ART. II.-REV. C. H. SPURGEON. SOME three years ago the fame of a bold young preacher broke on the multitudes of London, and its echo soon reached across the Atlantic. He was young, being only twenty years of age; he made no pretensions to learning, never having graced a literary institution in the character of a pupil; he was unheralded by brilliant antecedents. Being born in humble life, he was unpracticed in either the art of oratory or of preaching, his public efforts having consisted of addresses before Sunday schools, and a very brief but successful pastorate over an obscure Baptist Church at Waterbeach. In personal appearance he was not prepossessing; in style he was plain, practical, simple; in manner, rude, bold, egotistical, approaching to the bigoted; in theology, a deep-dyed Calvinist; in Church relations, an uncompromising Baptist. We could scarcely imagine a more unpromising list of qualifications, or rather disqualifications for public favor. Yet the fame of this young man spread throughout London, and from London through Europe and America, with a rapidity that has never, perhaps, been equaled in the history of preaching, and his labors suddenly gathered around him masses of anxious hearers, surpassing everything of the kind since the days of Wesley and Whitefield, if, indeed, the audiences of those mighty men equaled the vast crowds which gather to hear this youth. The growth of his popularity, the enlargement of his influence, the increase of his power, have gone steadily on, each year adding new laurels to his name, each public effort drawing around him a widening circle of admiring hearers. Most, even of his friends, looked upon him as a brilliant but transient meteor, and tremblingly expected the time when, like a meteor, his light would expire. His enemies thought him an over-zealous, fanatical enthusiast, whose burning zeal would soon consume both itself and him. Nearly all feared that he would become intoxicated with the large drafts of popularity which he had daily to drink, or that he would not be able, owing to the want of variety, to sustain the reputation he had so suddenly acquired. Neither result has happened. He has disappointed all. He has grown more humble as he has grown more popular; there has been no waning of his reputation, no diminution of his power, no fluctuation in his progress. His course has been steadily onward and upward, and he stands out to-day before the world, as the most famous preacher of the day, and the name of Spurgeon has become a household word in Europe and America, mentioned along with those of Whitefield, Newton, Summerfield, and Irving of days gone by, and crowned as the successful rival of Cumming, Melville, Noel, and Punshon, the first English preachers. Such success presents a problem which it is the duty and interest of the Church to solve. Twice on every Sabbath of the year thousands gather to hear this young preacher of the Gospel. Surrey Hall is packed to its utmost capacity. Between five and six thousand eager listeners are crowded in the spacious area, each paying roundly for the privilege. It is not unusual for the spacious body of the hall, the three broad galleries, the several aisles, and all vacancies about the pulpit and doors to be occupied, and hundreds turn away unable to find footing within the audience-room. And this is no novel fact; it was a fact realized in Exeter Hall; it was a fact in the large new chapel built for him in New Park-street, and is a fact which has been weekly realized for many months in Surrey Musical Hall. Nor is this the limit of his power to draw an audience; it is only the limit of his audience-room. It is only necessary to throw open the doors of the vast Crystal Palace, and twentyfive thousand anxious hearers gather to face the young preacher. Here, then, is a success unequaled, in the history of the past, in the rapidity of its development, and in the vastness of its results. Here is a phenomenon unprecedented in the history of audiences, whether in the sphere of religion, literature, politics, or amusement. What is this phenomenon? It is not that an orator attracts a crowd; that is often done; but it is that a young preacher of the Gospel, under the most unpromising circumstances, should, in the space of three years, rise to such an elevation of popularity and power, as to attract, day after day, six thousand paying auditors from all classes of society to hear the Gospel. "This is a result unequaled in the gathering of audiences, even where dramatic genius, where the enchantment of music, where the appliances of pleasure, where the magnificent adornings of art, and the thrill of eloquence have united to attract. Neither Macready, nor Garrick, nor Forrest, nor Jenny Lind, nor Rachel, nor Gough, nor Clay, nor Choate has done it." Its nearest approximation is in the history of our own Henry Ward Beecher. And the phenomenon is the more remarkable, in that this gathering is around the pulpit where no art wins and no pleasure stimulates, and occurs where hundreds of other audience-rooms are opened for the same purpose, with pulpits occupied by men of learning, eloquence, and piety. What is it that constitutes the power of Mr. Spurgeon, and makes Surrey Hall, week after week, the center of gathering thousands? Is it because he is the most eloquent man, the most learned man, or the most godly man among the clergy of London? Neither of these is true of Mr. S. His power is not found in his eloquence, his learning, his extraordinary piety, his personal appearance, his superior manner, or the unusual excellence of his matter, alone considered, for in all these he is far surpassed by more than one English preacher. The question becomes a still more interesting and important one at this day, when so much is said of the "preaching for the times," when there seems to be rather a repulsion than an attraction between the pulpit and the people, when the Churches of our towns and cities, although with an aggregate capacity greatly below what is needed for the accommodation of the multitudes of our people, are yet left but partially filled, and when numbers of our preachers, eloquent, learned, and godly men, are left to utter their lessons, or display their eloquence, or breathe out their pious worship, over a chilling array of empty pews. We sometimes attribute this wide-spread indifference to preaching, to loss of novelty in Gospel truth, to increased wickedness and hardness of human nature, or to the obstacles which we suppose may be found in the intensely earnest and worldly life of the present day. Yet with all these circumstances existing, the pulpit presents its attractions, and is surrounded by multitudes, "when a Whitefield, a Summerfield, a Duff, a Beecher, a Punshon, or a Spurgeon is found to fill it." Do not these names suggest the question, whether some of the difficulty may not be found in the pulpit itself? or at least, does not the vast success of these men intimate that a remedy may be found in some change of preaching? many Before attempting to discover the secret of Mr. Spurgeon's power and success, let us first look at the man, let us see what is in him, and from what he is, detect, if we can, the secret of what he does. Rev. C. H. Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, in Essex, on the 19th of June, 1834. He is, therefore, but little over twenty-three years old. His father and grandfather are both still living, and are Independent ministers, neither of them giving evidence of possessing those talents which have won this great popularity for their son. His literary advantages were small, and his opportunities of acquiring education were but brief; an ordinary English education was received at Colchester, and a year was passed in the Agricultural College at Maidstone, where his attention appears to have been directed chiefly to the natural sciences, for which he acquired a great fondness. Some further opportunities of mental culture were afforded him while acting in the capacity of usher in a school at Newmarket, and he subsequently filled the same office for a short time in FOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-35 a day-school at Cambridge. Mr. Spurgeon's education, if indeed it may be called by that name, was secured rather by extensive reading than through the process of intellectual training. He began the assiduous study of books at an early period, and has evidently, ever since, been a comprehensive reader of whatever he deems of practical use. His sermons abound in quotations, both of prose and poetry, from Bacon to Mrs. Stowe, and from Shakspeare to Wesley. Bunyan is his favorite author; Charles Wesley furnishes the greatest amount of his poetry. He has been a reader of Jay, and a student of Leighton. Mr. Spurgeon is mighty in the Scriptures. We would not say he has been a great student of the Bible, but he has evidently been a great reader of the Bible. He exhibits a remarkable familiarity with Scripture facts, and his sermons are full of striking and accurate Scripture quotations. To his diligence as a great reader, the results of which he retains in a capacious and ready memory, he adds the habit of careful observation of men and nature. He is a lover of nature, and watches her movements with a keen and admiring eye; while, through the discipline of a diversified life, Providence has furnished him the opportunity of securing an early and accurate knowledge of human nature. Since his conversion his reading and his studies have been in the light of the cross. He has "built his studio on Calvary;" he has "taken a hermit's cell in the Garden of Gethsemane, and laves his brows with the waters of Siloa." "Once," he remarks, "I put all my knowledge together in glorious confusion; but now I have a shelf in my head for everything, and whatever I read or hear I know where to stow it away. Ever since I have known Christ, I have put Christ in the center as my sun, and each secular science revolves around it as a planet, while the minor sciences are satellites to their planets." While at Newmarket he began to address the Sunday-school children, and that in such a style as attracted grown-up hearers. At Cambridge this practice was continued, with the addition of frequent visits to the neighboring villages, where he preached on Sabbath evenings, and also frequently during the week. While engaged in this work the Baptist Church at Waterbeach called him to be their pastor. He accepted the invitation, and while giving full Sabbath labor to his people, eleven villages shared the advantage of his sermons on week-days, which in a single year amounted to more than three hundred and fifty extra sermons. In January, 1854, he was invited to undertake the pastorate of the Baptist Church, in New Park-street, London. The fame of the young preacher spread rapidly throughout the metropolis, and before six months had passed Mr. Spurgeon was the most attractive preacher in London. His spacious chapel was packed with eager auditors, long before the time of service. From New Park-street Chapel Mr. S. removed to Exeter Hall, and from thence to Surrey Musical Hall, a vast audienceroom, capable of accommodating six thousand hearers, and though he has now been before the London public for three years and a half, still every appearance of Mr. S. gives an opportunity to measure the full capacity of his audience-room. The exact date of Mr. Spurgeon's conversion we do not know. He is, however, a living, experimental Christian; refers often to his own conversion, talks of the witness and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and though a hyper-Calvinist in theology, he is a thorough Wesleyan in religious experience. He says, in his sermon on Sovereignty and Salvation: "Six years ago to-day, as near as possible at this very hour of the day, I was 'in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity,' but had yet, by Divine grace, been led to feel the bitterness of that bondage, and to cry out by reasou of the soreness of its slavery. Seeking rest, and finding none, I stepped within the house of God, and sat there, afraid to look upward, lest I should be utterly cut off, and lest his fierce wrath should consume me. The minister rose in his pulpit, and, as I have done this morning, read this text: 'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.' I looked that moment; the grace of faith was vouchsafed to me in the self-same instant; and now I think I can say with truth, 'Ere since by faith I saw the stream I shall never forget that day while memory holds its place; nor can I help repeating this text whenever I remember that hour when first I knew the Lord. How strangely gracious! How wonderfully and marvelously kind, that he who heard these words so little time ago for his own soul's profit, should now address you, this morning, as his hearers from the same text, in the full and confident hope that some poor sinner within these walls may hear the glad tidings of salvation for himself also, and may, to-day, be turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God."" We have, in this extract, not only the evidence of his own conversion, but of his firm faith in the reality and instantaneousness of conversion, a faith which gives character to his preaching. We now turn to Mr. Spurgeon's preaching. There is no difficulty in characterizing his style; it is distinctly marked and easy of description. It belongs to the earnest, plain, practical, searching school. His texts are always simple, containing some practical or experimental truth, and his sermons are always textual. His introduction is short, direct, and designed to awaken attention to the subject of the text. His divisions are few and natural, and such as the text immediately suggests; his subdivisions are sparing, never |