C H SPURGEON: THE MAN AND HIS MINISTRY
by T T ShieldsFROM SWORD & TROWEL 20007 NO 1
A superb overview by the ‘Spurgeon of Canada’, given in 1934. This appears in full in
Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, articles from the Bible League Quarterly (1912-82).
One cannot, with any hope of accuracy, analyse the Spurgeon phenomenon without
recognising his apparent precocity. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that his place in religious
history is comparable to that of Pitt the Younger in the history of this country, for it would probably be
correct to say that by the time he was twenty-one years of age, C H Spurgeon was the most conspicuous
figure in the evangelical world.
How is his youthful pre-eminence to be accounted for? That he was a man of uncommon mental
capacity I think is generally conceded. He was, by nature, cast in an unusual mould. Moreover, his
remarkable native powers had been highly developed, and thoroughly disciplined, at a very early age.
Diminutive, theoretical, educational technicians have had the audacity to speak of Spurgeon as
‘uneducated’. As well might some miniature hot-house shrub, could it become vocal, describe the giant oak
of the forest that had braved a thousand storms as ‘uncultivated’ because it had not been pampered and
petted in its little hot-house pot.
Education consists essentially in developing and disciplining and directing to the highest degree,
and to the noblest purpose, a man’s natural capacities. The average youthful mind needs, for such
development, the direction of an intellectual senior, and the reinforcement and regulation of another’s will.
Hence the value of the regimen of college and university life.
But here and there is found a man possessed of such native qualities that he becomes in himself
both student and faculty, and therefore makes more progress in a year than most men would in four or five.
And in all departments of human activity and progress, history has been made by men of just such
independent, personal resourcefulness and power.
By what criteria shall we appraise Spurgeon’s intellect? I will make a confession: when Dr T
Reavely Glover made his inexcusably vulgar attack upon the memory of this mighty man of God, my temper
outran my judgement. I planned a reply which should reach every Baptist minister in the English-speaking
world. I had an initial thirty thousand envelopes made and printed for the job. Then I cooled down. I thought
I saw the great and magnanimous Spurgeon smiling.
I remembered a Spurgeon story of a minister who called to see Spurgeon, and told him he was in
great trouble. He had a member of his church who was strongly opposed to his ministry. He said that he
always sat in the front seat, and as soon as the minister announced his text, this man put his fingers in his
ears, and so continued to the end of the sermon.
Having told his story, he asked Spurgeon if he did not think that was a terrible situation, and
enquired what he would do in like circumstances; to which Spurgeon replied, ‘I think I should ask the Lord
to send a fly to light upon his nose.’ The man saw the humour of the situation, and found relief in a hearty
laugh.
That was characteristic of the attitude of our hero. He ever refused to exercise his mind with
trivialities. Remembering this, I felt that the vulgar attack made upon Spurgeon’s memory was not worth a
reply. Of one thing one may be sure, that by the time the centenary of the birth of some of these critics rolls
round, there will be nobody to celebrate it, for the reason that the world will have forgotten that they ever
lived.
It is difficult to measure the intellectual stature of Spurgeon. I venture humbly the opinion that for
native mental capacity and power of absorption; for rational vigour; for analytical acumen; for analogical
acquisitiveness; for poetic insight and imagination; for philosophical comprehensiveness; for prophetic
vision, and compass, and perspective; for fearless inquisitiveness and power of courageous exploration; for
heroic abandonment to the consequences of knowledge, for daring intimacy with Truth - in many centuries,
few minds have equalled, and none have excelled, that of C H Spurgeon.
But when all this has been recognised and acknowledged, there still remains the wonder of
Spurgeon’s ability as a youth to describe nearly every conceivable phase of human experience, and to play
upon every element of human emotional, intellectual, and volitional life as upon a harp of a thousand strings.
I recall laying down a volume of Spurgeon’s sermons, and enquiring of myself, whence and how
did this youth of twenty-one acquire so intimate a knowledge of the whole gamut of human experience? And
one day I found a satisfactory solution of the phenomenon, and in the discovery I thought, and still think, I
discerned the explanation of the depth, and breadth, and height, the wealth of content, the timeless character,
the enlarging compass and abiding fruitfulness of Spurgeon’s ministry.
Here it is: ‘O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thou through thy
commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. I have more
understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the
ancients, because I keep thy precepts’ (Psalm 119.97-100).
Spurgeon’s crystal-clear view of the doctrines of grace, and of the Bible as their authoritative
source, was the natural result of his personal intimacy with Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus a person of superior
piety, though of mediocre mental capacity and attainments, may have clearer understanding of divine Truth
than the greatest intellectual religious theorist.
It is one of the chief glories of Spurgeon and his ministry that while there was undoubtedly a
progression in knowledge, and enlargement of view, in the essentials of his faith, he was to the end of his
ministry what he had been at the beginning.
Spurgeon was a systematic theologian. He ever viewed Truth relatively. Dr Joseph Parker was
himself one of the greatest preachers of his day - perhaps second in popularity only to Spurgeon himself.
And, in the main, he was true to the principles of the Gospel. Yet the two men were poles apart in their
mental outlook.
Parker was a brilliant preacher, but his sermons were devoid of system. I do not mean that they
were homiletically defective, but rather that they were without doctrinal order and relation.
Someone, I think it was Carlyle, somewhere describes certain editors as editing their papers after
the manner of upsetting a cartload of coals. Parker preached after the manner of emptying a casket of jewels;
but they were of all sorts, and sizes, and qualities.
Spurgeon, on the other hand, was keenly logical and analytical; and viewed one truth in relation to
another. His conviction of the divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures inevitably made him a
Trinitarian, involving belief in the essential deity of Jesus Christ. Every doctrine he preached was the
inevitable corollary of that major premise.
The death of Incarnate Deity could be no accident. Hence it was purposeful, adequate, and
determinative. An acceptance of the involved principles of substitution and expiation was logically
inevitable; and that view of the eternally predetermined redemptive purpose of the incarnation made him a
Calvinist.
May I at this point, without offence, call attention to the difference between the abiding residues
of these two ministries? It was but a short time after Parker’s death that his pulpit became the centre from
which was disseminated a radical new theology.
On the other hand, throughout varying fortunes, in the forty-two years which have passed since
Spurgeon’s death, while none of his successors would presume to claim equality with him, the message of
the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit has continued to be that of the Gospel of salvation by grace.
CHOICE WORDS OF SPURGEON
Let us hear a little of Spurgeon’s view of the Bible as expressed in a sermon preached in
1855, at Exeter Hall, when he was three months short of his twenty-first birthday. The text of the sermon
was, ‘I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing’
(Hosea 8.12).
‘First, my friends, stand over this volume, and admire its authority. This is no common book. It is
not the sayings of the sages of Greece; here are not the utterances of philosophers of past ages. If these words
were written by man, we might reject them; but oh, let me think the solemn thought - that this book is God’s
handwriting, that these are God’s words.
‘Let me look at its date, it is dated from the hills of Heaven. Let me look at its letters; they flash
glory on my eye. Let me read the chapters: they are big with meaning and mysteries unknown. Let me turn
over the prophecies: they are pregnant with unthought-of wonders.
‘Oh, book of books! And wast thou written by my God? Then will I bow before thee. Thou book
of vast authority, thou art a proclamation from the Emperor of Heaven; far be it from me to exercise my
reason in contradicting thee. Reason! thy place is to stand and find out what this volume means, not to tell
what this book ought to say.
‘Come thou, my reason, my intellect, sit thou down and listen, for these words are the very words
of God. I do not know how to enlarge on this thought. Oh! if you could ever remember that this Bible was
actually and really written by God! Oh! if ye had been let into the secret chambers of Heaven, if ye had
beheld God grasping His pen and writing down these letters, then surely ye would respect them. But they are
just as much God’s handwriting as if you had seen God write them.’
‘Then, since God wrote it, mark its truthfulness. If I had written it, there would be worms of
critics who would at once swarm on it, and would cover it with their evil spawn. Had I written it, there
would be men who would pull it to pieces at once, and perhaps quite right too. But this is the Word of God;
come, search, ye critics, and find a flaw; examine it from its Genesis to its
Revelation, and find an error.
‘This is a vein of pure gold, unalloyed by quartz, or any earthy substance. This is a star without a
speck; a sun without a blot; a light without darkness; a moon without its paleness; a glory without a dimness.
O Bible! it cannot be said of any other book, that it is perfect and pure; but of thee we can declare all wisdom
is gathered up in thee, without a particle of folly.
‘This is the judge that ends the strife where wit and reason fail. This is the book untainted by any
error; but it is pure, unalloyed, perfect Truth. Why? Because God wrote it Oh ye who dislike certain
portions of the Holy Writ, rest assured that your taste is corrupt, and that God will not stay for your little
opinion. Your dislike is the very reason why God wrote it, because you ought not to be suited; you have no
right to be pleased. God wrote what you do not like; He wrote the Truth.
‘Oh! let us bend in reverence before it, for God inspired it. It is pure Truth. Here from this
fountain gushes aqua vitae - "the water of life" - without a single particle of earth; here
from this sun cometh forth rays of radiance, without the mixture of darkness. Blessed Bible; thou art all
Truth.’
Critics of the Bible
In February 1889, Spurgeon professed his own faith in contrast with the attitude of those who deny
the unique inspiration of Scripture:
‘There are men abroad nowadays - I grieve to say some of them in the ministry - who take the
Bible, not that it may judge them, but that they may judge it. Their judgement weighs in its balances the
wisdom of God Himself.
‘They talk exceedingly proudly, and their arrogance exalts itself. O friends, I know not how you
feel about the prevailing scepticism of the age, but I am heart-sick of it! I shun the place where I am likely to
hear the utterances of men who do not tremble at God’s Word. I turn away from the multitude of books
which advocate doubt and error. The evil is too painful for me
‘It sickens and saddens me to meet with the enemies of my soul.
‘If I knew that my mother’s name would be defamed in certain company, I would keep out of it. If
I knew that my father’s character would be trailed in the mire, I would travel far not to hear a sound so
offensive. I could wish to be deaf and blind, rather than hear or read the modern falsehoods which, at this
time, so often wound my spirit.
‘But as for us, we are determined we will not be tortured by this kind of thing; we cannot endure
it; and we will not remain among those who bespatter us with it. "Oh, but surely you are open to
conviction?" they say. We are open to no conviction that shall be contrary to the Truth that has saved us
from going down to the pit.
‘We are open to no conviction that shall rob us of our eternal hope, and of our glorying in the
Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not deliberate, for we have decided We have known our Lord and
His Truth for these forty years, and it is not maybe-or-
maybe-not with us now. We neither speculate, nor hesitate; but we know Whom we have believed, and by
His grace we will cleave to Him in life and in death.’
‘There are plenty of persons who profess and call themselves Christians, and yet do not believe
that this sacred book is the very Word of God They talk after this fashion: "This is the religious book of
the ancient Hebrew nation. A very respectable book it is, but infallible, certainly not; the very Word of God,
certainly not."
‘Well, then, we distinctly part company with such talkers. We can have no sort of fellowship with
them in any measure or degree with regard to the things of God. They are to us as heathen men and
publicans. If we are to come under the head of those that tremble at God’s Word, we must believe that there
is a Word of the Lord to tremble at, as we do most assuredly believe, let others talk as they may.’
Inexhaustible Truth
Let us hear for a moment something from his last great conference address. Thus he spoke:
‘After preaching the Gospel for forty years, and after printing the sermons I have preached for
more than six-and-thirty years, reaching now the number of twenty-two hundred in weekly succession, I am
fairly entitled to speak about the fulness and richness of the Bible, as a preacher’s book. Brethren, it is
inexhaustible.
‘No question about freshness will arise if we keep closely to the text of the sacred volume. There
can be no difficulty as to finding themes totally distinct from those we have handled before; the variety is as
infinite as the fulness. A long life will only suffice us to skirt the shores of this great continent of light.
‘In the forty years of my own ministry I have only touched the hem of the garment of divine Truth;
but what virtue has flowed out of it! The Word is like its Author, infinite, immeasurable, without end. If you
were ordained to be a preacher throughout eternity, you would have before you a theme equal to everlasting
demands. Brothers, shall we each have a pulpit somewhere amidst the spheres?
‘Shall we have a parish of millions of leagues? Shall we have voices so strengthened as to reach
attentive constellations? Shall we be witnesses for the Lord of grace to myriads of worlds which will be
wonder-struck when they hear of the incarnate God? Shall we be surrounded by pure intelligences enquiring
and searching into the mystery of God manifest in the flesh?
‘Will the unfallen worlds desire to be instructed in the glorious Gospel of the blessed God? And
will each one of us have his own tale to tell of our experience of infinite love? I think so, since the Lord has
saved us "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the
church the manifold wisdom of God." If such be the case, our Bibles will suffice for ages to come for new
themes every morning, and for fresh songs and discourses world without end.’
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