MR. SPURGEON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.* IT is a little difficult to pick
out the actual consecutive biographical narrative from the mass of materials collected by the careful editors of the two large volumes now given to the public. The first volume contains Mr. Spurgeon's reminiscences of his childhood, the preparation for his life's work began by Sunday-school teaching and itinerantpreaching at the early age of sixteen, his subsequent settlement in Southwark in 1854, and the beginning of his successful career as the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel; while the second volume is occupied with details of that career, his literary works, and the erection of the large building known as the Tabernacle, bringing the narrative down to the year 1860. To those most intimately connected with Mr. Spurgeon, there may be interest in bygone newspaper controversies, criticisms, favourable and adverse, reports of meetings, outlines of sermons, or facsimiles of corrected MSS.; but to the general reader the chief interest will lie in the revelations of the preacher's inner self and the searchings of heart that are perhaps a little too self-consciously unveiled, though Mr. Spurgeon's sincerity is beyond question. The present generation has forgotten the old controversies, and accepts Mr. Spurgeon as a great force in his day, even when out of sympathy with his theology, which has been defined as old Calvinism moderated a little by common-sense. His indefatigable powers of preaching and immense influence over vast con- gregations were used for the noblest ends, and his published sermons are full of good advice and striking illustrations, though he added little or nothing to the world of thought.
He attributed the great facility he acquired in preaching to his early training at Cambridge, where all day long he was teaching in a school and studying theology "as much as he could," and when evening came, turning into an itinerant preacher. He notes with characteristic sincerity :—
" I must have been a singular-looking youth on wet evenings, for I walked three, five, or even eight miles out and back again to my preaching work ; and when it rained I dressed myself in waterproof leggings and a mackintosh coat, and a hat with a waterproof covering, and I carried a dark lantern to show me the way across the fields. I am sure that I greatly profited by those early services for my Lord. How many times I enjoyed preaching the Gospel in a farmer's kitchen, or in a cottage, or in a barn ! Perhaps many people came to hear me because I was then only a boy. In my young days, I fear that I said many odd things, and made many blunders ; but my audience was not hypercritical, and no newspaper writers dogged my heels; so I had a happy training school, in which, by continual practice, I attained such a degree of ready speech as I now possess."
Mr. Spurgeon has himself recorded that he took George Whitefield for his model, and it is curious to note the charac- teristics they possessed in common. When Spurgeon first began to preach in London, Sheridan Knowles is reported to
• C. H. Spurgeon's Autobiography. Compiled by his Wife and his Private Secretary. Vols. L and II. London Passmore and Alabaster. (10e. Eid. each.]
have said to his elocution class : "Boys, have you heard the Cambridgeshire lad ? " and to have advised his hearers to lose no time in hearing him preach :—" He is only a boy, but he is the most wonderful preacher in the world. He is absolutely
perfect in his oratory he can do what he pleases with his audience ! He can make them laugh, and cry, and laugh again in five minutes." Garrick used to say of White- field that had he been disguised he might have made men weep or tremble by varied utterances of the word " Mesopo- tamia ; " and the general testimony that has come do e a to us shows that his voice was extraordinarily effective, clear, pene- trating to a great distance, besides being capable of express- ing every emotion. Both preachers were indefatigable in the number of sermons they preached during the week, though owing to circumstances Whitefield was more of a missionary preacher, the difficulties of travelling a century ago adding to his labours, while he would not have taken to address- ing crowds in the open air if he had been permitted the use of parish pulpits. Whitefield was also an up- holder of the Church of England and her liturgies, noting in his Journal : I have no objection against, but highly approve of, the excellent liturgy of our Church, would ministers lend me their churches to use it in. If not, let them blame themselves, that I pray and preach in the fields." He also described himself in a letter to Archbishop Slacker, written in 1767, as a "truly catholic moderate presbyter of the Church of England," just as Wesley clung to the Church of his baptism, and wrote shortly before his death that he lived and died "a member of the Church of England."
Mr. Spurgeon joined the Baptist community at an early age, and was a firm upholder of Calvinistic views, happily without the narrowness that marks the extreme members of that body; in fact, some of the hyper-Calviniste found fault with what they called his unsound teaching,—for instance, when he declined to preach that the prayers of the "unconverted" are not heard or answered. He was opposed to any form of ordination service, looking on a congregation as a Republic, free to choose its own minister without needing to have that minister's title confirmed by any other authority. He wrote : "I detest the dogma of apostolic succession," much as he also detested the idea of an endowment fund for ministers of religion, or the wearing of a white tie, because it was a "priestly badge." With a dislike of relics which led him to say that he could not worship God in a church in Lucerne which was said to contain the head of John the Baptist, he yet owns to having kissed a medal bearing the venerated likeness of John Calvin. It was a great concession when he consented to preach in the Cathedral at Geneva in what he calls "fall canonicals," but he consoled himself by thinking that he was wearing John Calvin's gown. He venerated Calvin—of whom he declared that "among all those who have been born of women, there has not risen a greater no age before him ever produced his equal, and no age afterwards has seen his rival"—much as a devout Catholic venerates his particular patron saint, and included Augustine in his veneration, because Calvin was trained in his school of thought. At the same time, with all his innate distrust of ritual, and a liturgical worship and ordained clergy, he owns that his early bringing- up was responsible for many of his modes of thought. When the erection of the great building known as the Metropolitan Tabernacle was contemplated Mr. Spurgeon said, in the course of an address :—" I never felt such union to the Church of England as I now do. The fact is that, when a youth in the country, I was accustomed to associate with the name of clergyman, fox - hunting and such - like amusements. I abhorred them, for I thought they were all like that." Mr. Spurgeon was conspicuously sincere, and be was broad-minded enough to own when he had made an error in judgment. Some of the letters included by Mrs. Spurgeon are model instances of the "soft answer" that makes for peace, though written in words of manly self-confidence. The notes to familiar friends are fall of quaint morsels of humour. It is by his written words that he will be remembered beyond his own immediate generation, and his sermons and lectures are full of good, homely advice, seasoned with apt illustrations and spiced with the quaint mother-wit we have before referred to. To the actual gifts of dramatic instinct and oratorical power was added the enlightenment of a sincere devotional spirit which lifted him above the ordinary preachers of his school. To those who have been
brought up in a different school of thought the language may often seem irreverent and the humour strained, but the significant fact that over a hundred million copies of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons have already been printed shows that an enormous number of readers are neither startled by irrever- ence nor shocked by unrefinement, but read with avidity and create an unprecedented demand. Mr. Spurgeon has not escaped the imputation of "eccentricity," and we have been interested in looking over a little volume which he expanded from a lecture on "Eccentric Preachers." He had an evident admiration for such men as Berridge, but we do Rot exactly follow the argument that all saints have followed an eccentric path because they kept to the narrow way and did not follow the many who pursued the downward road. Mr. Spurgeon seems to us to lose his usual clearness of sight in defining eccentricity. In asking the important question, "Who is to fix the centre from which deviation becomes eccentricity ? " he answers it, for instance, by saying: "Shall this important task devolve upon those gentlemen who buy lithographed sermons and preach them as their own ?" A man may be a stirring useful preacher of divine truths who neither buys lithographed sermons, nor behaves in any unusual manner. It is a fairer method of argument to take a moderate example as a " centre," and call those who deviate from it "eccentric," than to force an argument by starting from an extreme point of view. "If," says Mr. Spurgeon, "the centre is to be up in the clouds, let a few of us who care for something practical stop down below and be regarded as eccentric." But who would necessarily place the centre from which deviation becomes " eccentricity " up in the clouds? Mt. Spurgeon is more in hie element of sincere discussion when he says that preachers should do what they believe to be most useful, without fear of man, and we hold that if a man would impress his heartfelt con- victions on others he must be impressed with the deepest solemnity of the truths be is endeavouring to spread, and then he will need no adventitious aids to ensure a hearing. We concur with Mr. Spurgeon in not blaming a man for being himself, but if he purposely and deliberately puts on a fool's. cap when a sense of congruity demands a more seemly head- gear, we do not commend him; originality in illustration may be commended, but not caricature of reality, when reality is expected. What suits one congregation may not suit another, but we feel convinced that Mr. Spurgeon himself owned too firm and vigorous a style to be classed among the mere " eccentrics " of an ephemeral day. As George Whitefield wrote : "Men may say what they please, but there is some- thing in this foolishness of preaching, which when attended with divine energy will make the most stubborn heart to bend or break."
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