references to the fact of Spurgeon's frequent bouts of depression in some of the biographies that were written by people who knew him personally, but there really are relatively few resources that discuss in any detail the questions of how his depression was manifest, or how he managed to persevere through it, or even what were the causes of his melancholy? Was it worry? Was it stress? Was it a sense of loneliness or isolation or trauma? Or was it a medical condition? Was it related to his constant concern for his wife's medical issues? She was homebound for most of their married life. Or was it the way Spurgeon was savaged and publicly mocked by so many critics and cartoonists in the London newspapers? Or was it, in the words of the Apostle Paul, the daily pressure of concern for all the churches? Because there were hundreds of Baptist churches across England and around the world that looked to Spurgeon for leadership. Or was there just something about Spurgeon's fundamental temperament that was dark and dysfunctional? And the answer to all of those questions is, yes, Spurgeon's struggle with chronic despondency was undoubtedly caused by kind of a perfect storm of all of those things. And if you combine those influences with the fact that Spurgeon lived in an era when it was quite a challenge for anyone to stay upbeat and positive all the time, it begins to make sense. You know, this was the era of poverty and hardship that you read about in Dickens' novels. Lots of orphans and abandoned children who were put in workhouses rather than kept in proper orphanages. And Spurgeon was so concerned about society's treatment of homeless children that he started an orphanage of his own. And petty crime, pickpockets, and swindlers swarmed the streets of London. The city itself was filthy and fetid with overpopulation that only exaggerated the problem of poverty. Rigid class distinctions compounded every civic evil. And disease was a major problem. London's sewer system was woefully and notoriously inadequate and the River Thames carried the overflow so that the river was putrescent. It drew flies. It left the whole city blanketed in bad air. This perpetual fog of stench and microscopic filth and smoke from so much burning coal. It was given the name miasma. the dirty atmosphere. They called it miasma. And it was a noxious vapor that smelled bad and of course had an oppressive, dispiriting, gloomy effect on everyone's mood, and it undoubtedly had a damaging effect on everyone's health as well. And in 1854, during Spurgeon's first year in London, The city was brought to its knees by a cholera outbreak. I mentioned it in an earlier session. But here's some statistics about that. More than 10,000 people in London died during that epidemic. Statisticians mapped the locations of the 600 earliest deaths. And notice that there's a very clear center to this outbreak. It was at the intersection of Broad Street and Cambridge Street in the Soho District where there was a large water pump or a public water pump that drew water from the ground from a well. and sewage had seeped into the groundwater, and although no one fully understood why at the time, this was the chief source of the cholera outbreak. And officials, they didn't know the cause, they didn't understand germ science at the time, but they could tell that this pump was the center of the outbreak, and so officials took the handle off that pump so that people couldn't use it anymore. And the epidemic began to abate, but even after the removal of the pump handle, an additional 3,000 deaths from cholera were added to the toll. And Spurgeon, who's still a newcomer in London, was strongly advised by the experts of the day to stay as quarantined as possible. Most of the experts believed that cholera was spread through invisible particles in the miasma. Remember, this was 1854. It was not until seven years later that Louis Pasteur proposed germ theory, explaining that many diseases, including cholera, are spread by microorganisms and polluted water is filled with dangerous microorganisms. But in 1854, no one knew that for sure. But polluted water was the main culprit in the, it was the one culprit really in the outbreak of cholera in London. Even some of the water that was being sold by water companies was polluted and giving people cholera. And the removal of the handle from that well in the Soho district was a turning point. That was one of the very first clear signs that polluted water rather than miasma was the source of infection. And for his part, Spurgeon trusted the providence of God with his own life. He didn't know any more than anyone where the cholera was coming from or how people were becoming infected. Most people kept their distance from people who they knew were infected, but Spurgeon kept up normal schedule of visiting the sick and ministering to the people in his congregation, and he did that without hesitation throughout the cholera pandemic. He credited the Lord with keeping him free from the disease, but still it was a bleak way to spend his first year in London. Although he was never overly concerned with the danger to himself, he had so much death and bereavement to deal with as a pastor that it was not a happy year for him. He was literally still a teenager at the time. Remember that. He came to London at age 19. He's dealing non-stop with grown-up sorrows and literally hundreds of bereaved families. And it's worth noting, by the way, that famous public calamities dominated London, both at the beginning and at the end of Spurgeon's ministry in the city. In 1888, less than four years before Spurgeon died, and at the height of the downgrade controversy, that's when Jack the Ripper was terrorizing Whitechapel, which was just two miles from the Metropolitan Tabernacle. 1988, that was the same year that Spurgeon was formally censured by the Baptist Union, and he died four years after that, surrounded by controversy. You know, I'm sure that although the Ripper openly taunted the police with Letters to the newspapers and graffiti on walls. Jack the Ripper was never conclusively identified, and so when Spurgeon died, thousands of Londoners were still living in fear of Jack the Ripper and his crimes. So again, these were difficult times for anyone to be upbeat and cheery. And Spurgeon had a compassionate heart. It was such a keen mind, such a sensitive temperament, that he couldn't simply dismiss from his mind all of the misery and misfortune that surrounded him and enveloped him as a pastor with so many suffering people in his own flock. The catastrophic fruits of sin surrounded him constantly, and the endless awareness of that was like a spiritual miasma that kept Spurgeon on the precipice of profound sadness all the time, despite his great sense of humor. He was generally a sad person most of the time, and it would have been deemed inappropriate in the Victorian era for Spurgeon's biographers to delve too deeply into such a personal matter as the question of what was the source of his melancholy. clinical analysis of depression would either have been considered, it would have been considered as personal as any other medical issue in Victorian times. We're more open with discussion of things like that today, but in Victorian era, things like that simply were not discussed. So you won't find much in contemporary biographies that discuss this side of Spurgeon's personality. But a couple of recent 21st century works have explored the problem of Spurgeon's depression. You know, we live in an era where how you feel is generally considered more important than how you think or what you believe. And our generation, frankly, could learn a whole lot from Spurgeon and how he dealt with his miseries in private before God. And so here are a handful of sources, resources on this subject if you want to look into it further on your own. Zach Eswine published a book in 2014 titled Spurgeon's Sorrows. I'm going to turn that so I can see what's up there. Spurgeon's Sorrows is the title of this book. It's a pastoral treatment of the subject, and Zach Eswine's obvious aim is to offer help and encouragement for his readers who may be struggling with their own feelings of despondency. Parts of this book are focused on the issue of depression in general, more than on Spurgeon's personal battle with gloom and discouragement. And that's probably fitting if the author's intention is to help people struggling with their own depression. But along the way, he also brings up a number of good facts and quotations, giving actually some fresh insight into Spurgeon's struggle. This is an informative book. I recommend it. A second, more clinical treatment of Spurgeon's depression is Elizabeth Scoglin's book, Bright Days, Dark Nights, which was first published by Baker Books 23 years ago in the year 2000. This author is a licensed counselor whose approach to counseling integrates more from secular psychology than I would like to see, but overall, I think the research she has done into Spurgeon's miseries, and her analysis of why he felt so much sorrow, and how he dealt with it, it's all very helpful. So I recommend this book as well, with just a caveat, I'm not into psychology as much as she is. If you want to study Spurgeon's depression further and more intently, there have been a few academic papers published on the subject. There's one from Southern Seminary titled But this is a PhD dissertation by William Albert titled, When the Wind Blows Cold, and subtitled, The Spirituality of Suffering and Depression in the Life and Ministry of Charles Spurgeon. I found this paper helpful mostly for the many quotations and historical facts that he highlights. Another fine doctoral dissertation that you can download for free is by Dale Warren Smith, written for the University of Missouri in Kansas City. This one is titled, The Victorian Preacher's Malady, subtitled, The Metaphorical Usage of Gout in the Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. You've got to read this one. Because he's got gout. As do I. Spurgeon said of gout, it's the most painful thing you can imagine. Someone asked him to describe the pain, and he said, imagine putting your hand in a vice and tighten it down as far as your strength will possibly enable you to tighten it down. And he said, now imagine that pain, and then find somebody who's twice as strong as you and have him give that crank two more twists. That's gout. That was Spurgeon's description of it. This paper is not really about Spurgeon's depression per se, but he touches on that. It deals with his constant suffering from the pains of gout, which I'm certain was a major contributor to his feelings of despondency. As the Apostle Paul says, In this paper, again, Dale Warren Smith titled, The Victorian Preacher's Malady. Also downloadable online is an academic paper by Mitchell Pierce written for Whitworth University. This one is titled simply, Charles Haddon Spurgeon on Depression. You find that by Google if you just Google the title. Charles Haddon Spurgeon on depression. And then one last book. This one is a kind of daily devotional titled, Beside Still Waters, subtitled, Words of Comfort for the Soul, edited by Roy H. Clark and published by Thomas Nelson. This is a collection of modernized excerpts from Spurgeon. Normally I don't go for the modernization of Spurgeon's language, but there are a lot of good quotes in here, a lot of good insights. The daily entries are chosen for the consolation and encouragement that they offer the reader who's suffering from any kind of grief or trial, and it's 365 pages of one-page excerpts each, so this would serve well as a daily devotional for a whole year. It's not actually... it's not actually... you know, published that way. I think the intent was to make it one reading per day. That's why there's 365. But they're not dates on the pages or anything like that. You can read it like a normal book or you can use it as a daily devotional. Now again, I'm not keen on modernizing Spurgeon. And there's not much documentation in this book that would point you back to the original source in Spurgeon's published material, that's a disappointment as well. If you find a quote you really like, and you want to find the original source, it won't be easy. It doesn't tell you what the original source is, and it might not be easy to find since they've modernized the language, but the substance of what the preacher said is there, and if any quotation strikes you as particularly worthy of a re-quote, If you can't find it in the source material, email me, I'll find it for you. I think I have pretty much everything Spurgeon ever published in electronic form, and I can easily do a search to find any Spurgeon quotation that you want to verify. People write me with those questions all the time, and I actually like looking up stuff like that. So it won't be a bother to me, and if I can be a help to you, I'm happy to do that. But the best feature of this collection is the way it goes through every book of the Bible in order, except for one. Spurgeon never preached a sermon from 2 John. That little epistle of John is 2 John. It's the only book of the Bible that he never drew a text for a sermon from. But it's interesting that in every biblical book that he did preach from, all 65 of the others, Spurgeon said something that would encourage distressed people. And this book, besides Still Waters, compiles 365 excerpts from all of those sources. And this book is still in print. It's easy to find. I was recently discussing Spurgeon's struggle with depression. Is there anything there? How did I get a blank page in there? I don't know what happened to this one. But I was recently discussing Spurgeon's struggle with depression with a friend who told me he thinks all the postmodern talk about Spurgeon's melancholy is overblown. He insisted that Spurgeon was not such a gloomy person. And these were his arguments. He pointed out that depressed people aren't usually very productive. They go to bed and try to sleep off the feelings of despair. And it would be hard to identify anyone who was more productive than Spurgeon. All the sermons he preached, all the books he read and reviewed, all the books he wrote... All the magazines he edited, the articles he wrote, the pastoral work he did, all the many institutions that he founded and led, including orphanages and a college. So that Spurgeon's output, especially given that he died at age 57, equals or exceeds that of the best-known workaholics in church history. You'll have a hard time finding anyone who was busier or more productive than he was. The collection of his published sermons alone has more words than the Encyclopedia Britannica. And it's also, I would say, a more valuable set of books than the Encyclopedia as well. And furthermore, my friend said, Spurgeon had a keen sense of humor that you'll immediately detect if you read almost any sampling of his published works. His books, John Plowman's talk, and Plain Advice for Plain People, it's as witty as it is full of insight. And his sermons and his articles in The Sword of the Trowel, all of them are full of stuff that would make you smile. He was frequently funny. In fact, there's a story about a 19th century woman who came to scold him once because she said, you shouldn't make people laugh while you're preaching. She said, a sermon is no place for humor. And he told her, ma'am, if you knew all the amusing thoughts that occur to me while I'm preaching that I never say, you would congratulate me on my restraint. He worked at home during the week and worked from the library in his home. I mentioned that. But here's a fact. There were always deacons at the church who could help deal with the pastoral needs of people who might come in off the street during the week and on a weekday. But it was also well known that Spurgeon worked from his home and his address was no secret. So needy people frequently would show up at his residence to ask him personally for financial help or pastoral counsel or whatever. And so to protect his time, unless their needs were urgent, or if their needs were great, especially if the counsel or assistance that they needed would be very time-consuming, Spurgeon would simply write a note to the deacons who were stationed at the tabernacle and telling them Here's what I think you should do with this person. Here's the counsel you should give, or here's how you can help this person. He would seal it in an envelope and give it to the needy person and instruct them to take it to the church where they would get help. And there's a file of these handwritten notes still in the possession of the Metropolitan Tabernacle today. They call them the deacon's notes, Spurgeon's instructions on how to deal with people who had come to his house. And I once suggested to Peter Masters, the pastor currently at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, I told him, you ought to publish those notes. They would be very interesting. And he said, since Spurgeon himself meant those notes to be private, He thought it would be wrong to publish them, so the church is still honoring Spurgeon's wish for those to just be private correspondences. I think he's probably right about that, but part of me hopes they get published someday, because I'm sure they're interesting and instructive, and I'd love to read the pastoral wisdom in most of those notes. But there's also a bit of humor in them, and Dr. Masters described one to me, for me. He has read the file, and he told me that a woman had once come seeking financial help, and he sent this woman with a sealed note to the deacons, and the note says, which still exists in this file, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the actual note, but this is what Peter Masters told me. The note says, I believe this woman's needs are real. Do whatever you can to help her, but be forewarned, she talks like a parrot with its tail on fire. So Spurgeon did have a lively sense of humor, there's no denying that. His humor was always tasteful and sometimes even edifying, but he was truly funny and sometimes he was playfully mischievous with his humor. There's a whole chapter about his sense of humor in the autobiography that his wife and secretary assembled after he died. It's chapter 81. It's titled Pure Fun in the original four-volume edition of the autobiography. And all of that is to say that Spurgeon didn't typically wear the signs of his depression on his sleeve or even on his face. But if you read his letters and his sermons attentively, it's obvious that his struggles with depression were frequent and deep and very troublesome to him. He usually kept his sorrows from dominating his dealings with other people. He usually, just like you remember, as I told you, when he was a child and struggling under the weight of guilt about his sin, he didn't tell anyone, and no one around him knew the deep distress he was in. He carried that capacity to hide his sorrows through his life. So he usually didn't announce or publish the fact that he was downcast, but those who knew him intimately, all of them testified that the battle against chronic sadness was a perpetual struggle for Spurgeon. And so, let's talk about the nature of Spurgeon's private struggle with depression and his uncanny ability to hide his gloom from everyone around him. And I contend that Spurgeon's disposition was prone to sorrow from early childhood, and there were several factors that made his childhood difficult. You remember that when he was just 18 months old, he was sent to live with his grandfather in Stambourne. Again, we don't have any definitive record of why Charles was sent to live with his grandfather, but he was cared for by his grandparents, as you recall, for six years, and there's no record of how often he saw his own parents. They surely came to see him from time to time, but we don't know how often. And again, we don't know why, but it's fairly easy to guess. What we do know, I said this the other day, but I'll repeat it. His mother was pregnant with a second child when he went to his grandfather's. And in all probability, there were problems in the pregnancy that kept her bedridden. And so again, Victorian rules of propriety would not permit any of that to be recorded in a biography or mentioned if that were the issue. Spurgeon's mother ultimately gave birth to 17 children. Nine of them died in infancy. And the second surviving child, the one whose delivery or the pregnancy seems to have been complicated, the second child was a girl, born shortly after Spurgeon went to live with his grandparents. And then, less than a year and a half later, a brother, the third of the children who survived, was born. And that was less than two weeks away from Charles's third birthday. So assuming his mother suffered from some kind of infirmity, it's understandable why he didn't return to his parents' house until he was nearly eight years old. By then he already had three younger siblings, and he was old enough to be a helper to his mother. And by the way, Spurgeon always spoke of his mother with genuine affection, although he lived away from her for most of his first six years or so, they developed a close relationship. And so except for holidays and rare visits, Charles was separated from his own parents for most of his formative years as a child, as a toddler. If you draw a straight line from Kelvedon, which is where Spurgeon was born, to Stambourne, where his grandfather served as a pastor, it's only 15 miles, but that is, and it was and still is, a 25 mile journey by road, because roads in England are rarely straight. And that was not an easy matter in horse and buggy times, 25 miles. Spurgeon's grandfather, as we talked the other day, he was a busy pastor. And so as a toddler, Charles was cared for mostly by his aunt. She was Charles's father's sister, Anne, and she remained single all her life, living at home with her parents. She's the one, as I said the other day, she's the one who taught Spurgeon to read early. He became a voracious reader. By age six he took a keen interest in his grandfather's pastoral work, going with him on visitation and things like that. And he started reading his grandfather's theological library so that by seven or eight years old he was reading Puritan works. that would be hard for most of us to read attentively. But he read authors like Thomas Watson and Thomas Brooks and his favorite, John Bunyan. And through those influences and the preaching of his grandfather, he became keenly but privately aware of his own need for salvation. And we talked about the struggle he had with his burden of sin, so I won't re-cover all of that. But here's another insight into his toddlerhood. From a very young age, Charles Spurgeon liked solitude. And he would disappear at times for hours. And no one knew where he was. But years later, he explained to his Aunt Anne that as a child, he used to hide in a tomb in the church's graveyard. It was an altar-shaped grave marker with a loose panel on the sides as an above-the-ground kind of stone box, which one of the side panels was loose, and he would go in there and pull the panel back in place and hide, and he of course heard his grandmother and his aunt calling his name, looking for him, but he deliberately remained hidden inside that tomb. And in fact, here is his own description of that from the autobiography. He wrote, no, I did not get into the grave, but it had a sort of altar tomb above the grave. And one of the side stones would move easily so that I could get inside. And then by setting the slab of stone back again, I was enclosed in a sort of large box. where no one would dream of looking for me. How often I have listened to the good people calling me by my name. I heard their feet close to my den, but I was wicked enough still to be lost, though the time for meals was gone. I would dream of days to come that befell me every now and then as a child, and to be quite alone was my boyish heaven. He described the lid on this stone structure as just two feet above the ground, so the space inside there would have been quite cramped. And notice Spurgeon is describing a time in his life when he probably could still be called a toddler. I would guess he was five years old when he started doing this, maybe even younger. So if you can imagine a boy that small, alone in a graveyard, inside a cramped stone tomb, and describing that as his boyish heaven, maybe you can get a feeling for what an unusual character Charles Spurgeon was from the very beginning. Now I wouldn't say he was morose or antisocial because he wasn't, but he did have some quirks in his complex personality that probably would have made him, if he was not a pastor, he would have been a total recluse. if you weren't so highly motivated to get the gospel to people. I can relate to that. I'm a little bit like that myself. I like solitude. And I don't like, you know, social events where you have to make small talk. And I think Spurgeon was the same way. I mentioned that he was conscious of his need for conversion at a young age. He felt, as we saw the other day, deeply the weight of guilt for his sin. He was burdened with a sense of condemnation that was seemingly out of proportion for his small size and his relatively innocent life. Pilgrim's Progress was his favorite book, and he closely identified with Pilgrim in the early stages of the book when Pilgrim was dragging around this large burden of guilt. And that was pictured in woodcut illustrations in the book, like a massive backpack that weighed him down and made all forward progress very difficult. And Spurgeon said he secretly felt that way himself. By the time he was 10, His own sense of his soul's burden became almost unbearable for him, and he started on that quest to find salvation. I mentioned he was surrounded by adults who could have helped him with wise counsel. And remember that the two most important men in his life, his father and his grandfather, were both pastors, both of them capable ministers of the gospel. And all the other adults in his family, from his aunt Anne to his mother, all of them were devoted believers who could have helped him, but he kept that private struggle secret. And in his description of those years, it's clear that he was already under a cloud of despair and depression, and yet he somehow managed to keep his feelings hidden from everyone around him. I won't reread to you what I read the other day from Fullerton about how he carried that weight of guilt around. But his anguish was amplified by the fact that he refused to deal superficially with questions of sin and guilt and issues like divine judgment and eternity. Fullerton says he wouldn't believe because other people believed. He had to have an assurance of his own and he wouldn't rest until he knew. And that's why his quest for salvation continued for five full years. He visited dozens of churches, listened to scores of sermons, but nothing seemed to penetrate his heart, meaning that nothing ever lifted the burden that he bore all those years, even though his head was already full of... Yeah, I wondered why that went off. Did I do something to it? I don't think so. I just didn't change it enough that it... Oh, did it go off? It blanked itself. Yeah, there was actually some graphic on that page. I'm mystified about what happened to it. Oh, we've got the tree. Mouse disappeared too, I guess. I'll let you fool with it while I continue here. Spurgeon described his five-year struggle over the burden of guilt as the worst bout of depression that he ever suffered. He said this, quote, If there be a trouble weighing upon my soul, I thank God that it is not such a burden as that which bowed me to the very earth and made me creep along the ground like a beast by reason of heavy distress and affliction." So there you have his own testimony that those years of searching for salvation Five years. That was the worst period of depression he felt he ever suffered in his life. Which is remarkable when you read some of his adult descriptions of the troubles he went through as a pastor. But he also came to see that his own battle with feelings of despondency had actually made him more effective as a pastor. more effective in pastoral ministry when he dealt with other people. He said this, quote, When I talk with a young convert in deep distress about his sin, I can always tell him something more of his anxious plight than he knows how to express. And he wonders how I found it. He would not wonder if he knew where I had been and how much deeper in the mire I have been than he. And so you get some insight into the depth of burden that he felt as a young child. Now, you know the story of Spurgeon's conversion because we covered it. Was it yesterday or the day before? I don't remember. But on his way on a Sunday to some random church that he was sampling, he was caught in that blinding snowstorm, turned down that little alley in order to escape the wind, and then in front of him was this small primitive Methodist chapel where he was converted. And he said that his conversion instantly lifted his depression. I read to you the excerpt where he said he felt like he could dance all the way home, and he understood what John Bunyan meant when he said he wanted to tell the crows on the plowed land all about his conversion. Spurgeon now, all of a sudden, with a head full of doctrine and background of experience under his father's and grandfather's pastoral influence, As a new believer, he began almost instantly to testify and proclaim the gospel, and he spoke with such aplomb as a young man that that church in Waterbeach asked him to be their regular preacher. And then he was called to London. We've been through all of this, so I won't repeat it, but He was barely 21. He had been the church's pastor for less than two years when the congregation outgrew their auditorium. And so they temporarily moved their services out of the new Park Street building into a new location, into a temporary location so that the builders could refurbish and enlarge the building. That's how they wound up in Exeter Hall, which I read it to you, the description of that 4,000 seat venue in the Strand. Exeter Hall was well known as an evangelical gathering place. It had been born actually out of the anti-slavery movement in the 1830s. The anti-slavery movement was a big thing in England long before it was in America. And so the building was now more than 20 years old. It was beset with these terrible acoustic problems. And frankly, it still wasn't big enough for the audiences who wanted to hear Spurgeon preach. And the traffic of all those people coming to Exeter Hall choked the Strand, blocked the street. This was the busiest and, at the time, the most exclusive street in London. And the truth is Spurgeon could have filled literally any auditorium in London. As I said earlier, Exeter Hall was the biggest one at the time. But at the time, Spurgeon was being subjected to these bitter criticisms from other ministers and political cartoonists and anonymous writers in the newspapers. And some of them expressly said they were scandalized that a group of Christians, a church, would gather for Sunday worship in a public hall, like Exeter Hall, rather than in a church building. And then other people accused him of pride or arrogance that was unbefitting a minister for even wanting to gather such large audiences. And you know that these early critics caused him much distress, added to his depression, because he said so. He wrote that year to his fiancée a letter in which he said, quote, I am down in the valley partly because of two desperate attacks upon me. And he meant attacks in the newspaper, writers in the newspaper. And in a sermon a couple of years after that, He said, when a slanderous report against my character came to my ears, my heart was broken in agony. So he was deeply affected by the critics, made him sad. He didn't lash back at them as we've discussed, but he did internalize the pain and that added to his depression. But still, the more he was criticized, the more he learned to endure it patiently. And as he established himself in London, he also began to get more praise than criticism. Praise and appreciation from people who saw in him his faithfulness and his steadfastness. And ironically, when he began to get praise, that too made him even more melancholy. He said, quote, It always makes me feel sad, so sad that I could cry if I ever see anything praising me. It breaks my heart because I feel I don't deserve it. And then I say, now I must try to be better so that I may deserve it. He learned to take the abuse. He said, if the world abuses me, I'm a match for that. I begin to like it. But he never became totally comfortable with the praise. And by the time the enlargement of the new Park Street Chapel was complete, the building was literally insufficient already. The expansion wasn't enough. And on one occasion that year, Spurgeon preached in the open air and 10,000 people came out to hear him. And so the following year, in June of 1856, the congregation moved for a short time back to Exeter Hall, And plans were launched to sell the building at New Park Street. It was a terrible location anyway, as we've discussed. It stunk and all of that. And the decision then was made to build the tabernacle at one of London's busiest intersections. Elephant and Castle is the name to this day. It's the name of the intersection where the church has been located ever since. They couldn't stay long this time at Exeter Hall because the auditorium was already overcrowded and insufficient. He drew more than 4,000 people, so it was standing room only and people often had to be turned away. And the owners of that venue, the Exeter Hall, auditorium, told Spurgeon that they couldn't rent the hall to one congregation indefinitely. So a couple of miles away there was a 15-acre park with a zoo. It was known as Royal Surrey Gardens. It was adjacent to where today the Oval, which is a sports stadium, stands. It was a large park that was built as a privately owned pleasure garden. open to the public and the owners would entertain people with things like they would do reenactments of Vesuvius, the eruption of Vesuvius or the Great Fire of London. They would often have fireworks displays and concerts there. It was a kind of a tourist attraction and it also had a zoo. But the zoo closed in 1856 and proprietors built a massive auditorium, a music hall, on that site. This was a classic Victorian-style iron structure with galleries stacked too high, too, I mean, the number two, there were two balconies, and the venue seated 12,000. And it was designed for concerts, but it closed on Sundays, so it seemed perfect to serve as a temporary venue for Spurgeon's congregation. It was also large enough, and the only place in London that was large enough to accommodate the thousands of guests who came to hear Spurgeon preach. And the very first time the congregation met there, on the Sunday evening of October 19th, with the building absolutely packed to the gills and thousands of people outside who still weren't able to get in, an unthinkable disaster happened. Here's how Fullerton describes it. He says, The service began before the appointed time. After a few words of greeting, there came a prayer, a hymn, and the scripture reading with a running comment. That was Spurgeon's exposition. According to the general custom. That's what they did every Sunday when they were in the church building. So after another hymn, prayer was again being offered. This is Spurgeon. at the front of the platform leading in prayer when suddenly there was a cry of fire. The galleries are giving way. The place is falling. Fullerton says, it may have been hysterical excitement, but much more probably it was the criminal work of miscreants bent on plunder. And a terrible panic ensued. Many of the people rushed for the doors, stumbled, fell, were piled on each other. The balustrade of the stairs broke and people toppled over. Seven people lost their lives and 28 were taken to the hospital seriously injured. and Spurgeon from where he stood saw the commotion of course but he didn't know about the fatalities or the number of large number of injured people and so for a while he tried to calm the people down and get the crowd back in order so that he could continue the service and that fact only gained him more scorn from the critics because they act as if he knew people had died but he wanted to keep going anyway Ultimately it became impossible to continue the service so Spurgeon closed it and they actually had to literally carry him out of the place. He fainted from the trauma and had to be carried away unconscious. Criticism of that event continued for years and people blamed Spurgeon for the whole mess. In fact to this day there is a page at a website called the Victorian Calendar that describes the tragedy in a way that is purposely framed to make Spurgeon out to be a villain. They say this, quote, Spurgeon appears on stage. A call for praise God from whom all blessings flow goes unanswered as the choir has fled the gallery. The cleric's choice of sermons, Proverbs 3.33, the Lord's curse is on the house of the wicked, is hardly reassuring. Spurgeon shouts above the din, there is a terrible day coming when the terror and alarm of this evening shall be as nothing and he soon faints and must be carried to safety by his deacons." So you can hear the way they describe it makes Spurgeon sound foolish. They continue, Spurgeon's flock behaved no better in a crush than a music hall mob. Which is kind of a dumb thing to say because actually in a crowd that size, 12,000 people, fewer than one-fifth of the crowd actually belonged to Spurgeon's flock. But let's disparage them anyway. The description continues. Men were seen to knock down women and children to get to safety. The Spectator, that's a newspaper, said Spurgeon proved quite unable to control his multitudes, as if these people were supposed to hear and answer everything he said. The Illustrated London News claimed that Spurgeon had degraded the pulpit to a far lower level than that of the broadest buffoonery of the stage. The London Times reminded him, there are limits to all things, even hearers. suggesting then that he was, he shouldn't even try to gather an audience that large. The Saturday Review actually accused Spurgeon's minions of continuing to hand around the begging box, they said, taking up a collection despite the tragedy. And I don't think that actually happened, but he was accused of that. Spurgeon was severely shaken by this incident. He remained catatonic for days. He describes his agony with these words. Who can conceive the anguish of my sad spirit? I refused to be comforted. Tears were my meat by day and dreams were my terror by night. My thoughts were all a case of knives cutting my heart in pieces until a kind of stupor of grief ministered a mournful medicine to me. I sought and found a solitude which seemed congenial to me. I could tell my griefs to the flowers, and the dews could weep with me. My Bible, once my daily food, was but a hand to lift the sluices of my woe. prayers yielded no balm to me. There came the slander of many, barefaced fabrications, libelous slanders, and barbarous accusations. These alone might have scooped out the last drop of consolation from my cup of happiness, but the worst had come to the worst, and the utmost malice of the enemy could do no more." In other words, he felt he couldn't get any more grief than he suffered from this incident. And it's my belief that Spurgeon never did fully recover complete peace of mind after this incident, which was very early in his ministry. In fact, today they would call it PTSD. You have the post-traumatic stress disorder. Only they've stopped calling it a disorder. Now it's post-traumatic stress syndrome. So it's PTSS, I think, or something like that. Anyway. For years afterwards, and really literally for the rest of his life, little things would remind him of that night, and he would be swept under by a new wave of sadness. He wrote, quote, a word about the calamity and even the sight of the Bible brought from me a flood of tears and utter distraction of mind. So this remained a grief to him for the rest of his life. He recorded the story of the music hall disaster years later, and he told the story in great detail, writing a very long article that stands as chapter 50 in the autobiography. And it's a must read if you want to understand the depth of Spurgeon's depression. You can feel his fresh anguish as he writes about it and recalls it in his mind, even though decades had passed. It's perhaps the most poignantly personal thing he ever wrote. Now remember, Spurgeon was only 22 years old when the Surrey Gardens Music Hall disaster occurred. He carried the grief of that event for the rest of his life, meaning 35 more years. For him, it was as if it was a fresh sorrow. Still, that was just one factor that contributed to Spurgeon's suffering. An even more personal and literally painful factor was health-related. He inherited a proclivity to kidney failure. He ultimately died of Bright's disease, which is better known these days as nephritis. That's what they would call it today, nephritis. If you're in the medical field, you'll recognize that. It's a failure, a general failure of the kidneys, and the symptoms are a cornucopia of pains and physical limitations, and these health issues troubled him from a very young age. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. He didn't have a strong physical constitution. He never had been particularly robust. And in fact, Spurgeon himself suggested that his preference for serious study and reading, even when he was a child, probably contributed to his health problems. The biographer Fullerton records that when he was 40 years of age, he lectured on young men. That was the title of his lecture, young men. He's talking to the students at his pastor's college, and he said in all seriousness that he was now an old man. He's just turned 40 and he calls himself an old man. And then Fullerton quotes from his message where Spurgeon says, 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 at that period of my life when I ought perhaps to have been in the playground developing my legs and tendons, 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. Now, he was probably wrong to think that exercise in his teenage years would have kept him from gout. The gout was related to his kidney failure. Gout, you know, is caused by too much uric acid in the blood, and it's an exceedingly painful condition. It's related to kidney problems and his health would worsen every winter and by 1871 when he was only 37 years old he had to take his vacation every year at the peak of winter and go away just so that he could travel to a warmer climate and escape the harsh winters of London. That was the only way he could get relief from the pains that constantly assaulted him. Although to be honest, he also insisted that smoking cigars brought him relief. I don't know about that. I'm sure he enjoyed them. His winter retreat of choice was in Mentone, France, which is on the French Riviera. It's a little town right on the Italian border. Mentone, that's where Spurgeon died in 1892, less than 21 years after his first visit there. And a few years ago during one of the times I was preaching at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, Peter Masters very kindly let me examine a file of unpublished letters. These were handwritten originals from Spurgeon to his congregation. the updates he wrote when for health reasons he was not able to be in the in the church service so he would write letters to the congregation and the church kept them in a file which survived the two fires that have destroyed the tabernacle but the file that they had included The last letter Spurgeon wrote to his congregation from Mentone before he died. And I read several of the letters in this file. I didn't have time to read them all. But they're all poignant. All of them have powerful notes of sadness and pain. And yet, as was characteristic of Spurgeon, he never let his depression and pain have the final word. He would honestly chronicle his health issues as much as Victorian propriety permitted, but he would always end on a note of triumph, similar to what we often read in the Psalms, where David starts a psalm and often is depressed or troubled or under assault somehow, but by the end of the psalm, he's upbeat and positive. Spurgeon wrote his letters like that, and in that file, was this letter from Mentone dated January 10th of 1884. This is just eight years before Spurgeon's death. I think that's the right one. And you can't read it, so I'll read it to you. This was the year Spurgeon turned 50, and this letter from 1884 is explaining that he's going to be a little bit late getting back to the pulpit from his normal winter break. Here's the letter. Mentone, January 10th, 1884. Can you read that at all? January 10th, 84. Dear friends, I am altogether stranded. I am not at all able to leave my bed or to find much rest upon it. The pains of rheumatism and lumbago and sciatica mingled together are exceedingly sharp. If I happen to turn a little to the right or to the left, I am soon aware that I am dwelling in a body capable of the most acute suffering. However, I am as happy and clear of mind as a man can be. I feel it such a great relief that I am not yet robbing the Lord of my works, for my holiday is not quite run out. A man has a right to have the rheumatism, if he likes, when his time is his own. The worst of it is that I'm afraid I shall have to intrude into my master's domains and draw again upon your patience, because unless I get better very soon, I cannot get home in due time, and I am very much afraid that if I did get home at the right time, I would be of no use to you, for I would be sure to be laid aside. The deacons have written me a letter in which they unanimously recommend me to take the two more Sundays so that I may get well and not return to you an invalid. I wrote to them saying that I thought I must take a week, but as I do not get a bit better, but rather worse, I'm afraid I shall have to make it a fortnight as they preferred. Most men find that they go right when they obey their wives, and as my wife and my deacons are agreed on this matter, I'm afraid I should go doubly wrong if I am contrary to them." He's explaining why he's going to take two more weeks, two extra weeks off. The deacons wanted him to, his wife wanted him to, and his health is not improving, so he's going to do it. He says, I hope you will all believe that if the soldier could stand, he would march. And if your servant were able, he would be always with you. But as this cannot be, I am most thankful for the retreat afforded by this sheltered spot, and even more so for the rest of heart that comes to me through knowing that you are all spiritually fed under the ministry of Dr. Pearson. A.T. Pearson, an American evangelist, was filling in for him in the pulpit at the time. That's what he's referring to. May Dr. Pearson's health be maintained and that of his wife during your trying winter. You may feel sure that I am doing pretty well or the doctor would be looking me up. When he next calls I will have a bulletin from him and until then you can rest in peace about me. May the saturating showers of blessing for which I am looking soon fall in tropical abundance and may no front of the field be left dry. If there are any very sad, downcast, and self-condemned ones among you, I desire my special love to them." The Lord himself looks down from heaven to spy out and redeem special characters. See Job 33 verses 27 and 28. I think this text is a message for somebody. May grace abound towards you, yours ever heartily, C.H. Spurgeon. Now, that's classic Spurgeonic style. Notice, he acknowledges his own struggle with pain and depression, but his chief concern is for the hurting people in his flock. And elsewhere, whenever he spoke of his pain, he would always be careful, as he is here, to mention his blessings as well. Here's another one of those letters he wrote from his sickbed to the church. This one was written from Spurgeon's home in Norwood where he was bedridden at this time with illness and pain. The date on this one is 1881 and in fact the date on this letter is exactly three years and one day earlier than the letter I just read. So this one was written three years earlier. It was also interesting because it's written just one day after the Spurgeon's 25th wedding anniversary, which basically had to be canceled because of his sickness. In this letter, he writes, Westwood, Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, that's his address, January 9th, 1881. My dear friends, the past week has been full of disappointment and anguish. My pain came upon me in furious gusts and beat me back when I thought I was within sight of shore. I've endured as much as I can imagine one poor body to be capable of, But blessed be God, the fury of the storm seems this morning to have abated. Pray for me that I may be permitted speedily to recover. Our family gathering and the visit of the deacons on our silver wedding were both postponed, owing to my being so much worse. Ah me, this is trying work, this pain and downcasting. Still, through your prayers it will pass away, and he who is the health of my countenance and my God will yet appear to me. The kindness of friends both at the tabernacle and far away has been overwhelming. If I cannot tell my pain, so neither can I recount my mercies. The Lord is good, and blessed be his name. Receive my grateful love, yours in Christ Jesus, C.H. Spurgeon." Neither of those letters has ever been published before. In fact, they've been seen by very few eyes because they're in that file at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, but I snuck pictures of them with my cell phone. So you get to see them. But this determination of Spurgeon's to make more of the mercy of God than he made of his own pain, that is the thing that enabled him to weather so much sorrow and endure so much pain. And it colored his preaching as well. I got another blank slide there. That's horrible. Colored his preaching as well. He constantly preached to encourage downcast people. His own experience in his quest for salvation had encouraged him to make the promises and encouragements of the gospel more prominent than the castigations and condemnations of the law. Both law and gospel are essential, and Spurgeon understood that. He preached the whole counsel of God, but even when he was preaching on a text that highlighted the condemnation of the law, he never left his sermon without also making the good news of the gospel stand out as boldly as possible. And he did strive to preach the whole counsel of God. Over the course of his career, Spurgeon preached on texts from every book of the Bible except 2 John, and he rarely preached more than two sermons on the same text. But when he did, his second visit to a previously used text would always be a fresh sermon, completely new. He didn't reuse his old outlines and things. He didn't recapitulate the same material that he used the first time he dealt with this text. But there was one passage that he preached on at least 10 times. And that's Isaiah 61, verses 1 through 3. The text there says this, and notice how many references this passage makes to lifting up the downcast. This is what Spurgeon was aiming at when he preached from this text. Here's the text, Isaiah 61, the first three verses. The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me because Yahweh has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of Yahweh and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a headdress instead of ashes, the oil of rejoicing instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting, so they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that He may show forth His beautiful glory." Spurgeon loved that text and you can see why. His sermons and commentaries are full of rich insights on suffering grief and depression and pain. Here's just one more sample. In the Treasury of David, which is that massive multi-volume commentary on the Psalms, he comments on Psalm 42, and he quotes a short sentence from John Trapp, who was an early Puritan writer, and then Spurgeon elaborates. The text is verse 5 in Psalm 42. That's where the psalmist writes, Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me? Wait for God, and I shall still praise Him. And here's Spurgeon's comment. I'll abbreviate just a little. I'm just going to leave a few sentences out, but I'm not going to change what he says. Spurgeon writes this, As Trap says, and he quotes from Trap, David chides David out of the dumps. And then Spurgeon adds, and herein is an example for all desponding ones. To search out the cause of our sorrow is often the best surgery for grief. Self-ignorance is not bliss. In this case, it is misery. The mist of ignorance magnifies the causes of our alarm. A clearer view will make monsters dwindle into trifles. Why art thou disquieted within me? Why is my quiet gone? Why am I agitated like a troubled sea? And why do my thoughts make a noise like a tumultuous multitude? The causes are not enough to justify such utter yielding to despondency. Up, my heart, what aileth thee? Play the man, and thy castings down shall be turned to upliftings, and thy disquietudes to calm. Hope thou in God. God is unchangeable, and therefore His grace is the ground for unshaken hope. If everything be dark, yet the day will come. Yet my sighs will give place to songs. My mournful ditties shall be exchanged for triumphal paeans. A loss of the present sense of God's love is not a loss of that love itself. This verse, like the singing of Paul and Silas, looses chains and shakes prison walls. He who can use such heroic language in these gloomy hours will surely conquer. So here's the key to all of this. Spurgeon's battle with depressions deepened his resolve to seek the Lord. And he forced himself to focus that way every time he felt depressed. It magnified his compassion for other people. It gave him an uncanny ability to reach and help those who were also suffering or brokenhearted in an era that was rife with suffering and brokenhearted people. And I would urge you, when you read Spurgeon, read attentively with these things in mind. Look for these comments he makes about being downcast and melancholy and in despair, and then emulate his faith. Although Spurgeon was burdened, I think, with more sorrows than you and I combined are likely ever to have to bear, he never milked his suffering for victimhood status. Instead, he let it turn his heart towards God and to seek the grace of God that much more earnestly. My counsel, go thou and do likewise. Let's pray. Lord, we realize, like Spurgeon, that you often allow suffering and sorrows and trials to come to us in order to deepen our dependency on you, in order to remind us that our strength comes from above and it is not within ourselves, to make us seek your grace and seek your comfort, and you are the God of all comfort. and you let us suffer so that we might comfort others when comfort is needed. Help us to bear all of that patiently and understand that you are simply working all things together for our good and your glory, and therefore may we rejoice even in our trials. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.