The Genius of Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“I am almost tempted to shout out to those who are serving the Eternal Word as preachers, and to those who are preparing to do so, in what I hope will be a productive hyperbole: Sell all that you have (not least of all your stock of current sermonic literature) and buy Spurgeon (even if you have to grub through the second-hand book-stores).”

That striking testimony to the genius of Charles Haddon Spurgeon was given, not by a British preacher, nor by an American professor of homiletics, but by a noted German Christian—Helmut Thielicke, rector of the University of Hamburg, who is well known throughout the free world as an outstanding preacher and a distinguished theologian. It occurs in the preface to his German translation of Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students (published in English as Encounter with Spurgeon, translated by John W. Doberstein, London: James Clarke, 1964).

Though Spurgeon died over three-quarters of a century ago, his influence lives on in the evangelical preaching and literature of our time. And it also lives on in his own writings—chiefly in his sermons, which were published weekly throughout his London ministry, and his seven-volume exposition of the Psalms, The Treasury of David (James Stalker said he had used this work all through his ministry, both as preacher and professor, and had never once been disappointed). Then there are also the three institutions he established and directed—the tabernacle, the college, and the orphanage. These still bear the stamp of his genius and preserve his memory, in a very different kind of world from the Victorian era in which, as the monarch of the pulpit, he did his mighty work for Christ and his Church.

Spurgeon could hardly be described as an “ecumenical Christian,” as the phrase is used nowadays; yet in a very real sense he belongs to the whole Church. He was born in a Congregationalist parsonage 136 years ago, the son and grandson of Congregationalist ministers; sixteen years later he was “born again” in a Methodist chapel. Those two events—natural birth and spiritual rebirth—taken together constitute one of the turning points of nineteenth-century Christianity in Victorian Britain.

Furthermore, he became a Baptist preacher, having submitted to the ordinance of believer’s baptism soon after his conversion. Years later his mother said to him: “Charles, I constantly prayed that you would give your life to Christ, but never that you would become a Baptist.” His reply was: “And the Lord has answered your prayers according to his usual bounty and given you more than you asked for.”

That Spurgeon was the greatest preacher of his time (some would say “of all time”) is generally acknowledged, even though in that day the pulpit giant Canon H. P. Liddon was filling St. Paul’s Cathedral with overflowing crowds and Joseph Parker was exercising his mighty ministry at the City Temple. John Henry Jowett—himself a preacher of the first magnitude—was a tremendous admirer of Spurgeon’s genius. He went so far as to compare the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle with three of the greatest names in Christian history, asserting that “he is not eclipsed even when set in radiant succession to Paul, Luther, and Calvin.” Paul! Luther! Calvin! What company!

Kenneth Scott Latourette describes Spurgeon as “a moderate Calvinist” whose preaching was “warmly evangelistic.” He was not a hyper-Calvinist (as it was called in those days); otherwise his preaching could never have been “warmly evangelistic.”

It is difficult for us to realize that in the early years of Spurgeon’s London ministry he was accused by many people, including ministers, of deviating from the Gospel. One of the leaders of a strict theological orthodoxy, James Wells, minister of the old Surrey Chapel and a near neighbor of the rising young preacher at New Park Street Chapel, thundered to his congregation, “That young man will never preach in this pulpit”—a prophecy that happily was not fulfilled.

In later years Spurgeon was a close friend of John Clifford, the most distinguished preacher among the General Baptists. One day Clifford ribbed his friend about his theology. “You see me so often I cannot understand why you remain a Calvinist,” he said. Spurgeon replied, “Well, it’s like this, John. I see you only about once a month, but I read my Bible every day, and that keeps me straight.”

Spurgeon had much in common with Martin Luther. Both passed through a traumatic spiritual experience. Although the preparations and settings of the two experiences were vastly different, the spiritual turmoil that culminated in the conversion-crisis of the young Augustinian monk as he climbed the Sancta Scala in Rome was essentially the same as that undergone by the sixteen-year-old son of the manse in a Primitive Methodist chapel three and a half centuries later.

Luther’s great text was, “The just shall live by faith.” That of young Spurgeon was, “Look unto me all ends of the earth, and be ye saved; for I am the Lord, and there is none else.” Years later Spurgeon wrote a hymn to commemorate the “great transaction,” the refrain of which expressed the heart of the experience:

He looked on me: I looked to Him—

And we were one for ever.

How well he remembered the great event that for him was “the beginning of miracles”—an event that had swept him into a new world of amazing wonder and exulting hope.

St. Paul was the greatest of all the servants of Christ. His mighty contribution to the life and thought of the Church Universal may be summed up under three heads: (a) his experience of Christ, (b) his exposition of the Cross, and (c) his expansion of the Church.

Spurgeon’s experience of Christ was essentially like Paul’s, though again its preparation and setting were not exactly the same. In our time much has been written about conversion as a psychological problem to be investigated psychologically. No doubt there is some gain in this. But there is also much loss when we fail to realize that conversion is a spiritual miracle, that it is primarily an experience of the forgiving and restoring grace of God. It is “that work of the Holy Spirit in a man whereby a new life of holy love, like the life of God, is initiated.” St. Paul would have said “Amen” to that, and so would his nineteenth-century disciple.

In Spurgeon’s exposition of the Cross we see the determining influence of St. Paul’s teaching. He did not offer a “crossless Christianity.” He would have regarded with the utmost distaste any interpretation of the Gospel that did not center consciously and willingly in the death of Christ, and that refused to sing, with genuine conviction, such great hymns as “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” And he would have been completely at a loss to understand the preacher who could conduct a Communion service or deliver a Lenten meditation without the least reference to the death of the Saviour.

Spurgeon’s expansion of the Church, like that of St. Paul, cannot be measured. His pulpit was a throne from which with regal authority he sounded forth the Word of Life. But by means of the printed word (especially the published sermons) and the School of the Prophets he founded, his contribution to the ongoing cause of Christ was enhanced a hundredfold. “Spurgeon’s men” established churches, both in Britain and overseas, in the hundreds; and the present generation of Spurgeon’s students exemplify the college motto—an uplifted cross, grasped firmly by a human hand, with the inscription Et teneo et teneor (I both hold and am held).

What was the secret of Spurgeon’s success as a preacher? Undeniably, he was a pulpit genius, and genius defies analysis. But the forms in which a great man’s genius expresses itself can be distinguished, even though the final secret eludes the most painstaking investigation.

The first thing to note is that Spurgeon possessed a wonderful voice—a “bell voice,” musical, resonant, resounding—and used it with consummate skill. Without apparent effort he could make himself heard in the largest auditorium; even his whisper was lost on none save the hard of hearing. No audience ever had to ask him to speak up, nor was he ever accused of shouting. His voice was a perfect organ for the expression of his thought, and he knew how to make the highest use of it. As a distinguished professor of rhetoric said, “If C. H. Spurgeon had not been a preacher, he might have been the most perfect orator of his time.”

But this fact cannot of itself account for his phenomenal and sustained success as the herald of God. Spurgeon captivated the multitudes because he knew how to speak to them. He could “play to the gallery” in the best sense of that abused phrase. His ability to clothe his message in the lucid language of dignified simplicity was an important part of his secret. In a sermon preached the Sunday after Spurgeon’s death, Alexander Maclaren of Manchester (himself one of the great preachers of the Victorian era) said: “His genius for forceful, racy speech sets him by the side of the great masters of our English tongue.” During the same week, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, no mean judge, wrote in the British Weekly: “The home-like, sturdy Englishman … with his unfailing command of lucid Saxon and his power to rise to heights of eloquence will not easily pass from the nation’s memory and heart.” And he added: “In the sermons there are many passages which a really catholic anthology of English prose would not omit.”

If Spurgeon’s speaking style was part of the secret of his success, then the secret of his style must be found in his deep acquaintance with the King James Version of the Bible. Judged by present-day standards, Spurgeon was not highly educated (though he was far better educated than his critics realized), but he was a widely read man with a well-furnished mind. His knowledge of the classics—Greek, Latin, and English—was astounding, as anyone can see by glancing at his Lectures to My Students. But his chief reading was the Bible and books that drew their inspiration from Holy Writ, such as the writings of the Puritans. He spent many hours with John Howe, Thomas Goodwin, and John Bunyan, thereby enriching his heart and mind. Thus the language and style of the King James Version were woven into the texture of his mental and spiritual constitution, and did much to create the grandeur and simplicity of his prose, both spoken and written.

But we must go further if we wish to find his secret. A wonderful voice and a majestic speaking style are not in themselves sufficient to explain his long-sustained influence and popularity. We must also note that there was a refreshing ring of certainty and assurance in his preaching. Whenever he preached he was like his Master, who always spoke “as one having authority”—a note often absent from contemporary preaching.

True, he lived in very different days from ours. Mid-Victorian Britain was a time of ferment, but it was not as restless and revolutionary as our own age. Yet we can be sure that the great Victorian, if he were living today, would not indulge in the half-hearted, tentative, “pardon-my-existence” type of preaching that comes from some present-day pulpits. Certainly in his own day people were attracted to his ministry because they saw in him one who spoke with assurance.

What a distinguished English man of lettters wrote of Spurgeon in the Times of London more than a century ago is worth recalling:

The philosophical precision, the literary refinements, the nice discrimination between what we may know of a doctrine and what we may not know, leaving us in the end, perhaps, scarcely anything to know about—all this which according to some, is so much needed by the age, is Mr. Spurgeon’s utter scorn. He is the direct dogmatic enunciator of the old Pauline truth, without the slightest attempt to soften its outline, its substance, or its results—and what has followed? Truly Providence would seem once more to have made foolish the wisdom of this world. While the gentlemen who know so well how men ought to preach are left to exemplify their profound lessons before empty benches and in obscure corners, this young man can point to six thousand hearers every Sunday; and we ask, “Who, with such a sight before him, dares despair of making the gospel a power in the great heart of humanity?”

Too facile a judgment, some would say. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the appraisal both states a fact and points a moral. Undeniably, the assurance with which Spurgeon preached was a great factor in his phenomenal success. We preachers today cannot impress our hearers with the truth of our message if we are hesitant and uncertain in proclaiming it.

Finally, we may note that Spurgeon’s ministry was Christocentric (though he would have shied away from that Latinized term). For him every road led to Christ. However he dealt with a text—and he was a master homiletician—it was always full of gospel truth; and no sermon ended without bringing the hearers face to face with some demand of the Saviour.

Furthermore, Spurgeon knew how to deal with the great texts of Scripture. His distinguished contemporary Joseph Parker once wrote to a fellow minister:

You can’t preach except on the anecdotes of the Bible. But there’s a great deal in the Bible besides anecdotes. When Spurgeon first came to London he took for his text, “He hath made us accepted in the beloved!” You wouldn’t know what to make of a text like that.

Parker was right. Spurgeon did know how to deal with big themes: indeed, whether his text was a big one or a little one, it was always the Gospel—and nothing less than the Gospel—that he got out of it. He did not “preach sermonettes to Christianettes”; he did not expend his energy pottering about the fringes of religion. Christ was always the living heart of his “messages to the multitude” (the title of one of his sermon volumes), even when the text was taken from some “remote Scriptures,” such as the Book of Judges or the Song of Solomon. As one discerning hearer remarked, “Spurgeon became lyrical whenever he spoke of Christ, and he was always speaking about him.”

Other gifts he also possessed in large measure—intense sympathy with the common man in his struggles and troubles, a colossal memory, a vivid imagination, a saving sense of humor, and an amazing fund of common sense. No wonder that with such gifts, and with the completely consecrated personality that manifested those gifts, he did a work for Christ and his Church that has not spent its influence. Jowett was indeed right when he said of this great servant of Christ: “He is not eclipsed even when set in radiant succession to Paul, Luther, and Calvin.”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.