Chapter106: Public Opinion on Spurgeon's Life and Work

Chapter 106.
Public Opinion On Spurgeon's Life And Work The utterances of eminent persons and of the daily and weekly press on Spurgeon's character, his service, and his influence, at the time of his passing away demand some notice; and this biography would hardly be complete without some references to this subject, accompanied with illustrative extracts. It may be said without any approach to exaggeration that no great statesman in ending his career was ever more universally noticed by the journals of the day; and it has fallen to the lot of few men of commanding position to have such a chorus of encomiums uttered over their graves. There was, at the same time, so much of fair or discriminating criticism, that one who took the trouble to read any considerable number of the articles referred to was not only helped to make a worthy estimate of the preacher's character, he saw more clearly than before in what light the pastor of the Tabernacle was regarded by the great world outside the community with which he identified himself. Proof more emphatic than was ever possible before was given that Spurgeon, by his unselfishness and devotion to work, had won the sincere regard of the nation. None will know better than the readers of this biography that it had not always been so; but the very papers which had most roundly abused and misrepresented him in former years now excelled their contemporaries in sounding out his praise. It is one of the most remarkable instances on record of a supposed charlatan, a mere adventurer, living down opposition and winning the respect and regard of all.

Before turning attention to the public press, however, I will give some personal opinions on Spurgeon, which, as signs of the times, deserve to be registered. There were some religious teachers, even in supposed orthodox denominations, who still regarded the great preacher with extreme dislike. No sorry quidnunc who visited the Surrey Gardens in 1857 to write a caricature of the proceedings could have been more bitter in denunciation than certain of these critics. Thus a Free Church Edinburgh professor, who once went to hear Spurgeon, now very boldly gave his opinion:—

"The theology was revolting, the concluding appeal to the terrors of hell forced and unimpressive, and the whole sermon a failure. How much of this coarse, unscriptural exegesis men of the Spurgeon type perpetrate in the course of a long ministry, and how much mischief it does, alienating many from church and religion!" To the above a correspondent replied:—

"I wonder did he ever hear it said that the failure may often be in the hearer. On high authority we are told that the seed may fall upon a great variety of ground, and it strikes me in the case before us the cause of failure may have been in the hearer, as it is with even the most eloquent and accomplished preacher that would become intelligible to a man who writes about 'perpetrating an exegesis,' whatever that may mean." The late Principal Tulloch was hardly of the school of Spurgeon, but he knew how to be just and generous. Principal Tulloch died before the popular preacher, but had he lived we know enough about his sentiments to be assured that he would have regarded the death of the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle as a sore national loss. During one of his visits to London, in company with Professor Ferrier, Principal Tulloch wrote to his wife:—

"We have just been to hear Spurgeon, and have been both so much impressed that I wish to give you my impressions while they are fresh. As we came out we both confessed 'There is no doubt about that;' and I was struck with Ferrier's remarkable expression, 'I feel it would do me good to hear the like of that, it sat so close to reality.' The sermon is about the most real thing I have come in contact with for a long time. Guthrie is as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal to it; and although there is not the elevated thought and descriptive felicity of Caird (the latter especially, however, not wanting), there is more power. Power in fact and life are its characteristics.

"He began the service with a short prayer, then sang the 23rd Psalm; but instead of our fine old version, some vile version, in which the simple beauty of the hymn is entirely lost. Then he read and expounded the 32nd chapter (I think) of Numbers. His remarks were very good, and to the point, with no display of misplaced emotion. He then prayed more at length, and this was the part of the service I least liked. He preached from the same chapter he read, about the spies from the land of Canaan—the good and bad spies. It was a parable, he said, of religion. Then, after speaking of men of the world judging religion (which, however, they had no right to do) from those who professed it rather than from the Bible—which in thought and grasp was the fullest part of the sermon—he said he would speak of two classes of people, the bad spies first and then the good spies, those who made a great ado about religion and did not show its power.

"His description here was graphic beyond what I can give you an idea of; the most telling satire, cutting home yet not overdone, as he spoke of the gloomy religionist who brought up a bad report of the land of religion, making himself and his wife and children miserable, drawing down the blinds on a Sunday, 'always most religious when most miserable, and most miserable when most religious;' then the meek-faced fellow who can pray all Sunday and preach by the hour, and cheat all Monday, always ready with his prayer-book, but keeping a singular cash-book, wouldn't swear, but would cheat and lie. Then, again, he showed still higher powers of pathos in describing the good spies—the old blind saint who had served God for fifty years, and never found Him fail; the consumptive girl testifying to the goodness of her Saviour as the dews of death gathered on her brow. And then of all who only lived as Christians—the good wife who converted her husband by her untiring gentleness, and having supper ready even at twelve o'clock at night; the servant who, because she was religious, cleaned knives better without losing their edge; the Christian merchant; the wife who, unknown to fame, and having no time for teaching or district visiting, achieved her household work day by day.

"In fact, the whole was a wonderful display of mental vigour and Christian sense, and gave me a good idea of what good such a man may do. The impression made upon Ferrier, which he has just read over to me as he has written it to his wife, is 'driving downright.' He improves in look, too, a little as he warms in preaching. At first he certainly is not interesting in face or figure; but his voice is of rare felicity, as clear as a bell—not a syllable lost."

Writing from quite another standpoint, "Sacerdos Hibernicus" remarked:—

"I willingly admit that Mr. Spurgeon in his day kept many a man morally good—kept him from substantial sin and therefore morally good. Again I willingly admit that men who entered the 'Tabernacle' to 'scoff' left it 'not scoffers,' left it in the belief of some moral laws, left it not the worse because of Mr. Spurgeon's teaching. This certainly was a gain. Better have a belief in some moral laws than believe all moral laws to be shams. But when you say he was a reliable teacher because he was 'sincere, simple, unpretending, and straightforward' in his teaching, I cannot agree with you; because, I suppose, every teacher would claim for his teaching similar adjectives. Again you say, Mr. Spurgeon sought not himself but his 'Master'—and you could not say in his favour a bigger thing. Nor am I in a position to contravene your statement; nor, if I were, would I—a Catholic priest—do so. I leave Mr. Spurgeon in his 'Master's' hands. But his 'Master' came on earth in a twofold character: as a 'saviour' and as a 'teacher.' Of course, Mr. Spurgeon believed—and rightly believed—in his 'Master' as a 'saviour.' But as a 'teacher,' Mr. Spurgeon's office, as a disciple of his 'Master,' would be to teach what his 'Master' taught—that and only that. Might I ask you where Mr. Spurgeon got his mathematical knowledge of what his 'Master' taught?" To the above another correspondent added this testimony:—"...Both Cardinal Manning and Mr. Spurgeon were extreme men. We English dislike extremes, but extremes carry the day. Viæ mediæ have never produced enthusiasm nor leaders of men—it is contrary to all law that they should—and the Church of England is, by her first principles, a via media, both in doctrine and practice. She attempts to stand well with the classes and the masses. How to serve the two masters of Capital and Labour is the problem which is perplexing the minds of her foremost clergy at the present moment. This problem the Cardinal and the Preacher solved each in his own way. With true statesmanlike instinct, the former was a Democrat, and knew when to sink the dignity of the office before the man. Mr. Spurgeon's first victories were won amongst the dominant people of his early life. The sphere of his work lay with the great middle class. He cared to influence the two extreme sections of the nation only through them. The two men who, amongst the Anglican clergy in the last twenty years, have come nearest to the influence and power of Cardinal Manning and Mr. Spurgeon were Bishop Fraser and Dean Stanley. Students of their lives seem to see that they failed only when they could not shake themselves free from the trammels of their system.

"It is also worthy of notice that both of the two great Nonconformists held independent positions at a very early age. This is almost impossible except under the most favourable circumstances in the State Church.... The State Church, as at present constituted, has no special attractions for men of mark. She is, as a rule, only a kind and beneficent mother to those of her clergy who hold narrow views, possess private means, know how to toady, or are well connected. She strongly resents any interference in her domestic peace by the original or the strong." In a letter to The Times Dr. Parker wrote:—

"The only pulpit-name of the nineteenth century that will be remembered is no longer the name of a living man. Mr. Spurgeon was absolutely destitute of intellectual benevolence.... But who could compare with him in moral sympathy? In this view he was in very deed two men. The theologian and the philanthropist lived at opposite sides of the universe. Those who were damned by the theologian were saved by the philanthropist. Mr. Spurgeon's was emphatically religious or spiritual preaching. He had but one sermon, yet it was always new." Dr. Parker and Spurgeon are said to have been on cordial terms until H. Ward Beecher was admitted into the pulpit of the City Temple. Dr. Parker adds, in reference to Spurgeon:—"No good could come of my reasoning with him, because it was impossible for him to change. I had no apology to make. The greatest honour conferred upon my pulpit was Mr. Beecher's occupancy of it. So we parted; yet I trust to meet where we shall see all things in a clearer light. Mr. Spurgeon's career has proved that evangelical teaching can draw around itself the greatest congregation in the world, and hold it for a lifetime.... The great voice has ceased. It was the mightiest voice I ever heard—a voice that could give orders in a tempest, and find its way across a torrent as through a silent aisle. Meanwhile, the stress is greater upon those who remain. Each must further tax his strength so as to lessen the loss which has come upon the whole Church."

Principal Charles Edwards, of Bala Theological College, drew some distinctions between Spurgeon and Liddon:—

"Liddon is rhetorical, too rhetorical. His style lacks simplicity and crispness. You listen with admiration to the eloquent flow of words. The preacher at the outset pitches his voice high—a voice clear, piercing, finely-cut. He raises it gradually from beginning to end. At last he seems, with a sudden turn of the head, to be flinging it to the farthest corners. When he closes his manuscript, the congregation, after an hour's rapture and breathless attention, appear as if a weight had been lifted from their spirits. It is a real relief to be able to assert your own individual existence after the untiring pressure of the great preacher's profound earnestness. For Liddon was profoundly earnest. He had in him more of a prophet's wail than Spurgeon.

"Both were prophets, preaching to a cynical and self-indulgent generation. Liddon was the Jeremiah of our age. But Spurgeon was its Isaiah. He is not rhetorical. If anything, he is sometimes too familiar. He does not pitch his voice at all, anymore than a person pitches his voice in his own parlour. He knows he is speaking to some thousands. But, without the slightest apparent effort, he speaks so that the man that sits furthest from him can hear, and not more than hear, every syllable. Even the 's' at the end of a word comes on its own wings, and reaches the ear in its own separate moment of time. His voice is not sharp and piercing, but full, most musical, like a sound from the great organ. He does not raise it gradually. He plays with its ups and downs. He fences with it as with a rapier, thrusting quarte and tierce. But it is no foil. He means to draw blood, and seldom fails to make it spurt. Liddon convinced his hearers every time he preached that he was in earnest. I am bound to confess Spurgeon did not produce a conviction of this sort in my mind as he preached. The question did not occur to me. He was so perfectly natural! Liddon's earnestness was a distinct element of his ministry. It was like the seriousness of a great Welsh preacher. Every reader that heard him will know whom I mean. Neither he nor Liddon could tolerate humour in the pulpit. The Welsh preacher was brimful of it by nature—wrth naturiaéth. But then nature is evil, and must be crucified. Spurgeon was fortunately more illogical, and refused to banish from his preaching an element so richly poured into his soul. He consecrated it, as he consecrated every other gift, to the work of winning men to Christ."

Among the thousands of pulpit references to the departed preacher on Sunday, February 14, none was more cordial and emphatic than that of Archdeacon Sinclair at St. Paul's Cathedral:—

"We cannot hear untouched that our country has lost its greatest living preacher. I use the words deliberately, because I do not believe that there are any of us who remain who for thirty years, every Sunday during the twelvemonth, could gather together, morning and evening, more than six thousand earnest, patient hearers, eager to receive from one untiring tongue the Word of Life. Analyse the gifts of that powerful evangelist as accurately as you can; measure, as closely as may be possible, the secret of his influence; but I do not believe that you will find any other teacher whose printed sermons would be read week after week, year after year, by tens and hundreds of thousands, not only all over England, Scotland, and Wales, but in the backwoods of Canada, in the prairies of America, in the remotest settlements of Australia and New Zealand, wherever an English newspaper can reach, or the English tongue is spoken. The thing is absolutely unique. It has no parallel. You reverence your own Church with all your heart and soul as the pure and apostolical branch of Christ's visible communion planted of old in this country by God's saints, purified and reformed in the long course of ages; but does that prevent you from recognising and honouring those whom the accidents of history have separated from your outward fellowship? It is probable that never once in his whole life did it occur to the great preacher, even as an intellectual possibility, that he should join the national Church, any more than you think it conceivable that you should be found within the scornful pale of Rome. It is the privilege of a national Church to unite and not to separate; to give prominence to points of unity instead of distinctions; to promote mutual understanding and charity, not to exaggerate divergence of opinions. What was it that gave this plain, uncultured preacher a religious influence so unparalleled in our day, and made his name a household word all over the wide world? No doubt he had rare gifts. He was courageous, resolute, and lively in these times of the faint heart, irresolution, and dulness. He had that genuine eloquence which is all the more effective because of its directness and simplicity. He had a matchless voice, powerful, and vibrating with every quality of earnestness and variety. He had abundant humour, tender pathos, and never failed to be interesting. He was utterly untrammelled by the questionings of criticism. But it was, above all, the splendid completeness, the unswerving strength, the exuberant vitality of his faith in God's revelation to man through His Son Jesus Christ, combined with the width and warmth of his zealous love for souls, that gave him that unbounded power which he exercised so loyally for Christian belief among the middle classes, who are the very backbone of England, and throughout the English-speaking race." At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, on the same day, Dr. Pierson corrected some false rumours, and gave some striking facts in connection with the late pastor's life-work:—

"Some of the daily newspapers have been saying that the Pastors' College would not be continued, and that even if the pastor had survived it would have been given up. It is a great surprise to the officers of the Tabernacle, who have not been favoured with the recent intelligence upon the subject which seems to have been given to the editors of some newspapers. I pray you, my friends, let no such incredible statements make the slightest impression upon your minds. They are most assuredly inventions of the devil, to imperil that institution in which, as Mr. Spurgeon wrote me only a few weeks ago, his heart was specially enlisted. The training of young men to the ministry of the Gospel was to him one of the transcendent responsibilities of his life, and the Pastors' College, by the grace of God, will go on doing its magnificent work.

"Some people talk about the Church going into a decline. It would be the greatest reproach to the ministry of your pastor and to Christ if any paralysis should come upon one of the institutions connected with this, the greatest Christian Church in the world. I have been making a computation, and I find that Mr. Spurgeon must have preached the Gospel to no less than 10,000,000 of people. During his pastorate he must have received into communion between 10,000 and 12,000 converts. His sermons must have reached a total of between 20,000,000 and 40,000,000 of readers, and it is probable that to-day there are more than 50,000,000 of people reading of the Christ whom he loved, and of his labours in the past. Most of you know how those sermons have gone round the world, translated into twenty-three tongues and dialects that we know of—French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Syriac, Arabic, South American tongues, those of the islands of the South Seas, of the continents of Asia, of Africa, and of Europe. Into every part of the earth they have gone, and it is impossible for us to form a correct or exact estimate of the marvellous influence of that one voice and of that one pen. I have made no reference to the multitude of works besides sermons which were produced by his pen. Testimony has been given throughout the services of the past week that he was the greatest preacher of this century, and no doubt his Gospel messages have more rapidly and more distantly permeated the works than those of any other man in that century. I want to ask you whether it would not be a privilege to serve the same God, and so in course of time to receive the same reward and hear the words, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant'?"

Mr. G. T. Palmer, Rector of Newington, in which parish the Metropolitan Tabernacle is situated, wrote to The Times:—

"The announcement you made in The Times of Saturday, that I was to take part in a memorial service in connection with the funeral of Mr. Spurgeon, has been the occasion of surprise to some and of offence to others.... No doubt I shall feel myself in a somewhat strange position should I be on the platform of the great Tabernacle. I have never been in a Nonconformist place of worship since I was ordained by Bishop Wilberforce in 1858. Once before I had been in such a place of public worship, and that was as a Cambridge undergraduate to hear Mr. Spurgeon. I have no reason, therefore, to suspect myself of an unorthodox eagerness to take part in modes of worship unsanctioned by the Church. But the late Mr. Spurgeon was unique as a minister of the Gospel. The esteem felt for him by all sorts and conditions of Christian men is exceptional, the sorrow occasioned by his death is one in which they all participate. As rector of the parish in the heart of which the Tabernacle has been built, my relation to him was peculiar. It might have given rise to ill-will between us. As I look over his letters and remember his words in conversation, I am touched by thoughts of his Christian courtesy, gentleness, and humility. Will Christian orthodoxy or Church discipline suffer if I try to give these thoughts expression on a very exceptional as well as sad occasion, although it may be in a place where prayer is wont to be made in words other than those of the Book of Common Prayer?"

Dr. Robertson Nicoll wrote like one who understood the preacher and his work:—

"His style was famous as a model of clear Saxon. It is often tinged with beauty, and shows always that the preacher has gathered material from far and near; but the best merit that belongs to it is unfailing clearness and force. Mr. Spurgeon can rise on occasion to a high and stirring strain of eloquence, and is never more powerful than when he launches thunderbolts against evil in every form. He is deeply read in the theology of this country, and has taken from it its homeliness, directness, and unction, while leaving behind what is involved, cumbrous, and technical. Mr. Spurgeon loves to call things by their name, and is not careful to avoid raising a smile, though occasions of laughter are much less frequent in his sermons than they used to be. He introduces anecdote and illustration into his sermons to a considerable extent, though not so much as in former days. Many have taken exception to the frequency with which his own experiences are narrated, but, as we think, without much reason. The power of personal reference in securing the attention of an audience is very great; and if the employment of this source of strength is attributed by some to egotism, it cannot be helped. No preacher can afford to disregard it. The illustrations are gathered from an immense variety of sources, and bear witness to his wide knowledge. With all this he combines the manliness of a genuine Englishman. There is nothing weak or morbid about his mind; indeed, if he has a defect, it is that there is too little pathos in his sermons. He is, if we may be allowed the expression, a typical John Bull, and it is his John Bullism in religion that has made him so popular with all classes of the community. All know him to be every inch a man, and even those most hostile to his opinions are proud of him. The charity child who, on being asked who was the Prime Minister of England, replied, 'Spurgeon,' was not far from the truth." As Spurgeon and Manning died much about the same time, contrasts between them were drawn, and, according to the leading journal, the Cardinal "was rather a social than a spiritual force."Spurgeon the preacher is thus depicted:—

"He varied his teaching in a thousand ways, but from whatever point he started it was to this that he soon came round. His jokes and anecdotes and rough pleasantries were thrown in by the way, but not so as to obscure or interfere with his main drift. His audience might laugh if they would. His care was to make sure that they did not go to sleep, and in this he was singularly successful. We doubt if, from first to last, he told any of them anything which every one of them did not either know or believe. His art was to put old truths into a new dress, or to present them in a new form in which they were more likely to come home to the apprehension and to the hearts of his hearers. In all this his want of learning was in one way a distinct advantage to him. His range of vision was narrowed by it, but his standing-ground was the more secure. If he had known more, he might possibly have been less confident in himself, and therefore the less fitted for his special ministerial work. But whatever judgment we form about his faults or merits, the facts remain that he could command the attention of 24,000 eager listeners, that he never preached except to full benches, that his printed sermons have circulated by hundreds of thousands, and that he retained for nearly forty busy years an undisputed leadership in his own denomination, and beyond it. Such a man as this it is who has now gone from us, and his death will be felt within wide limits as a very real public loss."

Spurgeon's supposed want of education is here exaggerated until a false impression, is conveyed. It goes nearer the mark to say that Spurgeon owed "nothing to the ecclesiastical turmoils of his time":—

"He had no ambition save that of saving souls in his own way. He was his own Pope, and the Pope of his congregation, and he neither needed nor would ever have tolerated any other. Rome itself was not more infallible nor more unchangeable than he was. Indeed, the canon and inspiration of Scripture might well be thought by those who share Spurgeon's views of their character to be safer in his inflexible hands than in those of Rome as represented by the flexible and versatile Manning....

"To some of us this unyielding attitude will seem to have been his strength, to others his weakness. But without debating that point, we may say with confidence that his real strength lay in his grasp, at once homely and profound, of vital religious truth, and in his power of delivering that truth straight into the hearts of those who heard him. 'When he left the pulpit,' said Lord Houghton, 'he was an inspired apostle.' He has left the pulpit for ever, but his apostleship lives on in the quickened hearts and heightened lives of his innumerable hearers, and his inspiration is acknowledged of all men. That is why his funeral will be made almost a national occasion, and why all good and devout men among his countrymen, without distinction of faith or sect, will stand in spirit round his grave." The Conservatives were naturally pleased because Spurgeon was not, in Mr. Gladstone's sense of the phrase, a Home Ruler. In a more general way one of their organs thus referred to his character and work:—

"No estimate of his worth would be adequate which failed to take account of the work he did for his people and his denomination at Newington. Those who share his convictions would resent any attempt to explain his power by the mere form of his discourse. Vain, in their opinion, would have been his command of all the resources of the orator, his flow of homely or of graceful imagery, his rapid transitions from grave to gay, from invective to entreaty, from solemn pleadings with the innermost soul of each individual hearer to grotesque illustration and racy colloquialism—had they not felt that he was speaking straight from his heart to theirs, and working, not for his own fame, but for their profit. This is not the place to define, much less to criticise, Mr. Spurgeon's theology. It was, in his own language, of the good old Evangelical type—dogmatic enough on the one or two points held to be vital; loose, vague, and indifferent on all that concerned the mere niceties of creeds and confessions. In this respect Mr. Spurgeon was not original, and would have indignantly repudiated the suggestion that he had added to or varied the message he had received from his predecessors in the great work of conversion. The Rev. Charles Simeon and the Wesleys had, after the long reign of laxity and latitudinarianism of the early part of the eighteenth century, framed and elaborated the system of which Mr. Spurgeon was a singularly energetic exponent. Nor can it be said that his gifts as a preacher, pre-eminent as they were in his own day, were unique. He did not follow in the lines laid down by Whitefield and Rowland Hill, and many others. He confined himself to more select audiences than the men who rushed over the United Kingdom, and spent, themselves in incessant harangues to vast crowds of illiterate, and sometimes almost savage, men and women. The difference of the conditions under which Mr. Spurgeon worked from those which the itinerant founders of Revivalism had to confront indicates the space which Evangelicalism has traversed. Whitefield contentedly faced missiles and execrations with no pulpit save a cart and no roof except the sky. When Mr. Spurgeon, for want of a more commodious meeting-house, took to preaching in a public hall, some of his congregation declared themselves scandalised."

Another paper, which had in course of years changed from a violent opponent to a great admirer of Spurgeon, said:—

"From the Bible, the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and the writings of the Puritan Fathers, he derived the simplicity of utterance and nervous energy of phrase which made the common people hear him gladly, and the educated listen with appreciation as to a half-forgotten melody charged with the pathos of the past. To the primitive plainness and directness of English speech the dead preacher united perfect clearness of argument. A hearer might not agree with his opinions, but he could never mistake them. While avoiding the elaborate and formal structure which characterised the early Puritan sermons, Mr. Spurgeon, who knew them better, perhaps, than any man now living, emulated all their higher qualities, and brought to the emotional speech of the nineteenth century the perspicuity of severer and, perhaps, more logical utterances. We have dwelt upon those aspects of the striking individuality now lost to us with which the world was most familiar; but much might be said of Mr. Spurgeon, in his capacity as a Christian philanthropist, whose hand was ready to any good work, and whose zeal for the poor and needy will 'smell sweet and blossom in the dust'; much, also, of his capacity as an administrator, and of the knowledge of human nature which enabled him to deal with the concerns of a vast and varied enterprise without offence to any. His sterling honesty, fearless outspokenness, and unflinching fidelity to a creed not all the clauses of which are now fashionable, should equally be remembered to his credit. These things, however, need no assertion. They were well-known constituents in a character which reflects honour upon our age and country. Assuredly among the Christian worthies of the nineteenth century whose names will go down to late posterity not the least honoured by all good men will be Charles Haddon Spurgeon." A Liberal organ referred to the preacher's descent:—

"Mr. Spurgeon did not belong entirely to the people whom he served. He was a Dutchman on the father's side, a branch of the stock which Alva in vain tried to bend to his iron will, and in appearance, at all events, he suggested his descent from the countrymen of William the Silent. His Dutch solidity, however, was shot through with a lighter strain of blood, just as his Puritan fervour had come down to him through generations of men who professed the faith in which Cromwell and Bunyan and Wesley found their inspiration. In a sense, indeed, Spurgeon lived largely in the past. He cared nothing for new ideas, for modern refinements of faith and morals. His language, save for its characteristic turn of humour, and perhaps not even in that, differed little from that of some stout camp-preacher of Cromwellian days. His method of interpreting Scripture was largely theirs. His views of the future life, and its relations to the existence of to-day, were in no important sense distinct from those of the authors of the Westminster Confession. It has, indeed, been one of the wonders of the time that in the midst of our humanitarian, æsthetic, sensitive age, with its Universalist formulæ, its shrinking from logical extremes, its leaning to optimist idealism, one powerful, insistent, strenuous voice has resolutely preached the old doctrines in the old style, illumined by the light which genius gives, but set uncompromisingly to the note which found favour with the 'rude forefathers' who made English Puritanism. And the voice has been a solitary one. Spurgeon leaves no heirs. The attempt to found a kind of Sacred College, of which he was the head, failed. His 'young men' recall only the less desirable features of his ministry. Truly, the Last of the Puritans is gone from us." The organ of the fashionable world identified Spurgeon's life and work with South London more than the circumstances of the case properly allowed, as the great congregation was really drawn from all parts of the metropolis:—

"The public there were naturally and justly proud of him; and they lived near enough to him not only to know the sincerity of his life, but also for him to understand them and their wants, and for them to feel that he understood them as no other religious leader can be said to have done at the same time and in the same place. In that half of the metropolis, which has certainly not received the lion's share of those influences and institutions which at once humanise and spiritualise, the work of the Tabernacle and its eloquent pastor were sorely needed. How far that work can be and will be continued by the successors of the deceased preacher it is not easy to predict. The essentially subjective and emotional religion which offers such admirable opportunities to the eloquence of a Wesley, a Whitefield, or a Spurgeon, has the defects of its qualities. It necessarily loses on the lips of the comparatively commonplace preacher much of that compelling power which it gathers from the personal gifts of an exceptionally eloquent pulpit orator. One must not, however, for that, underrate the solid good which Mr. Spurgeon's preaching wrought in the souls of very many who heard him. The full depth of his influence will never be known; but at least it is certain that it was very great. He has left South London spiritually richer than he found it, and yesterday's manifestation abundantly testifies to the high place he held in the affections of those for whom and among whom he laboured." In regard to Spurgeon having been a victim of overwork, this true note was struck:—

"And yet at this moment the reflection forces itself, whether Mr. Spurgeon did not limit his influence by too great a devotion to the pulpit. He might have lived longer and worked over wider areas had he preached less and organised more. He has died at fifty-eight. Wesley saw his eightieth year; and to-day the influence of the Methodist leader, a century after his death, works more effectively than ever. Great preacher that he was, he understood that to create machinery is better than to be oneself the sole machine. The founder of institutions survives the orator. The effective force of a Chrysostom is surpassed by a Loyola, and a General Booth may have proved wiser in his generation than the pastor of the Tabernacle. It is true that he did organise, and effectively. But he was too lavish of himself. He did prodigies with his individual bow and spear, but great leaders are better employed in creating armies and filling them with their spirit than by exhibiting wonders of individual, strength and prowess." The provincial press was, on the whole, as generous in the tribute it paid to Spurgeon's memory as that of the metropolis. A leading journal of the West of England said:—

"Mr. Spurgeon was the poor man's friend. These last two days have seen how much his teaching and his example have reached the hearts of the weary workers of London. When most of the well-to-do were still asleep, the workman snatched an hour from his toil for the sake of passing round, in the dawn of early morning, the coffin placed before the familiar pulpit of the great orator. Every class has been represented in that procession. Thousands upon thousands have visited the great Baptist temple, and there were many tears shed by those who walked mournfully down the aisles. Detraction is hushed. We have read no single ungenerous sentence, we have heard no unappreciative word about the great man gone. His teaching in some of its aspects may have been even repulsive to the majority of his countrymen. He did not appeal to the learned, and he offended the fastidious; but because he was a man in the highest sense of the term—an Englishman, honest, God-fearing, righteous, and a lover of good work, he will have to-day all true hearts mourning for the loss which the Christian churches in this country are feeling. Of him it may truly be said, 'His name liveth for evermore.'"

Looking into the future, a Northern daily journal remarked:—

"The question that must already have been asked by many, no doubt, is, Who will be sufficient to fill the place which it was confidently hoped until little more than a week ago Mr. Spurgeon would reoccupy? The great congregation which his preaching gathered Sunday after Sunday into the Metropolitan Tabernacle cannot long be held together by the mere power of organisation without the commanding influence of a directing head. The future of the Metropolitan Tabernacle is probably more uncertain than that of the many religious and philanthropic agencies which Mr. Spurgeon, by his wonderful gifts of organisation and magnetic power, had built up around it, or in some measure associated with it. It seems probable that Mr. Spurgeon has made no special provision for ensuring the continuance of his many-sided religious work. His principle was that each generation should have cast upon it the duty of providing for its own wants. 'Let my successor,' he is reported to have said some years ago, 'if I have one in the College, do as I have done, and secure the funds which he needs for his own teaching.' That successor will not be easily found who will be able to take up all the varied engagements of the departed just where he had been obliged to put them aside. But what no single successor may be found to do a different organisation may succeed in doing, though not perhaps in Mr. Spurgeon's way, or with quite the same measure of success with which his enthusiastic efforts and unbounded faith were rewarded." The Scotch newspapers were quite as free in their criticisms as the English, but were quite as generous. Thus Spurgeon was contrasted with some other eminent preachers of his time:—

"Mr. Spurgeon's chief renown, however, was as a preacher; and his power and influence as a preacher have far outweighed all the minor defects of his somewhat narrow theology. His sermons were not marked by the culture, the subtlety of intellect, and the elevavation of thought of Liddon, Newman, or Stopford Brooke, or by the elegance of style and sonorous eloquence of Magee and other preachers of eloquence of the Church of England; but he was indisputably the first of Nonconformist preachers, and his sermons were characterised by a force and directness, a use of plain, blunt, homely Saxon diction that rendered them fully as powerful as, and perhaps more telling than, the elegant and refined utterances of the clerical orators just named."

Another Scotch daily paper said:—

"He held to his beliefs with intense ardour of conviction, and regarded it as his imperative mission to convey that conviction to others. He had a wide range of sympathies, immense force of character, a large endowment of robust common-sense, and a gift of healthy, genuine humour. These qualities the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle employed with his whole energy in the exercise of his function as a preacher, and they gave him to the last—albeit the theology he preached was regarded by many, even in his own denomination, as narrow and out of accord with the tendencies of modern thought—a hold on the popular attention such as was possessed by no other ecclesiastic of the time. He wrote, as he spoke, with a directness, a simplicity, and a command of racy Saxon English unsurpassed by any public man of this generation except, perhaps, John Bright; and while for more than thirty years he gathered round him every Sunday larger congregations than listened to any other London preacher, his written sermons, his lectures to his students, his 'John Ploughman's Talk,' and his 'Treasury of David' have had a world-wide circulation. Most of what he has written has been translated into all the principal European languages, and has been circulated in the United States even more freely than in this country. If the popular appreciation of a man's teachings is to be taken as a standard of his greatness, then Charles Spurgeon was one of the greatest men England has ever produced. Wherever Evangelical and Calvinistic Christianity has penetrated there Spurgeon's influence has long been felt and his name revered. The tidings of his death will be received with a sense of personal bereavement in innumerable places where his face was never seen and his voice never heard." The Unitarians, though Mr. Spurgeon was always their uncompromising opponent, were not behindhand with their tribute of praise. A few passages from one of their journals may be given as a sample of what was said by others:—

"...The leading statesmen and literati of our day, and members of both aristocratic and the Royal Family, now and then were among his hearers. All were more or less impressed with his sincerity, earnestness, and eloquence.

"While it is true that he could speak no language but his own English, he certainly was the master of the art of speaking it in a way which went straight to the heart of his hearers. His language had no fine literary polish, but his sentences appealed to all sections of society. The preacher's belief was that he had a message to deliver, and it was delivered with sincerity and power. He had a wonderful voice, full, sweet, and musical, that could whisper or thunder at his will. There was freedom, too, and fearlessness in his speaking, backed up by thrilling description and wit and anecdote. His preaching stood the test of time....

"We turn away from his"Calvinistic theories' to his Christian life, and here we find his solid kindness, his genuine loving character, in direct contrast with his narrow creed. There are not a few men of whose creed we may say it is similar to our own, and very dissimilar to that of Mr. Spurgeon's, but it would be a long drop from his noble, generous life to theirs. And there are popular preachers, men who have their thousands of followers, with a more liberal faith, but of very mean life—a gulf separates them. If as a Church we say, 'Character, not creed,' let us not forget this in our judgment of Mr. Spurgeon. Everywhere it is known he was a man not simply of independence of character, but of moral blamelessness of life. All who knew him knew him personally, loved him intensely There was no meanness, no littleness, but a large warm-hearted sympathy pervading his whole nature.... He bore all his sufferings with pious trust. He set the example of perfect resignation to the will of God. He did good in his own circle as opportunities offered themselves. His preaching and life have blessed the homes, no doubt, of tens of thousands, and now he has gone to his exceeding great reward. Honour and peace to his memory. We will gladly lay a wreath upon his grave."

Thus people of all creeds and of all political parties united to honour the memory of a man who lived a life of earnestness and self-sacrifice in building up the Church and advancing many philanthropic works.