him in a favorable light for a declining Baptist Union that still smarted from his resignation and his torrent of doctrinal criticism. Spurgeon raged against what he perceived as the Union's toleration of an intrusive and

parasitic, cankerous, heterodox modern thought. Carlile does not say it flatly, but he probably was dissatisfied with Fullerton's approach to Spurgeon. At virtually the same time as Carlile wrote and published, an American Richard Ellsworth Day published his biography of Spurgeon called The Shadow of the Broad Brim, and it was a citadel of admiration.

Books and chapters in books of reminiscences about Spurgeon offer valuable anecdotal information and often illustrate what was clearly a consistent aspect of Spurgeon's personality and spirituality. Peter Mordern, Arnold Dallimore, Lewis Drummond, and Patricia S. Kruppa have also written biographies of Spurgeon.

Each of these was helpful in both factual content and historical perspective. Iain Murray has written insightfully on Spurgeon as a controversialist.

Archival sources at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and at Spurgeon's College I have not been able to access personally. Others that have written special pieces in a variety of journals from their knowledge of those sources have benefited me.

While those sources would obviously provide an opportunity for valuable insight, the amount of primary source material available along with the ongoing labors of others have given me sufficient material for evaluation on the main object of my study—a presentation of the pastoral theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

My special thanks to my publisher, Christian Focus Publications, for their patience of over a decade and a half in waiting for this manuscript. My wife, Margaret, also has proven her love through the patient endurance of those same years and has sacrificed thousands of hours that I might seek to present a fair and accurate picture of this strikingly human Baptist Demosthenes.

S OLI D EO G LORIA