The Lost Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon Volume II: A Critical Edition of His Earliest Outlines and Sermons between 1851 and 1854

The Lost Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon, Volume 2

Copyright © 2017 by Christian George and Spurgeon’s College

Published by B&H Academic

Nashville, Tennessee

All rights reserved.

Standard Edition ISBN: 978-1-4336-8682-5

Collector’s Edition ISBN: 978-1-4336-4990-5

eISBN: 978-1-4336-4989-9

Dewey Decimal Classification: 252

Subject Heading: Spurgeon, Charles H. \ Sermons \ Christian Life–Sermons

Special thanks to Spurgeon’s College, spurgeons.ac.uk

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

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Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scriptures marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®) copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV® Text Edition: 2011. The ESV® text has been reproduced in cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers. Unauthorized reproduction of this publication is prohibited. All rights reserved.

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RRD

In memory of

Justine (Kirby) Aliff (1991–2016)

My former research assistant at Oklahoma Baptist University, whose love for Jesus Christ and winsome perseverance improved not only this project but all who knew her. Justine’s joy was evident in her recent battle with cancer, and though she did not live to see the publication of this present volume, she welcomed it from a distance and lives eternally in the unfailing arms of her savior.

FOREWORD

The history of the world is but the biography of great men, argued Thomas Carlyle, proponent of the Great Man Theory of history. Carlyle contended that the broader movements and contours of history can be traced to great leaders who exerted a unique, shaping influence on their times. Whether the Great Man Theory of history proves true is debatable, but that God providentially raises up certain individuals for kingdom work is not.

Throughout Scripture, God called forth individuals for consequential assignments. Figures like Moses, Joshua, David, Peter, and Paul dot the biblical landscape. In fact, Hebrews 11 is a biographical summation of the great lives of the Old Testament: men and women God appointed for his divine purposes. Church history is no different. In every era, God has raised up servants—men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and Whitefield—granting them a double anointing and unleashing them to impact the world and strengthen his church. Charles Spurgeon was such a man.

Carl F. H. Henry labeled Spurgeon as one of evangelical Christianity’s immortals. And, for evangelicals, Spurgeon has become a paragon of faithful Christian ministry. Spurgeon ministered in London during the Victorian Era, when Great Britain reigned as the world’s leading empire—thus amplifying Spurgeon’s ministry and expanding his global fame and influence. Spurgeon was an accomplished pastor, author, apologist, leader, visionary, and school and ministry administrator. Yet, he was first and foremost a preacher. Spurgeon’s auxiliary ministries flowed from his pulpit, and his weekly sermons were transcribed and dispensed around the world. Arguably, in the history of the church, there is no name in the English-speaking world more rightly associated with preaching than Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon is commonly ranked, along with George Whitefield, as one of the two greatest preachers of the English language.

As a preacher, Spurgeon pastored the largest Protestant church in the world—the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London—where he preached for nearly 40 years to a congregation of some 6,000 members. In 1857, he preached to a crowd numbering 23,654 at London’s Crystal Palace, and by the end of his ministry he had preached to more than 10 million people without the aid of modern technologies.

As an author, Spurgeon possessed an indefatigable pen. He, on average, wrote 500 letters per week, and by the time of his death had authored approximately 150 books. His sermons, which he edited weekly, sold more than 56 million copies in his lifetime. In Spurgeon’s day, they were translated into more than 40 languages and now total more than 62 hefty volumes. Additionally, Spurgeon wrote for various magazines and journals, including his own Sword and Trowel.

As an humanitarian, Spurgeon hurled himself at the great social ills of his day. He established two orphanages, a ministry for fallen women, was an ardent abolitionist, started a pastors’ college, and began a book distribution ministry for undersupplied pastors. He launched clothes closets and soup kitchens, for both his church members and nonmembers alike. By the age of 50, he had started no less than 66 social ministries, all of which were designed to meet both physical and spiritual needs.

As an apologist, Spurgeon ardently defended his Baptist, evangelical, and reformed convictions. He attacked hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism; Campbellism and Darwinism. Most especially, Spurgeon defended the person and work of Christ as well as the comprehensive inspiration and infallibility of Scripture. Spurgeon’s apologetic efforts were most clearly witnessed through the prism of the Downgrade Controversy, where he challenged and ultimately withdrew from his own Baptist Union for their equivocation over these same issues.

As an evangelist, Spurgeon relentlessly preached the gospel and consistently won sinners to Christ. He remains an unsurpassed model for balancing the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man in evangelism. In fact, one is hard-pressed to find any sermon Spurgeon ever preached that does not conclude with a gospel presentation. By the end of his ministry, Spurgeon had baptized 14,692 believers.

Spurgeon’s ministry still owns a certain mystique. This is due, in part, to the fact that he was a genius. He devoured books, possessed a photographic memory, and once testified of simultaneously holding eight thoughts in his mind at once. His enormous influence, intriguing life and times, and his many physical and emotional travails factor in as well. Spurgeon’s mystique is also due to his unflagging work ethic, which prompted David Livingstone to ask of Spurgeon, How do you manage to do two men’s work in a single day? Spurgeon, referencing the Holy Spirit, replied, You have forgotten there are two us.

Spurgeon was a phenom who preached in the largest Protestant church in the world within the context of the most powerful city in the world, London. Yet, his ministry coursed through and beyond the expansive tentacles of the British Empire. He embodied all that is right about biblical ministry and all that the contemporary church must recover in the 21st century: biblical faithfulness, evangelistic fervor, self-sacrificial ministry, power in the pulpit, social awareness, and defense of the faith.

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is pleased to own Spurgeon’s Library, which houses more than 6,000 books, letters, and artifacts once owned by Spurgeon. We are equally pleased to support the Lost Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon project and the scholar behind it all, Christian George. All of this points to a broader movement within the church, an even deepening appreciation of Spurgeon’s work, and a growing realization of his contemporary relevance. This is fitting and right, and Midwestern Seminary is thankful to be at the center of this Spurgeonism.

Referencing important statesmen, the famed French leader Charles de Gaulle once quipped, Graveyards are full of indispensable men. In Christ’s kingdom no one is indispensable either, but certain men are irreplaceable. Charles Spurgeon was one such man, and, in his own way, Christian George is as well.

In the 19th century, God raised up Charles Spurgeon. In the 21st century, he has raised up Christian George to raise Spurgeon up anew. Christian George is Spurgeon-like in his gifting and in his tireless work ethic. He is a scholar who is also a pastor; a writer who is also a preacher; and, for all who know him, a colleague who is also a friend. He is the perfect man for this project and, by God’s grace, will bless the church through this volume—and the entire 12-volume set—until Jesus returns.

JASON K. ALLEN

April 2017

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

EDITOR’S PREFACE

In 1859, an American minister named Rev. H. traveled to London to meet the famous pastor of the New Park Street Chapel. When Spurgeon discovered his guest was from Alabama, his cordiality sensibly diminished. A six-month American preaching tour would expedite the construction of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, but could Southerners tolerate Spurgeon’s stance against slavery? When Spurgeon asked his guest this question, the Alabamian said he had better not undertake it.¹

This advice might have saved Spurgeon’s life. The same year, S. A. Corey, pastor of Eighteenth Street Baptist Church in New York City, invited the twenty-four-year-old to preach at the Academy of Music opera house for $10,000.² News of Spurgeon’s visit was met with anticipation in the North and hostility in the South. According to an Alabama newspaper, Spurgeon would receive a beating so bad as to make him ashamed.³ On February 17, 1860,⁴ citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, publicly protested the notorious English abolitionist⁵ by gathering in the jail yard to burn his dangerous books⁶:

Last Saturday, we devoted to the flames a large number of copies of Spurgeon’s Sermons. . . . We trust that the works of the greasy cockney vociferator may receive the same treatment throughout the South. And if the Pharisaical author should ever show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat.⁷

On March 22, a Vigilance Committee⁸ in Montgomery followed suit and burned Spurgeon’s sermons in the public square. A week later Mr. B. B. Davis, a bookstore owner, prepared a good fire of pine sticks before reducing about sixty volumes of Spurgeon’s sermons to smoke and ashes.⁹ British newspapers quipped that America had given Spurgeon a warm welcome, a literally brilliant reception.¹⁰

Anti-Spurgeon bonfires illuminated jail yards, plantations, bookstores, and courthouses throughout the Southern states. In Virginia, Mr. Humphrey H. Kuber, a Baptist preacher and highly respectable citizen of Matthews County, burned seven calf-skinned volumes of Spurgeon’s sermons on the head of a flour barrel.¹¹ The arson was assisted by many citizens of the highest standing.¹² In North Carolina, Spurgeon’s famous sermon Turn or Burn¹³ found a similar fate when a Mr. Punch turned the second page and burned the whole.¹⁴ By 1860, slave-owning pastors were foaming with rage because they [could not] lay hands on the youthful Spurgeon.¹⁵ His life was threatened, his books burned, his sermons censured,¹⁶ and below the Mason-Dixon Line, the media catalyzed character assassinations. In Florida, Spurgeon was a beef-eating, puffed-up, vain, over-righteous pharisaical, English blab-mouth.¹⁷ In Virginia, he was a fat, overgrown boy;¹⁸ in Louisiana, a hell-deserving Englishman;¹⁹ and in South Carolina, a vulgar young man with (soiled) sleek hair, prominent teeth, and a self-satisfied air.²⁰ Georgians were encouraged to pay no attention to him.²¹ North Carolinians would like a good opportunity at this hypocritical preacher and resented his fiendish sentiments, against our Constitution and citizens.²² The Weekly Raleigh Register reported that anyone selling Spurgeon’s sermons should be arrested and charged with circulating incendiary publications.²³

Southern Baptists ranked among Spurgeon’s chief antagonists.²⁴ The Mississippi Baptist hoped no Southern Baptist will now purchase any of that incendiary’s books.²⁵ The Baptist colporteurs of Virginia were forced to return all copies of his sermons to the publisher.²⁶ The Alabama Baptist and Mississippi Baptist gave the Londoner 4,000 miles of an awful raking and took the hide off him.²⁷ The Southwestern Baptist and other denominational newspapers took the spoiled child to task and administered due castigation.²⁸

In the midst of this mayhem, Spurgeon attempted to publish several notebooks of sermons from his earliest ministry. His promise to his readers in 1857 would not be fulfilled, however, due to difficult life circumstances in London. How poetic, then, that 157 years after The Nashville Patriot slandered Spurgeon for his meddlesome spirit,²⁹ a publishing house from Nashville would complete the task he failed to accomplish. How symmetrical that Spurgeon’s early sermons would be published not by Passmore & Alabaster in London but by Americans. And not only Americans, but Southern Americans. And not only Southern Americans, but Southern Baptist Americans with all the baggage of their bespeckled beginnings.

As a Southern Baptist from Alabama, allow me to confess my own bias. I have spent the majority of my vocational life studying Spurgeon. I have found in him (and share with him) a genuine commitment to making Jesus Christ known to the nations. Like him, I too am deeply invested in the church and claim the same evangelical impulses that fueled Spurgeon’s ministry. I admire his stance for social justice, love for the marginalized, and commitment to biblical orthodoxy.

Spurgeon’s language is not always theologically precise. At times his colorful, allegorical, and experimental rhetoric make academic treatments challenging. However, Spurgeon was not a theologian in the systematic sense and never claimed to be. He was a preacher. And as such his ultimate concern was not crafting perfect manuscripts—though he spent a great deal of time redacting his sermons for publication. His greatest concern was, as his famous title hinted, becoming a Soul Winner. With pen and pulpit, Spurgeon indentured his literary and intellectual abilities to service of the church. His uncanny gift for rendering complex ideas in the working class vernacular distinguished him from many of his contemporaries and gave him instant audiences.

Spurgeon’s preaching emerged not in the ivory towers of Cambridge but in the lowly villages surrounding it. He was more concerned with feeding sheep than giraffes.³⁰ Spurgeon started his ministry as a country, not city, preacher. His congregants at Waterbeach Chapel were farmers and laborers. Even after moving to London, Spurgeon retained his early earthy idioms and used illustrations common to the Victorian experience.

His preaching flourished in cholera-ravaged Southwark near London’s warehouses, distilleries, and factories. This gave Spurgeon a finger on the pulse of the population that, when combined with his own physical and mental ailments, produced a level of empathy uncommon to his contemporaries. Spurgeon never suffered from having never suffered.³¹

At the height of my illness in 2013, Spurgeon’s earliest sermons had a profound effect on me. During a series of surgeries, my eyes chanced upon a phrase in Notebook 1: Think much on grace, Christian.³² Over the twelve months of my recovery, these words brought such encouragement that I doubt they shall ever be forgotten.

Whenever new discoveries are made—whether lost diaries, letters, hymns, poems, or sermons—there is an opportunity to further our knowledge of a particular subject or person. In 2011, only a handful of doctoral students in the world were writing on Spurgeon. Today roughly two dozen are entering the field. Much work is yet to be done. Caverns of untapped resources await exploration. My hope is that the publication of Spurgeon’s lost sermons will inspire future generations of scholars to mine the theological treasures still untapped.

I am also hopeful that this project will promote a reinvigorated sense of unity, mission, and Christian witness throughout evangelicalism. The recent surge of interest in Spurgeon could and should be leveraged for the kingdom. Spurgeon can become an agent of healing. Everyone can, and does, claim him, regardless of theological stripe, tribe, or camp. Spurgeon’s appeal extends not only across denominational barriers, but also into the broader evangelical tradition. With the upcoming accessibility of Spurgeon’s sermons on the revamped website www.spurgeon.org and also with the advances in scholarship at The Spurgeon Library of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, younger and older generations face exciting new opportunities to stand together as witnesses to the world in celebration of what God has accomplished in history. Who knows? Perhaps it was for this reason that the sermons were lost in the nineteenth century and found in the twenty-first.

In 1860, an article entitled Mr. Spurgeon and the American Slaveholders offered the following words: Southern Baptists will not, hereafter, when they visit London, desire to commune with this prodigy of the nineteenth century. We venture the prophecy that his books in [the] future will not crowd the shelves of our Southern book merchants. They will not; they should not.³³ In 1889, Spurgeon uttered a prophecy of his own: For my part, I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years; but the more distant future shall vindicate me.³⁴

The more distant future did vindicate Spurgeon. His sermons do crowd the shelves of Southern bookstores. As Carl F. H. Henry rightly noted, Spurgeon has become one of evangelical Christianity’s immortals.³⁵ Throughout Alabama, Virginia, and the United States of America, the books of the notorious English abolitionist still burn—casting light and life in a dark and dying world.

After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Spurgeon’s reputation improved among Southern Baptists. Many of their churches were named after Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, like Mark Dever’s Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, which originally was called Metropolitan Baptist Church.³⁶ Southern Baptists like John A. Broadus, founder of The Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, flocked to Elephant & Castle to hear Spurgeon preach. After his 1891 visit, Broadus said, The whole thing—house, congregation, order, worship, preaching, was as nearly up to my ideal as I ever expect to see in this life.³⁷ In June 1884, the faculty of that seminary penned a collective letter of commendation to Spurgeon: