CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON 1834-1892 Spurgeon was one of the great natural orators of the pulpit: a phenomenon hardly explicable upon any scientific theory; for there was nothing in the antecedents, or in the early personal experience of the humble usher in a Cambridge private school that can serve to explain the mighty preacher who, when hardly twenty years of age, was already drawing vast and excited audiences to listen to what he might have to say on the relations between God and man. What should the homely, coarse-looking, crude Essex country boy know of those relations? By what charter was he entitled to counsel and exhort his generation on the highest of human duties, and to interpret to them the profound and eternal wisdom conveyed in the Book of God's Word? His figure was squat and awkward, his face fat and clumsy, with heavy mouth, snub nose, and pale eyes; there was in him no form nor comeliness. Even his voice had none of the exquisite modulations, the tones of pathos and spiritual exaltation, which might rouse a drugged soul or spur selfcomplacent ungodliness to purge itself of sin. And yet Charles Haddon Spurgeon was heard, during his ministry, by millions of men and women, who found in him the chief incitement of their lives to virtue and charity, to the patient endurance of pain, and to steadfast faith in God and immortality. The words he uttered week after week in that Newington Tabernacle, built especially to seat the large and enthusiastic crowds that flocked each Sabbath to hear him, were taken down, and printed, and scattered broadcast over the English-speaking world, to serve as moral and religious nourishment to countless homes in England and America. The biographical facts of his career are few and simple. He was born at Kelvedon, Essex, June 19, 1834. After a school education at Colchester and Maidstone, he became usher of a private school in Cambridge, and in 1851 pastor of a Baptist church near Cambridge; whence he removed with his congregation to Southwark in 1853, and to the Tabernacle in 1861. During his ministration he found time to found an orphanage, a college for pastors, and various schools and almshouses. He edited a magazine, "The Sword and Trowel," and wrote numerous books of religious exhortation and counsel. He died, worn out in body, but full of spiritual vitality to the last, in 1892, at the age of fifty-eight. The "Substance of Sermons," given here, is filled with advice to young ministers. It is characteristic of Spurgeon's best style, being concise, thoughtful, and penetrating to the heart of the subject. WE THE SUBSTANCE OF SERMONS WE must throw all our strength of judgment, memory, imagination, and eloquence, into the delivery of the gospel; and not give to the preaching of the cross our random thoughts while wayside topics engross our deeper meditations. Depend upon it, if we brought the intellect of a Locke or a Newton, and the eloquence of a Cicero, to bear upon the simple doctrine of "believe and live," we should find no surplus strength. Brethren, first and above all things, keep to plain evangelical doctrines; whatever else you do or do not preach, be sure incessantly to bring forth the soul-saving truth of Christ and Him crucified. I know a minister whose shoe-latchet I am unworthy to unloose, whose preaching is often little better than sacred miniature painting-I might also say holy trifling. He is great upon the ten toes of the beast, the four faces of the cherubim, the mystical meaning of badgers' skins, and the typical bearings of the staves of the ark, and the windows of Solomon's temple; but the sins of business men, the temptations of the times, and the needs of the age, he scarcely ever touches upon. Such preaching reminds me of a lion engaged in mouse hunting, or a man-of-war cruising after a lost water-butt. Topics scarcely in importance equal to what Peter calls "old wives' fables," are made great matters of by those microscopic divines to whom the nicety of a point is more attractive than the saving of souls. You will have read in Todd's "Student's Manual" that Harcatius, King of Persia, was a notable mole-catcher; and Briantes, King of Lydia, was equally au fait at filing needles; but these trivialities by no means prove them to have been great kings; it is much the same in the ministry; there is such a thing as meanness of mental occupation unbecoming the rank of an ambassador of heaven. Among a certain order of minds at this time the Athenian desire of telling or hearing some new thing appears to be pre dominant. They boast of new light, and claim a species of inspiration which warrants them in condemning all who are out of their brotherhood, and yet their grand revelation relates to a mere circumstantial of worship, or to an obscure interpretation of prophecy; so that, at sight of their great fuss and loud cry concerning so little, we are reminded of "Ocean into tempest tossed To waft a feather or to drown a fly." Worse still are those who waste time in insinuating doubts concerning the authenticity of texts, or the correctness of Biblical statements concerning natural phenomena. Painfully do I call to mind hearing one Sabbath evening a deliverance called a sermon, of which the theme was a clever inquiry as to whether an angel did actually descend and stir the pool at Bethesda, or whether it was an intermitting spring, concerning which Jewish superstition had invented a legend. Dying men and women were assembled to hear the way of salvation, and they were put off with such vanity as this! They came for bread, and received a stone; the sheep looked up to the shepherd, and were not fed. Seldom do I hear a sermon, and when I do I am grievously unfortunate, for one of the last I was entertained with was intended to be a justification of Joshua for destroying the Canaanites, and another went to prove that it was not good for man to be alone. How many souls were converted in answer to the prayers before the sermons I have never been able to ascertain, but I shrewdly suspect that no unusual rejoicing disturbed the serenity of the golden streets. Believing my next remark to be almost universally unneeded, I bring it forward with diffidence-do not overload a sermon with too much matter. All truth is not to be comprised in one discourse. Sermons are not to be bodies of divinity. There is such a thing as having too much to say, and saying it till hearers are sent home loathing rather than longing. An old minister walking with a young preacher pointed to a cornfield and observed, "Your last sermon had too much in it, and it was not clear enough, or sufficiently well arranged; it was like that field of wheat, it contained much crude food, but none fit for use. You should make your sermons like a loaf of bread, fit for eating, and in convenient form." It is to be feared that human heads (speaking phrenologically) are not so capacious for theology as they once were, for our forefathers rejoiced in sixteen ounces of divinity, undiluted and unadorned, and could continue receiving it for three or four hours at a stretch, but our more degenerate, or perhaps more busy, generation requires about an ounce of doctrine at a time, and that must be the concentrated extract or essential oil, rather than the entire substance of divinity. We must in these times say a great deal in a few words, but not too much, nor with too much amplification. One thought fixed on the mind will be better than fifty thoughts made to flit across the ear. One tenpenny nail driven home and clenched will be more useful than a score of tin-tacks loosely fixed, to be pulled out again in an hour. Our matter should be well arranged according to the true rules of mental architecture. Not practical inferences at the basis and doctrines as the topstones; not metaphors in the foundations, and propositions at the summit; not the more important truths first and the minor teachings last, after the manner of an anti-climax; but the thought must climb and ascend; one stair of teaching leading to another; one door of reasoning conducting to another, and the whole elevating the hearer to a chamber from whose windows truth is seen gleaming in the light of God. In preaching, have a place for everything, and everything in its place. Never suffer truths to fall from you pell-mell. Do not let your thoughts rush as a mob, but make them march as a troop of soldiery. Order, which is heaven's first law, must not be neglected by heaven's ambassadors. Philo Your doctrinal teaching should be clear and unmistakable. To be so it must first of all be clear to yourself. Some men think in smoke and preach in a cloud. Your people do not want a luminous haze, but the solid terra firma of truth. sophical speculations put certain minds into a semi-intoxicated condition, in which they either see everything double, or see nothing at all. The head of a certain college in Oxford was years ago asked by a stranger what was the motto of the arms of that university. He told him that it was "Dominus illuminatio But he also candidly informed the stranger that, in his private opinion, a motto more appropriate might be, "Aristoteles meæ tenebræ." Sensational writers have half crazed |