invited to a conference, if I get to choose what I'm speaking on, I would prefer usually to open the scriptures and do biblical exposition, but Kyle asked me to do this on Spurgeon because he shares my love for Spurgeon, and I know that the question came up then, how is this practical? And my answer to that is it should be practical. In my own experience as a believer, there have been two things that have sort of spurred my sanctification, made my sanctification move forward, and one is obviously the Word of God, which is the only real instrument of sanctification. and that's what, you know, renews our mind. So that's why I actually love to preach from God's Word, and I think that is the singular instrument of sanctification, but also the thing that has encouraged me to continue in the pursuit of sanctification has been the biographies of great men church leaders in the past and just the example of their lives is an encouragement to me and I think you'll discover that as we talk about Spurgeon. We're going to start out tonight with a lot of biographical details just so that you know who the man is but before we get to the end of this series we're going to talk about Spurgeon and his struggles with issues in the church, his battle against depression. He struggled with personal depression all his life. Some of the theological battles he fought, how he chose his fights, and where he found his courage. We'll talk about all of those things and those are all things that we want to emulate. So I hope this will be profitable and that it will be edifying to you. but we're going to start with the biographical stuff. So we'll survey the life and ministry of Spurgeon, and I want to say up front, no one in all of church history is comparable to him. There has been no pastor since the apostolic era that surpasses him as a preacher and an evangelist. There have been greater scholars. John Calvin comes to mind. John Knox, my ancestor, was a more fierce and effective polemicist. George Whitefield was a more eminent evangelist who ministered in person, Whitefield did, to crowds of people, more than 20,000 people on two separate continents. He did it in America and he did it in England. Whitfield's fame and influence were arguably greater than Spurgeon's, but if you adjust for 17th century limitations on communication and population size, Whitfield perhaps you could argue is the more remarkable of the two men. You have Augustine as a theologian and he has had and will continue to have a more far-reaching and longer-lasting influence than Spurgeon. But all of those men, all of them, would have appreciated Spurgeon's ministry and they probably would have esteemed Spurgeon very highly themselves. Spurgeon stood on their shoulders and in particular he aspired to be like Whitefield as a preacher. Whitefield was his sort of model for preaching ministry. But Spurgeon was unique because he could do it all. He was extraordinarily gifted with a whole range of genius level aptitudes that equipped him for ministry. He was a capable and careful theologian. He was a powerful defender of the faith, he was an exceptionally fruitful evangelist, and he was a wise pastor. He preached, he wrote, he taught, he was a visionary leader, he was a beloved pastor, and above all he was a great, if not the greatest of all time, preacher. History has nicknamed him the Prince of Preachers, and it's a fitting moniker. I don't think there's been a greater preacher who pastored such a large congregation and remained in the same place for so long a time. It's really hard to think of any parallels to Spurgeon. John MacArthur, my pastor, is a close match in many ways. MacArthur and Spurgeon actually share the same birthday. I mean, different years, obviously, but the same day of the year. And there are actually several more uncanny parallels between the two of them. Spurgeon suffered from gout, so does John MacArthur, and so does Kyle, by the way. He's been limping around all week, and I'm telling him that's very Spurgeon-esque. But anyway, MacArthur has the advantage of radio and audio recordings and the internet, the ease of worldwide travel, and those are advantages that Spurgeon never utilized, but he remains and always will remain such a towering figure in Baptist and evangelical history. You can be certain Spurgeon will never be forgotten. and it's unlikely that anyone will ever surpass him in the sheer variety of ministry skills he displayed. He was an extraordinary man and I don't expect there will ever be another one quite like him. You can take any individual aspect of Spurgeon's expertise, and you might find people here and there who might do better. During Spurgeon's lifetime, for example, there were several superior theological writers on both sides of the Atlantic with keen and biblically instructed minds, men who produced textbook-level works that will last until Christ comes. I'm thinking of men like Charles Hodge, the theologian, William Cunningham from Scotland, and B.B. Warfield from America, Augustus Strong and William Shedd. All of those were contemporaries of Spurgeon. Their lives overlapped his. and we might even add J. Gresham Machen who was only 10 years old when Spurgeon died, and all of them were maybe superior theologians and better writers of theology than Spurgeon. Some of the best theological works I own were written in that same era by those men. None of Spurgeon's published works are that weighty or theologically masterful, but Spurgeon's published writings actually outnumbered and outsold them all. and he was doctrinally sound without being ponderous or pedantic. While those men wrote for pastors and seminary students, Spurgeon wrote for the common working class people, not for the Oxford and Cambridge elites. And as a matter of fact, Spurgeon himself had no university degree. This is something I read on Twitter yesterday, is that Rick Warren, the American pastor who was unaccountably made honorary chancellor of Spurgeon's College in London, yesterday granted a posthumous theological degree to Spurgeon. Gave him an MDiv, which is like the lowest of seminary degrees. Why he did that I don't know, but it's one of the remarkable facts of Spurgeon's life and career that he never went to seminary, he never earned a degree, He never even enrolled in college, we'll talk about why that is, but he produced sermons, not scholarly works, and yet because all of his sermons were transcribed for publication, he left a body of published work that represents the single most prolific output of any Christian in history. I haven't done an exhaustive study to verify this fact, but I believe Spurgeon published more words than any other Christian author in all of church history. He certainly sold and distributed more pages of printed text than any other Christian author ever, and over the past hundred years he has influenced millions of pastors and church leaders for good. The recent resurgence of Calvinism is owing in part to the continued influence of Spurgeon. Spurgeon's best known books are the collections of his sermons. The complete collection was reprinted about 50 years ago and it sold briskly for decades. It's about to be reprinted again. So all of his sermons have also been converted to digital format. You can download the entire collection of Spurgeon's sermons very cheaply. Even you can get them for free perhaps. and eventually all of his sermons will be downloadable on the internet and I'm happy to say I did have a hand in starting that project. I managed the Spurgeon Archive for probably close to maybe more than 20 years and recently donated it to the seminary in Kansas City, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who own all of Spurgeon's books. I'll talk about that later, but I think Spurgeon would be delighted to know that his sermons are still being read and distributed on the internet. Spurgeon was not put off by new technologies. He was strangely both old-fashioned and newfangled at the same time, which I think you'll discover this is true of any of the great preachers of the past. George Whitefield for example was considered something of a scandalous innovator because Whitefield preached in the open air to people and people in his day thought that's just not done. but he did it, and at a time when deism was gaining popularity and whole churches were apostatizing because of this theological drift, Whitfield's theology actually represented a return to the orthodoxy of an earlier age. That's also true of Jonathan Edwards who worked alongside Whitfield and they were friends. It's also true of Spurgeon. All of them were happy and eager to stay in step with technological advances and you know, advances in travel and communications and things like that, but they were not willing to change their doctrine to adapt their ministry philosophy to the shifting winds of every cultural trend. All of them, I think, would despise the pragmatism that dominates 21st century evangelicalism, where you have people today saying we have got to keep up or we're going to lose the next generation. At the height of Spurgeon's popularity, an article about him was published in Vanity Fair magazine. From the December 1870 issue, the writer of that article said of Spurgeon that he extracts edification out of slang. And by slang, the writer meant that Spurgeon just used simple words and commonplace expressions and spoken language that anyone could understand. He didn't He didn't craft his sermons for scholars. He preached to working-class people, and a lot of people in Spurgeon's generation commented on the way he could deliver the profoundest truths in everyday language and Spurgeon himself gloried in that kind of communication. He had no patience with preachers who would purposely use high-sounding academic language and language from the pulpit that they would know people in the pews can't possibly understand but they were trying to impress people with their eloquence. Spurgeon never did that and in fact his book Lectures to My Students is a collection of his messages that he gave to ministerial students in the college that he founded, and in one place he tells them this, quote, I am persuaded that one reason why our working men so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial, unmanly ways. If they saw us in the pulpit and out of it acting like real men and speaking naturally like honest men, they would come around us. So his desire was to communicate and he knew that that sort of stuffy highbrow academic language and especially the effeminate mannerisms that went with it that would not communicate well with the men in his flock. And I'll have more to say about that when we discuss Spurgeon's approach to preaching but the point here is that Spurgeon wasn't the least bit reluctant to adjust his style of communication or his vocabulary to communicate as effectively as possible with his audience. If he lived today you can be certain he would be using all the tools the internet gives us to get the message out to the largest number of people with as much force and as much clarity as possible. I like to think he would have a Twitter account. 100 years after Spurgeon, 150 years really after the peak of Spurgeon's ministry, we're using language that has changed greatly but you can read Spurgeon's sermons and for the most part they still convey that plain language ease of understanding. Some of his phraseology might sound quaint and Victorian because It was a different language than we use today and for that reason you might think that Spurgeon sounds a little old-fashioned. The first time I ever read him that's what I thought. But just pay attention to what was said about him in his day and know that in his own time he was notable for making the old truths clear in what was then modern language and unpretentious kind of speech. His informality actually shocked people who had these prims, Victorian sensibilities. Preachers were not expected to use the common working class language from the pulpit. So the social critics and the newspaper pundits wrote blistering condemnations of Spurgeon's style. I'll share some of those with you in a later session, some of the critics of Spurgeon, but for now just understand that we still today read Spurgeon because of the simple, uncluttered clarity of his message. And in this, again, we see that while Spurgeon may have been keen to stay in step with changing means of communications, he was anything but trendy. He was not a trend follower when it came to the content of his doctrine. He understood that the message we have been commissioned to convey and to take into all the world, that message can never change. And we must not try to change it, even in the name of keeping up with a changing world. The message remains the same. And at the same time, Spurgeon understood that the language and the technology we use to distribute to distribute our message, that language had better be familiar and understandable to the audience we're trying to reach. Spurgeon would obviously share our disdain for the wickedness that gets broadcast on Twitter and Facebook and all of that, but he also would believe that Christians ought to be there using every possible means, including social media, to disseminate the message of the gospel. He was in favor of all of that. And what I want to do in this hour is begin introducing you to Spurgeon by telling you what I can about the context of his life and times. And we'll start in this hour with a look at his background and his early life. And so we'll start with the Spurgeon genealogy. The line of descent in the Spurgeon family isn't all that clear, but there are records of people named Spurgeon going back at least 12 generations before Spurgeon was born. One author, a man named William Higgs, investigated Spurgeon's ancestral lineage and published a book titled The Spurgeon Family in 1906. And in doing that, he exploded some of the myths that Spurgeon himself seemed to believe about his family background. Spurgeon and most of his biographers will tell you that the Spurgeon line came from Holland. Higgs writes this. in all the accounts of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's life where a short space is given to his lineage. Curiously enough, a Dutch descent is attributed to him. As a matter of fact, the writer of this little work has been quite unable to discover any proof for such a statement, certainly on his direct paternal descent. In other words, he couldn't find anything that traced the Spurgeon family back to Holland. But he traces the Spurgeon name back dozens of decades to Essex and Suffolk in England, where with records as early as 1465, the earliest Spurgeons on record included a farmer and a carpenter and a common laborer, but there was no one in the family who was ever prominent. Higgs says that by the end of the 1500s, as the Protestant Reformation was sweeping over England, Spurgeons were well distributed all over the county of Essex. and he reproduces dozens of pages of wills and legal documents and information from church rolls documenting the existence of people named Spurgeon in Essex through almost four centuries before Spurgeon. So the idea that his line of descent came through Holland I think is false. It's not possible to determine exactly what the lines of relationship are between each of those names, the other Spurgeons and Charles. The details and lots of the records are simply lost to history. But it does make it fairly certain that Spurgeon's ancestors came from England. They lived in Essex for at least four centuries before he was born. And it's also worth noting that so few people in the Spurgeon ancestry ever were notable at all. The one who interested Charles Spurgeon the most was a man who lived in the early 17th century. His name was Job Spurgeon. And he lived about six generations before Spurgeon. And that means if Charles Spurgeon was a direct descendant of Job Spurgeon, He would have been Spurgeon's great-grandfather's great-grandfather. In other words, his fourth great-grandfather. I looked up my own genealogy to get an idea of what it would look like to go that many generations back. My fourth great-grandfathers were born in the second half of the 1700s. And one of my great grandfathers was born on the Potomac River in 1776, which is the year America was founded as a country. That's a long way back. And that was Spurgeon's most notable ancestor, more than 200 years before him. This guy, Job Spurgeon, lived actually more than a hundred years before the United States was founded and in fact the first record of Job Spurgeon occurs in 1677, 99 years before the birth of my fourth great-grandfather. And by then Job Spurgeon was already an adult and he was leading a religious meeting in a private home. private meetings for worship had been outlawed some 15 years before that. If you know about Reformation history, that era in England, the Reformation was already drawing to a close and the Church of England had outlawed religious meetings led by any and all ministers who refused to subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer. There had been a law called the Act of Uniformity in 1662 which officially ejected all the ministers from their pulpits who dissented from the Church of England. And it was during that era that most of the early Puritans were simply expelled from the Anglican Church. And that is what drove so many early colonists to America. in those years. It also explains why the heart of evangelical conviction in England has always been outside the state church, outside the Church of England, mostly among nonconformists. Anyway, six years after the act of uniformity in 1683, Job Spurgeon was arrested and imprisoned for attending a non-conformist religious meeting. Higgs refers to Job Spurgeon as a Puritan, but in reality he was an early Quaker. And the meeting he was attending was a Quaker meeting in Essex. And the Quakers, you know, kept a lot of records about their meetings. And the record of that one was preserved. There's actually a copy of the record, and it says this, quote, on the 22nd of the month, called July this year, John Matthews of Harwich, Job Spurgeon of Dedham, Stephen Moore, and Stephen Arnold of Lawford, taken at a meeting, were committed to Chelmsford Jail by warrant from Justice Smith. They were after a few weeks bailed out till Sessions, but on their appearance, there on the 3rd of October, they were required to give sureties for their good behavior, which refusing to do, in other words, the officials asked them to promise that they would never again attend an unauthorized religious meeting, and they refused to make that promise. So they were recommitted to prison where three of them lay upon straw about 15 weeks in the midst of a winter remarkable for extremity of cold, but the fourth, Job Spurgeon, being so weak that he was unable to lie down, sat up in a chair for the most part of that time. Think about that, 15 weeks. He couldn't really even lie down and rest. That's literally all we know about Job Spurgeon today. There's no record of baptism. He had no will. There's no census records that record him. But we do know that he spent 15 weeks in prison during the cold of winter because he refused to pay the fine and would not swear that he would cease participation in these unauthorized religious meetings. In other words, he was a man of principle, and he refused, even though he was suffering and in ill health in an unheated prison in one of the coldest winters on record, an experience that must have put him in unspeakable agony, and it probably shortened his life. In fact, if he recovered from that ordeal, he was never mentioned again in any surviving records anywhere. Charles Spurgeon knew that story and in a sermon near the end of his life here is what the Prince of Preachers said about it. He said, quote, personally when my bones have been tortured with gout and rheumatism I have remembered Job Spurgeon, doubtless of my own stock, who in Chelmsford Jail was allowed a chair because he could not lie down by reason of rheumatic pain. that Quaker's broad brim overshadows my brow. Perhaps I inherited his rheumatism, but that I do not regret, if I have his stubborn faith, which will not let me yield a syllable of the truth of God." Now there was only one other sort of brush with fame in the Spurgeon family history, and it's found in the parish register of Burnhamthorpe, a town in East England There, on March 13th of 1769, a woman named Elizabeth Spurgeon recorded a marriage certificate. And one of the witnesses at that wedding was a 10-year-old boy who signed his name on the register as Horace Nelson. And over that, you see his father's handwriting correcting the son's name to Horatio. And if you know English history, you know who he was. He grew up to be Admiral Horatio Nelson. If you've ever been to London, you've probably seen Nelson's column. That's that massively tall pillar that stands on a pedestal in the center of Trafalgar Square. And it has a statue of Admiral Nelson at the top. Again, that's a wedding that occurred in 1769. Nelson grew up to be a great admiral. He lost an arm in a battle in 1797, and then he was killed in 1805 at age 47 during the Battle of Trafalgar, which that's near the Strait of Gibraltar. He lost his life in that battle, but he defeated Napoleon's army, navy rather. And this was a turning point in the war that sealed Britain's naval dominance for the remainder of the 19th century. And Admiral Nelson is actually buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. His monument, which contains his remains, is the most impressive of all of the monuments there. If you ever go there, be sure you see it. It's in the crypt underneath the main floor in St. Paul's Cathedral. 29 years after that wedding, on June 19, 1834, the most famous member of the Spurgeon clan was born at Kelvedon in Essex. It's a tiny little town even today. In fact, the birthplace of Charles Spurgeon is a brick row house that's still standing today. I've been there. It's on a busy street. When Spurgeon was born, it was a more rural area. And in fact, here's an interesting Fact of history, Spurgeon was born exactly 10 days after William Carey died in India. Spurgeon's mother's maiden name was Eliza Jarvis. She was only 19 years old when Charles was born. And his father, John Spurgeon, was a 24-year-old part-time pastor. At the time of Charles's birth, John Spurgeon was engaged in some kind of business during the week. That was his main source of income. But on Sundays, he pastored an independent congregation at Tolsbury, in a church that's still there today. John Spurgeon later became a full-time pastor and actually outlived his famous son by 10 years. Died in 1902. Spurgeon's mother died in 1888, just four years before her eldest son died. But the most important influence in Charles Spurgeon's young life was that of his grandfather, James Spurgeon. who was pastor of the church at Stambourne, which was not terribly far from where Spurgeon's parents lived, but it was a long, more than 20 mile ride to get there. And for reasons history doesn't record, we don't know why, but Spurgeon was sent to live with his grandparents when he was only 18 months old. And he remained there until he was six years old. What we do know is that when Spurgeon was 18 months old, his mother was pregnant with a second child. And there must have been some kind of severe complication that kept Charles Spurgeon's mother bedridden. And so the young boy at age 18 months was sent to live with his grandparents. And that is where he stayed for the next six years. And it was a convenient arrangement. Charles' grandfather loved having his grandson in the home. His mother apparently remained physically frail from childbirth for years. In Victorian times they didn't record the details of of health issues, so we don't know precisely what was wrong, but obviously it was something related to the birth of subsequent children. And in the plan and the providence of God, those years of bonding with his grandfather actually set the course for Charles Spurgeon's life. He was a precocious child who began reading very early, and he loved his grandfather's Puritan library. At first he said it was the leather covers of the books that interested him the most. But he found that the books themselves were a goldmine of wisdom and interest. His father's library was actually in a dark room in the upstairs portion of the house. In those days, the number of windows in a house determined the size of your real estate tax. Windows, of course, were abundant in mansions and they were scarce in cottages. So someone decided that the easiest way to tax houses was based on the number of windows they had. And the house in the foreground of this picture is the preacher's house. And as you see, it was built with lots of windows. But you could avoid the window tax by boarding up and blacking out windows. And Spurgeon records that the law allowed eight windows in a house to be free from duty. And in order to avoid extra taxation, this parsonage had blocked up several of the original windows, including the ones in the library. Spurgeon described it this way. These are his words. Quote, when the window tax was still in force, many people in country houses closed half their lights by plastering them up. And then they had the plaster painted to look like window panes so that there was still the appearance of a window, even though no sunlight could enter. Well, I do remember the dark rooms in my grandfather's parsonage and my wonder that men should still have to pay for the light of the sun. So James Spurgeon's library was kept in one of those darkened rooms, but that did not deter young Charles. He describes that room, quote, it was a dark den, but it contained books, and this made it a gold mine to me. He said therein was fulfilled the promise, I will give thee the treasures of darkness. Some of these, he said, were enormous folios, such as a boy could hardly lift. A folio is a huge-sized book. Many of the Puritan books were published that way. He says, the old editions of their works with their margins and old-fashioned notes are precious to me. It's easy to tell a real Puritan book, even by its shape and by the appearance of the type. He said, I confess that I harbor a prejudice against nearly all new editions and I cultivate a preference for the originals even though they wander about in sheepskins and goatskins or are shut up in the hardest boards. It made my eyes water a short time ago to see a number of these old books In the New Mans, he said, I wonder whether some boy will love them and live to revive that grand old divinity which will yet be to England her balm and benison. He's talking about Puritan theology. And he goes on. Out of that darkened room, I fetched those old authors when I was yet a youth, and I was never happier than when in their company. Out of the present contempt into which Puritanism has fallen, many brave hearts and true will fetch it by the help of God before many years have passed. He was right about that by the way. Puritan writings have seen a great revival just over the past 30 years and I know of at least three companies that exist only to reprint some of these classic Puritan works. So many people are reading them today just as Spurgeon predicted. He says, those who have daubed up the windows will yet be surprised to see heaven's light beaming on the old truth and then breaking forth from it to dispel their own confusion. And it was from his grandfather's library that Charles obtained his first copy of The Pilgrim's Progress and that book became his lifelong favorite. Before he was 10 years old, he was reading and comprehending some of the richest theological works that have ever been written. His father and his grandfather, both being pastors, Spurgeon himself grew up talking and thinking like a pastor. James Spurgeon, his grandfather, told the story of one time when Charles Spurgeon, six years old, overheard him talking about a wayward church member, a man named Thomas Rhodes, who was an illiterate working man who attended the meeting house on Sundays, but he also, during the week, would hang out at the pub drinking beer and smoking a pipe. And Charles overheard his grandfather being concerned about this man's lack of sanctification. And the little six-year-old boy said, don't you worry about old Rhodes. I will kill him. And a couple of days later, he came home boasting that he had killed old Rhodes. He says, he'll never grieve my grandfather anymore. And Spurgeon's grandfather, of course, was shocked by the language. He said, what do you mean? And Charles just said, I've been about the Lord's work. That's all. Six-year-old boy. And he refused to say any more about it. But soon, Thomas Rhodes himself showed up and explained to the pastor that the little boy had come into the pub. Charles had walked in the door and went straight to the table where Thomas Rhodes was smoking and drinking, pointed his little finger in the old man's face, and said, what doest thou here, Elijah, sitting with the ungodly? You're a member of the church, and you break your pastor's heart. And Rhodes said he was angry at first, but he had come to the pastor's house to apologize. And in fact, here's the account from Spurgeon's autobiography. This is how Spurgeon told it. He said, Thomas Rhodes said, well, I did feel angry, but I knew it was all true. And I was guilty. So I put down my pipe. I didn't touch my beer. But I hurried away to a lonely spot and cast myself down before the Lord, confessing my sin, begging for forgiveness. And I do know and believe the Lord in mercy pardoned me. And now I've come to ask you to forgive me. And I'll never grieve you anymore, my dear pastor. And Spurgeon said that event actually turned that old man's life around. A note in his autobiography says this about Thomas Rhodes, quote, Thomas Rhodes was one of the old men of the table pew. That's the place where the deacons sat in preparation for serving communion. He says, Rhodes was an active, lively little man, but quite illiterate. Not much above a laborer, but he kept a pony in a cart and he did a little buying and selling on his own account. He was an earnest and zealous Christian, striving to be useful in every way possible, especially in the prayer meetings and among the young people, opening his house for Christian conversation and prayer. He only lived about four years more, but his devotion to Christ was sustained with a cheerful confidence to the end. I love that story. And it sort of summarizes the character of Spurgeon as a little child. He seemed precocious in lots of ways. He had unusual artistic gifts. I'll show you that in a moment. He had a mind like a sponge and an unusually keen memory. And he had a good, well-tuned sense of logic as well. He was a sober-minded, industrious person even as a little boy. At age 15, He wrote a 295 page book called Antichrist and Her Brood, Popery Unmasked, against Roman Catholicism. That was more than a year before his conversion. And the book was never published, but Spurgeon kept the manuscript. And it's a decent measured insightful critique of Roman Catholic error. I think I have a picture of it in an upcoming session. I'll show it to you. But I have more to say about that book in a future session. And we'll talk about the struggle and the inner turmoil that led to Charles Spurgeon's conversion. But I mention it because sometimes people will tell the conversion story of Charles Spurgeon as if he was an out-and-out pagan who was suddenly converted to Christ when he walked into a church almost by accident just to avoid a snowstorm. And that really doesn't capture what actually happened. But as you can see, Christian influences shaped his thought literally from the time of his infancy. He loved those years with his grandfather at Stambourne and in fact the last book Spurgeon ever wrote before he died was a small book that recounted his memories from those years. It's a little book called Memories of Stambourne. And in the preface to this last book that he wrote Spurgeon said this, The issue of this small volume will mark an epoch in my life full of interest to my friends and solemnly instructive to myself. In the end of May 1891, I suffered from the virulent influenza, which was then raging. So in other words, that was a year before he died. He had a terrible case of the flu, and he said, I thought I had recovered, and it was judged wise that I should take a change of air. So I went for a few days to the region near to Stambourne, delighting myself in what I called my grandfather's country. I was very happy in the generous and hearty hospitality of Mr. Gertin of Haverhill and enjoyed myself mightily. But on the Thursday of the week, an overpowering headache came on, and I had to hurry home on Friday to go up to that chamber wherein, for three months, I suffered beyond measure and was often between the jaws of death. He was literally dying at the time. I don't think he knew it when he wrote this little preface. But he says, now I trust that I am really recovering and I amuse myself with arranging what had been previously prepared and with issuing it from the press. So literally in the throes of the disease that took his life in the end, he wrote and published this little book on his grandfather's What he didn't know or didn't want to admit in writing was that his health was not improving. It was declining and fewer than six months after this book was published Spurgeon died in a hotel on the French Riviera where he was trying to get some relief from the bitter cold of a London winter. But it intrigues me that literally the very last year of his life was spent with so much time of his fondly remembering and carefully recording his memories from those earliest years. Spurgeon didn't write a lot about himself. He didn't record much about his own life. After he died, his wife and secretary assembled four volumes, really wonderful volumes, full of stories and illustrations. And it's titled The Autobiography of Charles Spurgeon. But it's not a true autobiography. It's really a scrapbook of things, some of them written by Spurgeon about his personal and ministerial life. But in the same way, this little book, Memories of Stambourne, is kind of a scrapbook. If you pick it up thinking it's going to be autobiographical, you'll be disappointed. Spurgeon himself is not the focus of the book. It's not about his childhood. It's about the place, the village, the manse where Spurgeon's grandfather lived, and also the meeting house where his grandfather preached. And so the book covers some of the history of that congregation with several sort of drawn out anecdotes and a couple of sermons. It's a thin book, only about 80 pages in the edition I have. And the first half of the book was actually written by a friend and fellow minister of Spurgeon's, a man named Benjamin Beddoe. Beddoe's own grandfather actually preceded James Spurgeon as the pastor of the congregation at Stambourne. And he writes about the early history of the Stambourne village and the church up through the era of his own grandfather's personal ministry there. And then more than halfway through the book, Spurgeon takes over. And he begins with a transcript of the sermon that he preached at his grandfather's funeral. Then that's followed by a description of the manse, the house where Spurgeon grew up as a toddler. And there's also an extended description of the meeting house. And all of it is very quaint. The Stambourne, even to this day, is barely a wide spot in the road. I've been there. And the village where the meeting house is has fewer than 50 houses. It's along a small stretch of one road. There's no side streets. The chapel that's there today, this is obviously not the same building that Spurgeon knew. The current building looks like it was built sometime after World War II. And it's also considerably smaller than the building pictured in Spurgeon's autobiography. This building looks like it would only accommodate about 35 people. So it's a small congregation. The meeting house of Spurgeon's time wasn't much larger, really. Spurgeon remembered it fondly. And by the way, he drew this sketch of the meeting house when he was just 12 years old. So when I told you he had some artistic ability, you can see it there. Here's what he wrote in Memories of Stambourne about this meeting house, the church building. He says, quote, it was a rare old chapel. I wish it could have remained forever as I used to know it. Let me see if I can sketch it with my pen. When I was a boy of 12, I made this drawing of the back of the old meeting house. He says the pulpit was glorious as the tower of the flock. He's describing here the pulpit as an elevated platform. We tend to speak of the pulpit as the lectern or the desk on which the preacher places his notes as the pulpit. But technically, the way Spurgeon always spoke, the pulpit is actually a raised platform. It's the area where the pastor stands. And in Spurgeon's time, it usually had a rail around it. He continues, over the pulpit hung a huge sounding board. That would be a large piece of plywood or something that was angled back towards the audience in lieu of a amplifying system. It just projected the preacher's voice out that way. And Spurgeon says, I used to speculate as to what would become of grandfather if that sounding board ever dropped down upon him. He said, I thought of my jack-in-the-box, and I hoped that my dear grandpapa would never be shut down or shut up in such a fashion. At the back of the pulpit, he says, was a peg to hold the minister's hat. Inside, meaning inside the pulpit railing, there was room for two, because I've sat there with my grandfather when I was quite a little boy. But, he said, looking at it years later, the pulpit looked too small for two people. Of course, he was smaller when he used to sit there with his grandfather. But he continues, just below and in front of the pulpit was the table pew, wherein sat the elders of the congregation, the men of gracious light and leading. There, Uncle Haddon generally stood and gave out the hymns and the notices. You know, Haddon was Spurgeon's middle name, so he was named after that uncle. He goes on to describe then the pews, square-shaped enclosures with doors like you can still see in some churches. There was a balcony or a gallery as Spurgeon knew it, and he described how musicians who were playing instruments were always seated up in the gallery. One of the things that stood out in his memory from childhood was how the flute players would let the spit from their instruments drip down on the people below. kind of thing you would notice as a little boy. And I love that he gave little details like that. He says also there was a clarinet, a bassoon, and a double bass. And all of that is a little surprising to read because under Spurgeon's leadership at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, no musical instruments were ever allowed, not even an organ. If you go there today, they do have an organ, but the organist is there just to keep the tempo and the melody prominent. He is strictly forbidden to play ornately. But Spurgeon's grandfather evidently had no compunction about musical instruments. So this tiny church had a small orchestra of its own. And after describing some of these woodwind instruments, Spurgeon says, there were a lot more of them. And then in all capital letters, he says, and they could play. He says, there's no mistake about it. At least it was almost as certain as that other undeniable fact that our singers could sing. And then he kind of mischievously qualifies that claim and says, well, it was hearty singing. And say what you like, it's the heart in the singing which is the life of the business. So he's not talking about the quality of their pitch. He's talking about the enthusiasm with which they played and sang. He had a deep and lasting respect for the rustic people of that little village. Here's how he described them. Quote, they were real Essex, hardy people. They loved a good sermon and they would say, Mr. Spurgeon, I heard you well this morning. Spurgeon says, I thought the good man had preached well, but their idea was not so much to his credit. They judged that they had heard him well, and there's something in that different way of putting it at any rate that it takes from the preacher all ground of glorying in what he has done. They were a people who could and would hear the gospel, but I don't think they would have put up with anything else. He says, they were skilled at criticism. Some of them were very wise in their remarks, and some were otherwise. And then he remembers this anecdote. He says, well, do I remember an occasion upon which the preacher had spoken of the tares. And they said, he wouldn't know a tare if he saw one. It was painful to hear a man talk so ignorant, to say that you couldn't tell wheat from tares when they were growing. That's ridiculous, Spurgeon says. Well, the rest of critics were wrong for once, but on matters of doctrine or experience, you would have found them quite a match for yourself. Spurgeon says, there were no doubt in Stambourne a few rough fellows who did not go to any place of worship, but those who came to the meeting house were the great majority. So it seems Spurgeon's grandfather was quite an effective and well-respected preacher, but in most, as in most churches, the midweek service was not so well attended, and Spurgeon says of that, The prayer meeting during the week were always kept up, but at certain seasons of the year, grandfather and a few old women were all that could be relied upon. The grandfather, James Spurgeon, was a godly man who preached from that same pulpit in Stambourne at the Meeting House for 54 years. He was known for his evangelistic emphasis, and Spurgeon and his grandfather both had a very keen sense of humor. Once when someone asked James Spurgeon how much he weighed, he answered, well, it depends on how you take me. He said, if I'm weighed in the balances, I'm found wanting. He said, but in the pulpit, they tell me I'm heavy enough. His influence on his grandson was evident because Spurgeon loved humor and had a good sense of humor despite his constant struggles with melancholy. He was a very humorous person. Preaching the sermon at his grandfather's funeral, Charles Spurgeon said this, quote, my grandfather who is now with God once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in the favor of these hymns or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. But in that volume he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. He said we forgive him for the first collection because he didn't inflict another. The meaning was good, but the dear old man paid no attention to the mere triviality of rhyme. We dare not quote even a verse. It may be among the joys of heaven for my venerated grandsire that he can now compose and sing new songs unto the Lord." So at his grandfather's funeral, he's making fun of his ability to write hymns that actually rhymed. He hastened to say that there was no problem with the doctrine in his grandfather's hymns, but the poetry, he said, was abominable. Now I need to mention the person who practically raised young Charles from age one through age six. It was his aunt Anne. She was the only one of Spurgeon's father's siblings who remained unmarried all of her life and Charles Spurgeon retained warm affection for her for the rest of his life. She is the one who played games with him and taught him and nurtured his incredible curiosity. She was a capable mentor to him. That's one of the reasons he was able to read so well so young is because she tutored him in that. but she was in a role that's analogous to that of an elder sister. She understood at a very early age that there was something extraordinary about this boy and she delighted in helping him channel his gifts into profitable pursuits. Still, it's clear that Charles's grandfather was the person whom he most wanted to emulate. James Spurgeon is, I would say, the person who had the most lasting influence in shaping Charles from his earliest years into the churchman that he became. His grandfather's keen pastoral instincts, his knowledge of how to lead and teach the church, and his love for and unshakable commitment to the word of God, these were all characteristics of James Spurgeon that he passed on as a legacy to his grandson. And when the time came for Charles to leave his grandfather's home, it was a painful parting for both of them. James Spurgeon comforted his grandson, by telling him, you can look at the moon every single night in Colchester, where his parents live. And remember, that's the same moon your grandfather is looking at from Stambourne. And Spurgeon later said that never in his life did he ever look at the moon without thinking of his grandfather. He continued spending holidays at his grandparents' house. It was like permanently a second home to him. And his grandparents remained a constant influence on him. Once his grandmother offered him a penny for every Isaac Watts hymn he could recite perfectly. This was before she realized he had a photographic memory. And he began saying so many Isaac Watts hymns that she reduced the reward to half a penny, but still she complained that he was reducing her to poverty. And then his grandfather concocted a new scheme. Since there was a huge rat problem in those days, he offered Charles a shilling a dozen for all the rats he could kill. And so Charles Spurgeon said he gave up hymn learning for rat catching because the pay was better. But he later spoke about the value of those hymns that he memorized because he was able to use them even as an adult, even as an old man. He would quote those hymns in his sermons. If you read his sermons, one of the things you'll notice is that on average he quotes at least two or three hymns in every sermon. Most of those had been embedded in his memory as a young boy because of the influence of his grandmother. By the time he returned to his own parents' home at age six, he already had three younger siblings, two sisters and a brother. And Charles seemed to feel deeply his responsibility to influence them for good. That again is a perspective that is largely the legacy of his grandfather's influence. And it made him mature beyond his years. And that became a consistent trait of Spurgeon even before he was a teenager. As a young boy his hobbies were writing poetry and editing a magazine. And so he was already honing the literary skills that would make him legendary. You can look at Spurgeon at any stage in his development, and what you will see is someone wise beyond his years with an exceptionally mature outlook on life. Even Spurgeon himself made reference to this. When he was 40 years old, he gave one of the lectures to his students titled Young Men. And in his lecture to Young Men, he said he was already an old man. He was only 40, but he called himself an old man and he said this, quote, I might have been a young man at 12, but at 16 I was a sober, respectable, Baptist parson sitting in the chair and ruling and governing the church. And at that period of my life, age 16, when I ought perhaps to have been on the playground developing my legs and sinews, which no doubt would have kept me from the gout now, I spent my time at books, studying and working hard, sticking to it very much to the pleasure of my schoolmaster. I'll read you that quote again in a subsequent message here, but because it's I think an important one about the formation of his life. He became mature at a very young age. It was at age six when he returned to his parents' home from his grandfather's that he entered school for the first time, and he was such a gifted student excelling in everything except for one brief span where he didn't do so well. The teacher said she was shocked when Spurgeon began to do badly until it occurred to her that the top student's place was away from the fire and next to a drafty door. And so the teacher reorganized the way the students were seated and Spurgeon's academic performance rebounded. When he was 14, he and his brother James were sent to a boarding school in a town called Maidstone, where his uncle was one of the teachers. And it was there, as a very young teenager, in a conversation with one of the school staff, that Charles Spurgeon was first exposed to the Baptist view on baptism. His grandfather, you know, was a congregationalist. So he practiced infant baptism, and that was all Charles had ever known. But now he's a student in an Anglican school, in an unlikely place to embrace Baptist beliefs. But he studied the subject from scripture and found the Baptist position unassailable, and made up his mind that if he ever experienced conversion, he would be baptized. Now we will talk about Spurgeon's remarkable conversion in our next session, but in fact he was still a youth when he was saved, but because of his background, steeped in the church, raised in a pastor's home, trained from childhood at the knee of an aunt who nurtured his spiritual growth, and a mother who prayed diligently for his soul, Spurgeon launched into ministry almost from day one after his conversion. the speed with which his preaching gift developed and was used by God is also really quite remarkable and we'll look at that part of his life in our next session. I'm going to quit for now. Shall I close in prayer? Let's pray. Lord thank you for the many faithful witnesses that we have who have gone before us and starting in the earliest pages of Scripture we have these examples who we want to emulate. We pray Lord that you would give us grace to be faithful as they were and may we honor Christ as they did in all that we do we pray in Jesus name. Amen. You want me to take