LIFE AND MINISTRY

OF THE

REV. C. H. SPURGEON.

INTRODUCTION.

OPULAR favor has seldom been shown to any man so extensively, and so spontaneously, as it has been to the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Although some of the worst feelings of human nature have long been in active exercise to check the benevolent labors of this philanthropic youthful divine, yet an overseeing and an overruling Providence has directed the issue. The favors of friends and the frowns of foes have together resulted in promoting the great work for which this modern Whitefield seems especially raised up, namely, to preach the gospel in a manner which shall secure its welcome to the hearts of multitudes who have hitherto disregarded it.

Many have been the inquiries which have been made respecting Mr. Spurgeon's antecedents. One asks to

which of the universities he belongs; another wonders how so young a man obtained holy orders; a third puts the question plainly, Who ordained the young man? A page would not suffice to enumerate the interrogatives we have ourselves heard from all classes of people ; from the plain-spoken Englishman, from the penetrating Scotchman, from the mirthful son of Erin, and from not a few of our transatlantic brethren. Indeed we have had this kind of verbal investigation continued, with the greatest possible relish by the inquirer, for an hour together, without any apparent abatement in interest. In some instances, the desire for information has led to a succession of queries so varied and so strange, that a prudent man would rather remain silent than try to satisfy such prurient curiosity. In this great London, thousands of voices have repeated the question in one day—"Who is this Spurgeon?" and, to many, a negative was not an answer; so that where positive information of a reliable kind could not be obtained, imagination has too often supplied its place, to the injury of both the subject of this sketch, and the work in which he is engaged. So intense was the desire for information respecting Mr. Spurgeon during several months, that whoever would risk a few pages of biographical anecdotes, historical incidents, or doctrinal peculiarities, at the price of a penny, was sure to sell the work by thousands. These transient phantoms have now all passed away, having satisfied the mere inquisitor; while the seekers after knowledge are still eagerly desiring to know more. The number of these is still a multitude. Were it otherwise, we

should not see, each successive Sunday morning, from ten to twelve thousand persons, some from every part of London and its expansive suburbs, including many from the provinces, gathered to worship in the great Surrey Music Hall. Nor is this spirit of inquiry unnatural or wonderful. The wonder would be far greater were it otherwise. In the Church of England, such instances of youthful divines and youthful oratory are unknown. In the established Church, the best read student, the most fluent orator, the soundest divine, or the most earnest Christian in our universities, must pass his twenty-third year before he is allowed to exercise his gifts in publicly calling sinners to repentance. Our Southwark divine, on the contrary, before twenty-three summers have swept over his head, has not only been allowed to preach publicly, and with authority, but with a power and a success which, considering the shortness of the period, really has no parallel. Long before an English churchman is considered of sufficient age and discretion to be presented to the bishop for ordination, our modern Whitefield has been a successful preacher for several years; so successful, indeed, that there are numerous towns and villages in the land in which his wellknown voice has pealed out its "come and welcome" to congregations numbering not hundreds only, but repeatedly ten thousand persons, and from among whom some hundreds have been gathered out of the world and infolded in the church of Christ.

We have met and conversed with English clergymen who are well aware of the secret of the success of this

eminent preacher, and who righteously covet, to some extent, his gifts and his honors. There is a charm about the young man which wins the good-will at the least of by far the greater majority of those who hear him. The existence of this charm is patent to the world, and its influence is already felt in every country where the Saxon character and the English language exist. There is one country where the good done by this laborious minister would not be recognized-but it is because Italian, not Saxon, blood flows in the veins of the inhabitants.

Mr. Spurgeon's popularity is both wonderful and natural. There exists but few instances, in either ancient or modern times, of men, so young, producing an influence for good to his fellow-men on so large a scale, as in the instance before us. One of the youngest persons ever sent out into the work of the ministry among the Methodists was the late learned Dr. Adam Clarke. While yet a "youth in his teens," we find him appointed to a circuit so wide, that he had to preach in a different place, once at the least, during every day in each successive month. Although tall in person, yet so slender, he was generally denominated "the little boy" preacher. There are many points of resemblance in the early preaching career of this eminent scholar, divine, and Christian, to those connected with Mr. Spurgeon. The almost tender years of both preachers prompted many to go and hear for themselves. In both cases, large multitudes of young persons of both sexes gathered together and formed a large proportion of the

preacher's audience. In both cases many persons of age and experience stood aloof for a time, throwing out innuendoes, cautions, and warnings, and in both cases such men lived long enough to acknowledge their

error.

Another preacher among the Wesleyans presents to us, in some respects, a parallel case to Mr. Spurgeon's. Of the Rev. Richard Watson, we read, that "impelled by a conviction of duty, and an intense zeal for the spiritual good of mankind, the day after he was fifteen years of age, Richard Watson preached his first sermon in a cottage a few miles from Lincoln." He continued to preach, prompted by the same excellent motives, with great success, for nearly forty years. There is, however, one point in the cases of these preachers which deserves notice more particularly. In many points, the career of the two young Methodist preachers, and the young Baptist minister, very nearly agree; in age, learning, zeal, piety, and success, they are all three remarkable, and are very near parallels. In the opposition to which they were all subject, and the persecution which was carried on against them with a very high hand, they are not dissimilar, excepting in this particular. The persecutors of the last century were the ordained clergy; Mr. Spurgeon's persecutors are— not the clergy, though report represents some of them as jealous, others as envious-but persecution has come only from the press, or from that portion of it which would like to make religion a lifeless formality, and which shrinks alike from both conscience and eternity.