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London of the 1860s was, to borrow Charles Spurgeon’s expressive humor, “the city of Gog, Magog, and Fog!” Early optimism about the Industrial Revolution was now fading. An urban underclass was growing rapidly. Within this context evangelical Christians struggled with varying degrees of success—to work out the social responsibilities of their faith. Spurgeon declared that he and his congregation were determined “to show our love of truth by truthful love.”

By any standards, the involvement of Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle congregation in social ministries was outstanding. In 1867, £23,360 was voluntarily given to the various causes of the church—the Pastors’ College, Almshouses, and the Sunday and Ragged Schools among them. But £7,000 went to one of the most interesting, significant, and least understood of these causes—the Stockwell Orphanage.

The summer of 1866 found Spurgeon looking for a new work in which to engage. Concerned about the advances of Tractarianism [a High-Church movement within the Church of England], he wanted to establish a Christian school. An unexpected gift of £20,000 from Anne Hillyard, the widow of an Anglican clergyman, led him in a different direction. By the end of 1867, four boys’ houses had been opened at Stockwell, followed during the 1880s by five houses for girls. Located on the Clapham Road, south of the River Thames, the row of boys’ houses faced a similar row of girls’ houses across an area of lawns and open play areas. Both the boys’ and girls’ institutions aimed to provide for the “free and gratuitous residence, maintenance, clothing, instruction, and education of destitute, fatherless children.”

Spurgeon believed that Christians could cooperate on matters of social concern, when theological differences might exclude cooperation on other issues. At the laying of Stockwell’s foundation stone in 1867 he declared, “On these occasions we do not meet either as Church [of England] people or as Dissenters. When we aim to help orphans or to take care of the poor, we lay aside all that.”

This was not an argument for working with all people who loosely described themselves as Christians. In his later years, as theological liberalism and Christian socialism arose, Spurgeon increasingly put forward the orphanage as a testimony to opponents of the gospel. “The orphanage is an eloquent answer to the sneers of infidels and scoffers of the modern school who would fain make it out that our charity lies in bigoted zeal for doctrines but does not produce practical results. Are any of the new theologians doing more than those of the old orthodox faith? … What does their Socialism amount to beyond words and theory? At any rate, we care for both the bodies and souls of the poor, and try to show our love of truth by truthful love.”

The annual reports of the orphanage set forth three broad principles for the work.

Need-based admission. The orphanage was to be open to all classes of the community, and patronage from subscribers holding votes was rejected. In this Spurgeon followed the pioneering example of George Müller of Bristol.

Nonsectarian admission. “More concerned that the children should become disciples of Christ than devotees of a sect,” trustees admitted children from any or no denominational background. “No child is prejudiced as a candidate by the creed of his parents.… [If] Christian principles were lacking in the father, the child should not be punished on that account.”

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