Charles Spurgeon

The Prince of Preachers

Why Spurgeon?

• The New Park Street Pulpit and The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit—the collected sermons of Spurgeon during his ministry with that congregation fill 63 volumes. The sermons’ 20–25 million words are equivalent to the 27 volumes of the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The series stands as the largest set of books by a single author in the history of Christianity.

Why Spurgeon?

• Before he was 20, Spurgeon had preached over 600 times.

• Spurgeon typically read 6 books per week and could remember what he had read—and where—even years later.

• Spurgeon once addressed an audience of 23,654 without a microphone or any mechanical amplification.

His Life

• Born in 1834• Read The Pilgrim’s Progress at age six and

went on to re-read it over 100 times.• Died on January 31, 1892 and over 60,000

people came to pay their respects during three days.

His Difficulties

• Spurgeon’s Wife had serious physical problems later in life:

• On January 8, 1856 Spurgeon married Susannah Thompson.

His Difficulties

• After having two children, Susannah was unable to have more; when she was 33 years old she became a virtual invalid and seldom heard her husband preach for the next 27 years till his death.

• She carried on a ministry while bedridden.

• On October 19, 1856 Spurgeon was to begin services in the Surrey Royal Gardens Music Hall.

• The Hall held 12,000 and had an additional 10,000 people overflowing into the gardens.

• The service was underway when, during Spurgeon’s prayer, several malicious miscreants shouted, “Fire! The galleries are giving way!” In the ensuing panic, seven people died and twenty-eight were hospitalized with serious injuries.

• Spurgeon had to be carried from the pulpit and spent several days in deep depression.

• About the incident he said:• “Perhaps never soul went so near the burning

furnace of insanity, and yet came away unharmed.”

His Difficulties

• After the Music Hall incident Spurgeon suffered more frequently from serious depression.

• He speaks of this in the chapter “The Minister’s Fainting Fits” in Lectures to My Students.

• He says It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary. ”

His Difficulties• Spurgeon suffered from terrible gout.• This started in 1869 when he was 35 years old.• He was seldom free from pain from 1871 until

his death and missed many Sundays in the Pulpit because he was unable to stand.

• During the last years he said: “suffered the loss of friendships and reputation, and the infliction of pecuniary withdrawments and bitter reproach.… But the pain it has cost me none can measure.”

His Ministry

• He loved the Scriptures:• He was a believer that the Bible was without

error• “This is the book untainted by any error; but it

is pure unalloyed, perfect truth. Why? Because God wrote it”

• Spurgeon founded a pastor’s school which is still in existence today

His Ministry

• He loved Calvinism:• "To me, Calvinism means the placing of the

eternal God at the head of all things. I look at everything through its relation to God's glory. I see God first, and man far down in the list ... Brethren, if we live in sympathy with God, we delight to hear Him say, 'I am God, and there is none else'"

His Ministry

• He loved children• Spurgeon founded orphanages:• By the end of 1867, four boys’ houses had

been opened, followed during the 1880s by five houses for girls.

His Death

• “When our lives come to be written at last,” Spurgeon once wrote, “God grant that they be not only our sayings, but our sayings and doings.”

Recommended Works

• Lectures to My Students• The Suffering Letters of C. H. Spurgeon• C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography• A. Dallimore- Spurgeon• Christian History Magazine, 29 (Volume X,

Number 1); The Life and Times of Charles Spurgeon