Alright, so I'm going to pick up where we left off last time. I mentioned at the end that Spurgeon began preaching soon after his conversion, and I also mentioned that he was converted on January 6, 1850, and that exactly five years and one day later, he preached his first sermon as pastor of the the London congregation that he would pastor the rest of his life. Today it's called the Metropolitan Tabernacle. In those days it was the New Park Street Chapel. But what's amazing about that is, I mentioned that Spurgeon just seemed to spring full-grown into his Christian ministry. He never went to any university or seminary. In fact, that's to me one of the more remarkable things about him and why it sort of irritates me that just this week he was given a posthumous seminary degree that I don't think he would have appreciated at all. you know, by someone whose ministry philosophy is the opposite of Spurgeon's, that irritates me. I'll admit that to you, I'm irritated. But anyway, the truth is, there were many circumstances that were arranged by Providence to make Spurgeon what he was. We've seen them all, his grandfather, his parents, the Puritan books in his grandfather's library, and all of that. His reading is one of the remarkable things about him. All his life, he was an inveterate reader. You can see this, perhaps best of all, in his commentaries on the Psalms. He has a multi-volume work that covers the Psalms. It's called The Treasury of David. And in it, it's not just his comments on the Psalms, it's a digest of all of the commentaries on the book of Psalms that he read. He pulled out the best comments and the most insightful sections, and he included it in his work. So, I often tell people if you can only have one commentary on the book of Psalms, get Spurgeon's Treasury of David, because He brings together all of the best commentaries that had been written up to that point. And in order to do that, obviously, he would have to spend an immense time in reading. And it's true that he was a bibliophile, meaning he loved books. and he collected books and he had a massive library that he kept at his home where he did most of his study. That library was sold after his death by his two sons who auctioned it off to a college called William Jewell College. It was a Baptist school in Kansas City, Missouri in the United States. So the books were all shipped to Missouri and they stayed at William Jewell College for several years. Years ago, I visited the library there at William Jewell College. They since have sold that library to Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where now it's on permanent display in a beautiful facility. Hang on a second. This is what it looked like at William Jewell College. And then a few years after Spurgeon's death, William Jewell College also owned the library of Lois Lenski, who was a famous children's author. And it seemed that they treated the Spurgeon library like a kind of stepchild. They kept it away from the public in a locked room. It was a nice room, and they meant to sort of replicate Spurgeon's study in his home. They got a table that was very similar to the table he used, and chairs, and even had a chandelier built to match the ones in Spurgeon's homes, in home. But as I said, they kept it away from the public, locked away. You could make an appointment and go and see it, Around 1996 or so, I visited there, and they opened the library for me, and they gave me permission to just look through the books and browse to my heart's content. And I was hoping to find places where Spurgeon marked the margins, wrote notes in the margins of the books while he read. And what I noticed, to my surprise, was that his marginal notations in his books are extremely rare. Even in the books that I knew Spurgeon used quite a lot, he didn't write in the margins the way I do. He didn't underline or highlight sentences like I do because, unlike me, Spurgeon remembered everything he read and so he didn't need to highlight his books and write marginal notes to himself. the way I do. After Midwestern Seminary bought the library, and before they had a place to put it on display fully, they kept most of it in a storage unit somewhere in Kansas City for five years or longer, and during that time I visited Kansas City again and the president of the seminary there that now owned the library. The president's name was Jason Allen, still is Jason Allen, and he graciously let me look at a few of the treasures from that library that he had especially picked out to keep on permanent display in his office. And the books he showed me included a few volumes that Spurgeon did write notes in. And although he didn't typically mark the pages of his books, it turns out he did sometimes write notes in the flyleaf to remind himself what he thought of certain books. If it was a book he didn't like, he would write a scathing one-paragraph review in the front of the book. And it's intriguing and sometimes funny stuff. He had a good sense of humor. And if you want a sample, you can read the reviews that Spurgeon published in another book that he wrote called Commenting and Commentaries. where he wrote his opinions on some of his commentaries. Anyway, for the most part, Spurgeon had no trouble recalling anything he had ever read, and since he started reading the Puritans in his grandfather's library when he was a very young boy, Even his earliest memories were filled with things that he had learned, and phrases that he had picked up, and doctrines that interested him, and illustrations that he remembered from books he had read as a child. And so, into his life as a new Christian, Spurgeon drew with him an encyclopedic knowledge of that he had gleaned from a childhood interest in spiritual things. I should mention, because I clicked the slide, this is the new Spurgeon Library. This is the new building where it's displayed now in Kansas City. And thankfully, they've put it on permanent display. And you can see it's a library in and of itself where students can go in there and study. And if you want to look something up in a book, you can actually look it up in a book that Spurgeon owned. It's an amazing place. I've not been there yet, but I've seen pictures of it, and I'm impressed with it. There was one other profound influence on Spurgeon that I should not neglect to mention. In the autumn before his conversion, he went to a private school in Cambridgeshire, and the cook and the housekeeper at that school was a woman named Mary King. Remember her name because she will be, I think, honored in heaven. Spurgeon often said afterward that he was as indebted to Mary King as he would have been to any theological professor. Most of his theology, the fundamentals of his theology, he learned from her. She was one of those who enjoyed reading theology and discussing doctrine and seeking to understand the deep things of God. And she was a remarkable woman, especially given that she was employed full-time as a domestic worker. She was basically a maid and a housekeeper. And in Spurgeon, she found a kindred spirit, someone whose interests intersected with hers. She was a strong Calvinist who loved the doctrines of grace. She loved to talk theology, and Spurgeon recalled with great fondness and gratitude the influence she had on him for the rest of his life. He often talked about her. In fact, he wrote this about her. He said, quote, Many a time we have gone over the covenant of grace together and talked of the personal election of the saints and their union with Christ, their final perseverance, and what vital godliness means. And I do believe that I learned more from her than I would have learned from any six doctors of divinity of the sort we have nowadays." So he thought very highly of her. And the church in Cambridgeshire where she attended was not A very good church. It was spiritually dry. The pastor was not very pastoral. And Spurgeon once asked Mary, why do you bother to go to this church at all? Because the church was filled with problems. And she replied that a hen scratching at a pile of rubbish might not get any corn, but she shows that she's looking for it, she's using the means to get it, and she's warmed by the exercise. Spurgeon had such a great regard for her that in her old age even, he helped support her financially. She's the one who first sparked his interest in the doctrines of grace and other cardinal doctrines that Spurgeon regularly preached about, and he learned much from her. As I said, I think her reward in heaven will be great. Spurgeon's early January conversion came at the end of Christmas holidays for Spurgeon's boarding school that year, and when he returned to that school in Cambridgeshire, he decided he was going to join the same church where Mary attended. And although it was dry as dust, he said, it was the only option he had at the time. And so he went to visit the minister of that church for a membership interview. And when he got there, he was told the pastor was unavailable. After four days in a row trying to meet with this pastor, Spurgeon wrote him a letter saying that if the pastor wouldn't see him, he was simply going to propose himself for membership at the next church meeting. So the pastor finally agreed to interview him and he was admitted to the fellowship of that church. It was not a Baptist church. however, and Spurgeon, who was true to the conviction he had formed as a 14-year-old, determined to be baptized as a believer. He searched for a Baptist minister, and he finally found one about eight miles away in Ilam. And he wrote to his parents asking their consent, their approval, for him to be baptized as a believer. And, of course, they were not Baptists either. And so they wrote and replied with their approval. They said, go ahead and be baptized. But they cautioned him that he must not trust his baptism as the means of his salvation. Spurgeon's mother also told him that she had prayed for him from infancy that he would be a Christian, but she said, I never asked the Lord to make you a Baptist. And Spurgeon responded by telling his mother that the Lord had answered her prayers and given her exceedingly abundantly more than she had asked or thought. And so one Friday morning in early May that year, he got up early and walked the eight miles to Ilam. Ilam Ferry on the River Lark is a beautiful stream that marks the border between the counties Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Spurgeon had never even witnessed a baptism by immersion, and he was nervous. It was a cold, gray, windy day, and the place where Spurgeon was immersed is so remote that although there's a monument, stone monument, there that marks the site that was put up I think sometime in the 1960s, You'll never find that monument unless you know someone who knows how to tell you how to get there. Two young women were also baptized that morning, and here's how Spurgeon described that day, quote, The wind blew down the river with a cutting blast as my turn came to wade into the flood, but after I had walked a few steps and noted the people on the ferry boat and in boats and on either shore, I felt as if heaven and earth and hell might all gaze upon me, for I was not ashamed, then and there, to own myself a follower of the Lamb. My timidity was washed away. It floated down the river into the sea and must have been devoured by the fishes, for I have never felt anything of the kind since. Baptism also loosed my tongue, and from that day it has never been quiet." Spurgeon's Baptist convictions, that's the monument, by the way, that marks the spot where he was baptized. I have no clue where those people are, who they are. I pulled that picture from the internet. Spurgeon's Baptist convictions were biblical, not sectarian. In other words, he didn't become a Baptist in order to be part of a group or a denomination. He became a Baptist because he was convinced that the Baptistic understanding of the sacraments was the most Biblical way to interpret Scripture. He would have been perfectly happy to pastor a congregation like the church I attend, which is Baptistic, but we're not part of any Baptist union. And in fact, in later years, as we're going to see in one of our lectures, Spurgeon famously pulled his church out of the Baptist Union because of his conviction that this denomination, the Union, was becoming too tolerant of doctrinal compromise. He wrote this, quote, I did not fulfill the outward ordinance to join a party and become a Baptist, but to be a Christian after the apostolic fashion, for they, when they believed, were baptized. It is now questioned whether John Bunyan was baptized, but the same question can never be raised concerning me. who scarcely belong to any sect, am nevertheless by no means willing to have it doubted in time to come, whether or not I followed the conviction of my heart." After his conversion and his baptism, Spurgeon immediately set out to do as much as he could to proclaim the gospel to others. He seemed to sense his calling to preach instantly after he was converted. And in fact, at one point, a few years later, he began to think seriously that he might be called to preach the gospel in China. and all through his life he took a keen interest in foreign missions, but he knew he needed to start right where he was, and he started immediately. Systematically distributing gospel tracts, he would spend his Saturdays going door-to-door with the gospel, and the Sunday after he was baptized on Friday, he partook in the Lord's table for the first time, And on that Sunday, he began teaching Sunday school. He found that teaching a class of young boys was a good way to hone his speaking skills. It was there that he learned how to hold an audience. If you can hold the attention of a group of young boys, you can hold an audience. And Spurgeon said that when the boys first began to fidget, He saw that as a signal that it was time for him to give an illustration. And in fact, one boy in the Sunday school class used to say, this is very dull, teacher. Can't you pitch us a yarn? And Spurgeon said later that he realized the point of a good illustration may be remembered long after the rest of the sermon is forgotten. He transferred to a school in Cambridge the following school year, and it was there that he preached his first sermon. Actually, he more or less got tricked into it. He had joined a Baptist church in Cambridge that had a long history, and one of the men in that church was president of an organization called the Preachers Association. And this man called on Spurgeon one Saturday morning, just as school was dismissed, and he asked him to go with him to a nearby village called Teversham. And he said he's going there the next evening and he wanted Spurgeon to accompany him. And he told Spurgeon that a young man was scheduled to preach there who was not accustomed to preaching and that he would appreciate having company. So Spurgeon agreed to go. And when this fellow showed up with another man, Spurgeon, of course, assumed that the third man was the preacher. And as they drew near to their destination, Spurgeon told this other young man that he hoped the Lord would empower him as he preached. And the guy stopped, and he looked at Spurgeon like he was crazy, and he told him he'd never preached, and he couldn't preach, and unless Spurgeon himself preached, there wouldn't be any sermon. That's how he kind of got tricked into preaching, and that's how he preached his first sermon. The place where Spurgeon preached that first time was a little cottage in Teversham. It was a small little rustic place. There could not have been many people in there, just a handful, just one roomful. And Spurgeon had no choice, because he wasn't prepared to preach, so he had no choice but to use one of his Sunday school messages. And the text he chose for that sermon that evening, his very first sermon ever, was 1 Peter 2.7. Unto you that believe, he is precious. And when he finished preaching, he said he was simply relieved that he hadn't broken down or forgotten what to say, and he felt like it went okay. Other people in the audience said that they were dramatically impacted by the message. There's, of course, no record of it, no written record or any of that, other than the testimony of people who spoke years later who said they were there. But they said they could see his genius as a preacher in that very first sermon. By the way, the cottage still exists today. It's at 6 High Street in Teversham, and it's obviously, as you look at it, been significantly rebuilt. The walls are higher, the roof is a different pitch. and it's no longer a thatched roof, but this is the same cottage built on the same foundation with many of the same features and structure as the original. All the rooms are the same inside. Today it's actually part of a suburban development. It was a rural place in Spurgeon's time, but there is a plaque on the wall commemorating the start of Spurgeon's preaching ministry on that spot. I took that picture when I was there. He was naturally gifted as a preacher. He had a rich voice and a quick mind. He was witty and eloquent and even before his conversion he was knowledgeable about theology as we've seen. His preaching from day one stood out as something special and so soon the entire region was talking about this young boy who could preach so well. Now I need to move quickly through the story of how Spurgeon came to London. So I'm going to draw heavily from Spurgeon's first biographer and I'll summarize what he wrote about that part of Spurgeon's life. So most of this information about Spurgeon's move to London is found in the biography of Spurgeon written by William Young Fullerton. I quoted him earlier today. Fullerton, who as a young man actually served as one of Spurgeon's personal assistants. So he knew Spurgeon well, and in fact during the time he served as Spurgeon's personal assistant, he helped Spurgeon proofread and prepare the sermons that were being published by Spurgeon. Spurgeon was invited to preach in various churches and study groups on Sundays and many times on weekdays. Here is how Spurgeon himself described his daily routine in those days. He said in the early morning he would get up and pray and read the Bible and then he would attend to his school responsibilities until about five in the evening when he would set off almost every day to tell the villages around Cambridge what he had learned. during the day. Toward the end of October of 1851, Spurgeon promised... wait a minute... Spurgeon promised that he would preach only a few Sundays, but this church at Water Beach, which is six miles from Cambridge, called him to be their sort of interim pastor. He planned to do it, as I said, only a few Sundays, but he ended up remaining as the interim pastor of this church for more than two years. His first convert was the wife of a laborer, and he said that he still prized that one soul more than all the multitude who came to Christ under his preaching afterward. At the first opportunity, early Monday morning, he went to this woman's cottage, the woman who had been converted, to encourage her and instruct her in the first steps of the Christian life. He said, if anybody had said to me, someone has left you 20,000 pounds, I wouldn't have given a snap of my fingers for it compared to the joy which I felt when I was told that God had saved a soul through my ministry. He says, I felt like a boy who had earned his first guinea, or like a diver who had been down to the depths of the sea and brought up a rare pearl. his ability to preach spread like wildfire through that region, and so soon he was invited to speak at Ilam, the town closest to the spot where he was baptized. The deacons there borrowed the largest chapel in the neighborhood, thinking that big crowds would come, but for the Sunday morning service, only seven people showed up. And Spurgeon, they said, preached as if he was talking to a full auditorium. And by later that evening, the news of him had spread so that people literally had to be turned away from the evening service. Now at one point he decided he would go to college. It was his desire to study and earn a degree, and he tried to enroll at Stepney College, which is a Baptist school that was part of Oxford University. It's now known as Regents Park College. Some of you may have heard of that. It's a prestigious school. It was then and it is now. And the principal was a man named Dr. Angus, who visited Cambridge in 1852, February 1st, in order to preach at St. Andrew's Street Chapel there in Cambridge. And he made arrangements to speak with Spurgeon about enrolling at the university. And so there was this meeting that was scheduled to take place in the house of Alexander Macmillan. Alexander Macmillan was one of the founders of the Macmillan publishing empire. And Spurgeon came early for that meeting, and of course Macmillan was a wealthy man with a very large house and several domestic servants, and one of the servant girls showed Spurgeon into the drawing room and told him to wait there. He waited for two hours. and he was too shy and, as he thought, too insignificant to make any noise and so he just waited two hours until he finally rang the bell and got a servant in there and reminded them that he was waiting to meet this important man. But by then, Dr. Angus had come and gone and he was on his way to London on a train. The principal said he had waited for quite a long time for Spurgeon, but he was in another room, and neither Spurgeon nor Dr. Angus knew that the other one was in the house, and nobody put them together, and so he missed the meeting. This was an incredibly disappointing turn of Providence. But it was definitely by God's design. Spurgeon said that as he walked away that afternoon, a thought came into his head. He said, almost like a loud voice, the words came to him that were an exact quotation from Jeremiah 45, verse 5, which says, Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. And he immediately said he gave up any thought of ever going to college, and he resolved just to continue in ministry where God had placed him. Again, another reason why I'm disturbed that someone would posthumously give him a degree and think that he would enjoy that. Spurgeon pastored, as I said, at that little church at Waterbeach for the next two years, and his influence grew, and respect for him grew as well. Soon his reputation reached all the way to London, and the New Park Street Baptist Church was actually one of the largest and most well known of all the London Baptist congregations. In previous years, this church had been pastored by John Gill, who is probably the keenest thinking Baptist expositor who ever lived. Gil's influence on the Baptists of England was widespread, and although I hesitate to say anything negative about John Gil, because he is one of the commentators that I always turn to for help in understanding the hard passages of Scripture, Gil's insights are usually quite profound. his commentary on the entire Bible. He was an expert in Old Testament Hebrew, and he was a voracious student of the Jewish writings on the Old Testament. He had studied the rabbinical commentaries on the Old Testament. In all candor, his long-range influence has not always been entirely good. Gill held to a kind of high Calvinism that pointed many British Baptists into a poisonous kind of hyper-Calvinism. And Spurgeon even said this about John Gill. He said, quote, tries to open up a parable and finds meaning in every circumstance, in every minute detail, or when he falls upon a text which is not congenial with his creed, and hacks and hews terribly to bring the Word of God into a more systematic shape. He says Gil is the Koryphaeus of Hyper-Calvinism, but if his followers never went beyond their master, they would not go very far astray. Koryphaeus is an expression from Greek drama that speaks of the chorus leader, the choir director, and Spurgeon was saying that Gil had influenced and encouraged early Hyper-Calvinists, but Spurgeon stops short of calling Gil himself a Hyper-Calvinist. Ian Murray would tell you that Spurgeon was being a little too generous in his assessment of Gill. Ian Murray considers John Gill a hyper-Calvinist, and who am I to disagree with Ian Murray? But I never encourage anyone to adopt Gill's doctrinal positions on anything. But Spurgeon is right. As a commentator on scripture, Gill is usually brilliant, superb. Anyway, by Spurgeon's time, John Gill had been dead and buried for nearly 80 years, but he was obviously still honored and held in an influential place in Baptist history, as he still does to this day. When Gil began as a pastor of this congregation, they were meeting in a neighborhood known as the Goat Yard. Not a very elegant name for a church. The Goat Yard Church is what it was called. It was called the Goat Yard Chapel. Before he finished his ministry, the congregation moved to a place close to the River Thames in Carter Lane. I think I have a picture of it here. Yes, I do. That's the Carter Lane Chapel. It was a very plain-looking meetinghouse. This is typical of nonconformist places of worship. In fact, the distinctive feature of all nonconformist and Puritan chapels was the positioning of the pulpit. I noticed this, we went around a few days ago to some of the Lutheran churches in the area, and the pulpit is always off to the side, the altar is front and center. In Puritan churches, there was no altar, and the pulpit was front and center. That's how it was built. The buildings were very modest, as this one is, and as far as I know, these are the only pictures of the Carter Lane Chapel that exist. After a couple of decades, the Carter Lane building became a victim of imminent domain. It was purchased by the Crown and demolished in order to make a better entry to London Bridge. And for three years, this congregation was without a building. The deacons at the time were frugal and frugal to a fault, I would say, so they found the cheapest plot of land nearby on an out-of-the-way place known as New Park Street. And that's where they built their new, slightly larger building. Here it is. The New Park Street Chapel. It's where the congregation was meeting when Spurgeon began his ministry there. And he absolutely hated this location. Here's what he said about it. Quote, the good deacons ought to have pitched upon a better site for the new edifice, but it's not hardly judging them when we say that they could not have discovered a worse position. If they had taken 30 years to look about them with the design of burying the church alive, they could not have succeeded better. New Park Street is a low-lying sort of lane, close to the bank of the River Thames, near the enormous breweries of Mr. Barkley and Perkins, near the vinegar factories of Mr. Potts, and several large boiler works. So in other words, in an industrial area, if you've ever been around a brewery, you know it stinks. And the River Thames stunk too. So this was not a very pleasant place. He says, the nearest way to it from the city was over a Southwark bridge with a toll to pay. No cabs could be had within a half mile of the place, and the region was dim and dirty and destitute and frequently flooded by the river at high tides. Here, however, he says, the new chapel must be built because the ground was a cheap freehold, and the authorities were destitute of enterprise, and they would not spend a penny more than the amount in hand. That God, in infinite mercy, forbade the extinction of the church is no mitigation of the short-sightedness which thrust a respectable community of Christians into an out-of-the-way position that was far more suitable for a tallow melters than a meeting house. The chapel, however, was a neat, handsome, commodious, well-built edifice, and it was regarded as one of the best Baptist chapels in London. Now, if you're familiar with the layout of London, the New Park Street Chapel was literally within throwing distance of where they discovered and rebuilt Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. If you go to London today, there's a replica of the Globe Theatre practically on the place where the New Park Street Chapel stood at the time. Again, this was the largest of all Baptist church buildings in England, but the congregation there was beginning to dwindle. They'd been without a pastor for some time and Fullerton says in an understatement that the situation of the chapel was, these are his words, very unfavorable because London's sewage drained into the river in those days and the chapel was this low-lying plot of land that never got a breeze and you mix that with the breweries and the vinegar factory this left a stench that hung over the neighborhood all the time and that as when he says there were no taxis within a half mile of the place he's commenting on how hard it was to get there It was dank and smelly and desperately hot and humid in the summers and inconvenient in every conceivable way in the winters. The building was directly across the river from St. Paul's Cathedral. but in a very seedy industrial area. The neighborhood featured a boiler works factory, an iron factory, the local gas works, and a factory that made lead paint. All of these within close proximity of where the chapel was. The closest bridge charged a toll, I said it's the Southwark Bridge, that's right there, you see. And so to get there, you had to pay a toll, which made it even harder to reach, especially for many of the working class people who went there. And no public transport or hired carriages would go within a half mile of it. Fullerton says it lay so low that it was frequently flooded, and when factories and warehouses sprang up all around it, naturally the people moved their residences elsewhere, which means nobody in the church lived even close to it. And Fullerton quotes a pastor who described it this way, quote, a more dingy, uninviting, and repelling region than where the chapel is situated, I have seldom explored. It is in a gloomy, narrow street surrounded by small, dirty-looking houses. Within a minute's walk of the chapel, you see written up at the corner of a little street, Bear Garden." And that, by the way, was a pit for bear baiting. bull baiting, other cruel sports that appealed to the lowest characters in society. It's this guy's way of saying this is a lousy neighborhood. In fact, there's a street named Bear Garden that still graces that neighborhood today. During its history of 200 years, the church, 200 years prior to Spurgeon, this church had been in operation, that church had had at least three notable pastors whose portraits still to this day hang in the vestry of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Benjamin Keech was pastor for 36 years from 1668 to 1704. And he paid a high personal price for being a nonconformist and a Baptist in an era when nonconformists were being imprisoned and persecuted for holding views that were different from the Church of England. Keech was locked in the pillory. That's what this illustration shows. He's best remembered for his published work on the metaphors and parables of Scripture. And if you look carefully, I think you can even download Keech's work on the parables and metaphors of Scripture from Google Books, like a free copy of the PDF. I've already mentioned John Gill, who followed Keech. Gill pastored this church for more than half a century, starting in 1720, more than a hundred years prior to Spurgeon. Gill started his ministry there. And Fullerton, who cites this painting of Keech, says in his portrait, his nose has a distinct tilt. Mr. Spurgeon was accustomed to say that he was turning it up at Arminians. Which, I like that comment. Actually, what Spurgeon said, as I recall, was, the expression on his face in this portrait looks like he has just caught the aroma of nearby Arminianism, or something like that. And then, Gill's immediate successor was Dr. John Rippon, who was famous for publishing the first ever Baptist hymn book. We still sing some of the hymns in this hymn book that introduced to the church, at least we do in and around America. How Firm a Foundation, do you all sing that? You don't? How Firm a Foundation, probably the best known hymn in this, All Hail the Power of Jesus Name, Rock of Ages, There's a Fountain Filled with Blood. This hymn book introduced all of those hymns. to the church. Rippon's ministry lasted 33 years from 1773 to 1836. He came to the church, Rippon did, when he was just 21 years old. 40 members left the church when he was called because they thought he was too young, but he stayed there longer than any pastor in the church's history. What did I say, 33 years? 63 years, sorry. He pastored for 63 years. So he ended up staying there longer than any pastor in the church's history, and this church thrived under his leadership. There were three or four other pastors who came between Ripon and Spurgeon, but the church declined in all those years until fewer than 200 souls came on the best of Sundays in a building that was designed for a congregation of 1,200. When the church finally asked Spurgeon to candidate, the pastorate had been vacant for several months. Now here's how that came about. George Gould was a deacon at a church in Essex and he happened to be in Cambridge on a weekend when there was a gathering of the Cambridge Sunday School Union and Spurgeon was one of the speakers at that event. He was still a teenager and he frequently met with scorn from people, older people, who prompted people to leave the London Church when the same same kind of people who prompted this departure from the London Church when John Ripon came at age 21 and people just don't like a younger pastor and Spurgeon got some of that scorn himself. And at this Cambridge gathering, two of the other speakers were actually joking from the platform, making snide remarks about Spurgeon because of his young age. One of them asked him why he had left his few sheep in the wilderness, and the other guy said he wished that boys would tarry at Jericho until their beards had grown, before they tried to teach people who were older than them. Now, Spurgeon wasn't ashamed or intimidated by that. He asked permission to reply. And then he pointed out that the men in Scripture who were told to tarry at Jericho were not young boys without the ability to grow beards. They were men whose beards had been shaved off by their enemies. And then he pointed out that an old preacher who disgraced his calling had more to be ashamed of than a young preacher who was seeking to be faithful. Whether he knew it or not, and I don't know that he knew it, one of those two pastors had actually been involved in some kind of moral scandal, and so the exchange unmasked this man's shame. He's the one who went away ashamed. Anyway, this deacon, George Gould, was impressed by the boldness of this young Spurgeon, and his ability to speak as well. And so he spoke to Thomas Olney, who was one of the leading deacons at the New Park Street Chapel in London, spoke to him and described the incident to him. He said to Olney that, I know that your congregation is seeking a pastor. I think you should give Spurgeon a look. And so they did. Thomas Olney passed that suggestion on to the rest of the deacons and they were so desperate that they wrote to the church at Waterbeach and invited Spurgeon to come to London on Sunday and preach for them. Spurgeon was convinced that the letter was mistakenly sent to him he thought maybe they wanted his father or his grandfather and so he showed the letter to one of his deacons and who assured him no there's no mistake this deacon had known for some time that the little chapel at Water Beach was not going to be able to hang on to this young preacher as their permanent pastor. So Spurgeon wrote back to the New Park Street Church and said he was willing to come, but he told them they needed to know that he was only 19 years old and he was a nobody. And the London deacons wrote back to assure him, it's not a mistake and we want to schedule you to preach at the New Park Street Chapel on December 18th of 1853. It was not yet four years since Spurgeon's conversion, but he was being asked to preach at London's oldest and most venerable Baptist church with an eye to becoming their permanent pastor. And to be candid, Spurgeon was somewhat scared and sorry about the prospect. He said he kept saying to himself, John 4, verse 4, he must needs go through Samaria. In Fullerton's words, he felt that he was being forced along an undesired path. He wished he had stayed at home. And in the midst of the preparations for Christmas in the big city, this is December 18th, so they're getting ready for Christmas. He was somewhat bewildered by the busyness of London and all. The host church in London was no champion of hospitality. Spurgeon wasn't asked to stay in anyone's home. Instead, he was directed to a boarding house in Queen's Square in Bloomsbury. Fullerton says their lack of courtesy was the measure of their expectation. In other words, they really didn't seem to have high hopes for Spurgeon to be called as their pastor, and they just didn't treat him very nicely. He was, in many ways, a rustic sort of country lad, having grown up in the country. He was a bit of a bumpkin, and no one seemed to have high hopes that this young man from the country How could he possibly succeed in London? And in fact, Bloomsbury, the square where Spurgeon stayed, was inconveniently located far away from New Park Street. It was north of the river. It's about three blocks east of the British Museum, separated by one block from Russell Square where a terrorist bomb killed 26 people in 2005. I mention that because I happen to be speaking at the Metropolitan Tabernacle the very moment that bomb went off. But anyway, the boarding house where they put Spurgeon up is a two-mile walk from the New Park Street Chapel. And in busy London, in mid-December, just a week before Christmas, this wasn't a pleasant walk. 25 years later, Spurgeon described that cold walk to the church. He said, It was a clear, cold morning, and we wended our way along Holborn Hill toward Blackfriars and certain tortuous lanes and alleys at the foot of Southwark Bridge, wondering, praying, fearing, hoping, believing. We felt all alone, and by the way, he was all alone. He's walking literally by himself to the church, all alone, and yet not all alone. Expectant of divine help, inwardly borne down by our sense of the need of it, we traversed a dreary wilderness of brick to find the spot where our message must needs be delivered." Here is Fullerton's description of that boarding house. He says, Spurgeon was given a bedroom, more like a cupboard, over the front door. The boarders looked askance at the new arrival. His very clothes proclaimed his country breeding. He had a great black satin stock around his neck. That was a thing that men wore around their necks before neckties. And in special honor of the occasion, he produced a blue handkerchief with white spots. The young man gave him some tall talk about the wonderful preachers of London, and sent him to his little bedroom so depressed that with the added noise of the street traffic, he was unable to sleep. And then, when he arrived at New Park Street the following morning and saw the building, which appeared to him to be very imposing, he was amazed at his own temerity. But he preached a sermon from James 1 17. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. That was his text. And the deacons were immediately and profoundly impressed with his preaching. One of them said he was sure that if they could have gotten Spurgeon for three months, the place would be full again. This 1200 seat church that only had less than 200 people in it. He said in three months Spurgeon could fill this place. In reality, he underestimated. And in fact, that evening, a much larger crowd came, including a young girl whom Spurgeon would one day marry. I'll have more to say on that in another session. But Spurgeon preached a sermon on the doctrine of justification that evening. His text was Revelation 14, verse 5. They are without fault before the throne of God. The people that night refused to leave until the deacons gave them a promise that they would have Spurgeon come back and preach again. And they did, and he did. He promised he would return three times in January, staggering those Sundays between Waterbeach and London. So he'd preach at his church in Waterbeach one Sunday, go to London the next, and do that three times. He stayed in London the following day and did some sightseeing. In fact, in a letter to his father, he said, I spent Monday in going about London. I climbed to the top of St. Paul's and left some money with the booksellers. And in fact, in his Commentaries and commentators. Commentaries and... Commenting and commentaries, I think is the name of the book. He tells us that on that day he bought the commentary of Thomas Scott with his first pulpit fee from London, though afterwards he came to think of it, he said, as nothing but milk and water. London in those days was a bleak place. This was the era of dickens and workhouses and horrible poverty and lots of orphans. Fullerton says, there were great areas of slums. It was estimated that over 3,000 children under 14 years of age were living as thieves and beggars. More than 20,000 over 15 years of age existed in idleness, and at least 100,000 were growing up without any education. Ragged schools were even then places of peril to their teachers, and the common lodging houses sheltered tens of thousands in lairs fitter to be the habitation of hogs. rather than of human beings. But people were beginning to care. Lord Shaftesbury was leading a crusade against the exploitation of the poor. It was a time of transition. The city was ready for a voice and still was not too large to be reached by it. So it's a perfect time, that's what Fullerton is saying, it's a perfect time for Spurgeon to come. During all those months that the church was without a pastor, the deacons had never asked any of their candidates to return and preach a second time. Spurgeon came those three times in January, and on his final Sunday that month, they asked if he would be willing to stay and be their interim pastor for the next six months, with the understanding that this is like a probationary period, and if things go well, they were going to call him permanently to be their pastor. And from that very first letter he received, Spurgeon had been hesitant about his prospects with with the London church and the thought of six months of engagement in the city just didn't appeal to him, especially if after six months, what happens if they determine he's not the right man for the office? And so he wrote back and said, my objection is not to the length of the time of probation. I would engage to supply for three months of that time. And then should the congregation fail or the church disagree, I would reserve to myself the liberty without breach of engagement. to retire, and you on your part would have the right to dismiss me without seeming to treat me ill, enthusiasm and popularity are often like the crackling of thorns, and they soon expire. I do not wish to be a hindrance if I cannot be a help." So he asks, instead of a six-month probation period, let's just do it for three months. And so they agreed, and the deacons gave Spurgeon a dozen white pocket handkerchiefs. The blue polka-dotted one got retired. I have more to say about that handkerchief. Because everybody talked about it. And Spurgeon learned over time to dress more like a city preacher. In an 1876 article reminiscing about that three-month probation period, Spurgeon wrote this, the six months probation was never fulfilled, for there was no need. The place was filling, the prayer meetings were full of power, and conversion was going on. A requisition for a special meeting signed by 50 of the male members was sent to the deacons on April 12th, and according to the church book, it was on April 19th, resolved unanimously that we tender our brother, the Reverend H.C.H. Spurgeon, a most cordial and affectionate invitation forthwith to become the pastor of this church, and we pray that the result of his services may be owned of God with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a revival of religion in our midst, that it may be fruitful in the conversion of sinners and in the edification of those who believe. And a week later, Spurgeon sent this reply, he said, there is but one answer to so loving and candid an invitation, I accept it. And then asking for their prayers, he continued, remember my youth and inexperience and I pray that these may not hinder my usefulness. I also trust the remembrance of those will lead you to forgive mistakes that I may make or unguarded words that I may utter. Now, Spurgeon was not exactly welcomed with open arms by the community of saints. The Baptist manual of 1854 lists the new pastor as simply J Spurgeon, J period Spurgeon. He got his name wrong. At one gathering of Baptists that year with Spurgeon himself present in the room, a London pastor prayed in these words, for our young friend who has so much to learn and so much to unlearn. People pray that about me, I suspect, but I've never done it in my presence. Spurgeon got a lot of that kind of condescending, backhanded feedback early on, and for the most part he just seemed amused by it. He didn't let it get him down. He was confident enough in the message he preached that he didn't need to worry about what people thought of him. He famously said, I have hardly ever known what the fear of man means. And I think that's true. He never showed any signs that he was infected with the fear of men. His biographer, Fullerton, likens him in that regard to John Knox, and it's a fair comparison. Spurgeon would have liked the comparison. Spurgeon wrote, John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again. And his courage in the pulpit is one of the features that stands out most in any portrait of Spurgeon as a preacher. W.T. Stead was a British newspaper editor who died during the sinking of the Titanic. And sometime in the 1800s, he was touring Melrose Abbey, which is a ruined monastery in Scotland. That's John Knox country. And he said to the tour guide, it's a shame England never had a John Knox in any of her pulpits. And the tour guide lady said, yes, but you have Mr. Spurgeon. One of Spurgeon's first trials as a pastor in London was that he had to deal with a major pandemic. He talks about this in his comments on Psalm 91 in the Treasury of David. He says this, quote, In the year 1854, when I had scarcely been in London 12 months, The neighborhood in which I lived was visited by Asiatic cholera, and my congregation suffered from its inroads. Family after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost every day I was called to visit the grave. I gave myself up with youthful ardor to the visitation of the sick, and I was sent for from all quarters. of the district by persons of all ranks and religions. I became weary in body and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me. A little more work and weeping would have laid me low among the rest. I felt that my burden was heavier than I could bear, and I was ready to sink under it. As God would have it, I was returning mournfully from a funeral. When my curiosity led me to read a paper which was wafered up in a shopkeeper's shop, a shoemaker's shop, in the Dover Road, he says, it didn't look like a trade announcement, nor was it, for it bore in a good, bold handwriting these words. Quote, because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most high thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. And Spurgeon says, the effect on my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure and refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying in a calm and peaceful spirit. I felt no fear of evil and I suffered no harm. The providence which moved the tradesman to place those verses in the window, I gratefully acknowledge, and in the remembrance of its marvelous power, I adore the Lord my God. By the way, if you want to read some interesting history on what a serious pandemic is really like, look up the Wikipedia page for 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak, or just do a Google search for 1854 cholera pandemic. And it's fascinating stuff. In fact, we'll talk more about it in an upcoming session because I think this contributed to Spurgeon's depression, which I want to talk about. But the point here is that it didn't deter Spurgeon from ministry. Nor did it interrupt the worship of the congregation. And so I'll close with that. And then in the next session, we'll talk more in detail about Spurgeon's preaching, his preaching style, and what made his preaching so distinctive. With that, I will close. Let's pray. Lord, again, we thank you for the example of godly men and women who have gone before us, and we pray, Lord, that you would keep us faithful, that you would give us the strength and courage that has made the great saints of the past truly great. May we be faithful and steadfast and unmovable in our pursuit of the truth, in our determination to declare it to our neighbors, and in our faithfulness to you, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.