Chapter 10: Settlemen At Waterbeach

Chapter 10.
Settlement At Waterbeach

Waterbeach Past and Present—Winfold Farm and Denney Abbey—The Doctrines preached—The Old Chapel—A Time of Preparation for Higher Service—The Young Preacher's Method of Study—His Ingenuous Nature—An Old Deacon's Recollections—Mr. Spurgeon's first Sermon in the Chapel—Characteristics of his subsequent Discourses—Reproving an Old Minister—"The Sauciest Dog that ever barked in a Pulpit."

In the natural order of things it was impossible that the light of such a preacher as Mr. Spurgeon could for long remain hidden under a bushel; or, in other words, that he would be allowed to work as a mere wandering agent of the Cambridge Lay Preachers' Association for any lengthened period. As Mr. Spurgeon was accustomed occasionally to tell his own students, there is always room for candidates at the top of the tree, however great the competing crowd may be at the bottom. Not that Waterbeach was in any sense to be regarded as representing a topmost position; but it was the very place in which a promising man, with credit to himself and benefit to others, might make an encouraging start. The congregation was quite a model one for a thriving Cambridgeshire village; and if the people did not raise much more than the proverbial forty pounds a year for their pastor's maintenance, it was probably through their keeping to the old-time fashion rather than through any want of thought or lack of kindness. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was a very general thing in English country places for notions of the most modest description to be entertained concerning the temporal requirements of a preacher of the Gospel. The fact was that a pastor's income did not consist of money alone, the people making him many presents in kind.

Waterbeach itself is an ancient place, and when Mr. Spurgeon first went there he found the church of the Establishment, dedicated to St John, to be an interesting building, while there were almshouses and a charity-school dating from the seventeenth century. Though sufficiently flat to call forth expressions of aversion from Robert Hall, the surroundings are in some respects charming in genial weather, and have besides some attractions for archæologists. Mr. Samuel Lewis remarks in his "Topographical Dictionary of England":—"About the year 1160 a cell to the monastery of Ely was established in a small island called Elmeneye, but was shortly after removed to Denney, both in this parish. In the following century it was occupied by the Knights Templars, who then possessed the manor of Waterbeach. In 1293, an abbey for minoresses of the order of St. Clare was formed.........., which in 1338, the order of the Templars being then abolished, was transferred to their house at Denney. At the Dissolution there were twenty-five nuns, and the annual value of the lands was estimated at £172. The abbey house and the demesnes have been many years rented as a farm, and the refectory has been converted into a barn."

These things are worthy of mention because the remains of mediaeval England referred to were objects of rare interest to Mr. Spurgeon himself in his oft-repeated visits to the scene of his early labours during the nearly forty years of his ministry in London. Mr. Spurgeon has often visited Winfold Farm at Waterbeach; and visitors to that charming spot are able to inspect the remains of Denney Abbey. For many years Winfold Farm had its "Orphanage Acre," the entire proceeds of which, consisting of flour, potatoes, etc., were regularly sent to the Stockwell Orphanage as a gift to the inmates. That fact alone would have been almost sufficient to attract Mr. Spurgeon to the spot; for persons who were kind to his great family of orphan children were regarded as being kind to himself.

It would appear that Mr. Spurgeon first became acquainted with the village and people of Waterbeach in the course of his travels as a member of the Cambridge Lay Preachers' Association. He never had a settled home in the place; and there is reason for believing that he found so many friends there that during the time of his ministry he had a fresh house of entertainment on the occasion of every visit. The people were a warm-hearted community, who at once showed the most cordial appreciation of the young preacher's services. The doctrines he preached were such as they themselves loved and built their hopes upon; and these doctrines were identical with the teaching which had been given forth from the Baptist pulpit in the village for long generations. In point of fact, Waterbeach was as much a little stronghold of Puritan ideas as Stambourne itself; and that is the reason why the grandson of the aged Essex pastor at once felt himself at home with the congregation. The strong silken cords which bound the boy-preacher and his people together in the bonds of love were never severed. In early days it was as the Garden of Eden; in after years it was a quiet resting-place to which the orator loved to retire for change and refreshment. In the middle of this century, when Mr. Spurgeon first became associated with the Waterbeach friends, many fashions such as we now associate with a former age had hardly passed away. The railway through Cambridge had not been opened many years; and the many signs of agricultural depression which are now apparent even in the richest tracts of England, did not then sadden the hearts of observant tourists. The evidences of plenty and of quiet progress were seen on every hand. On alighting from the train, the vast dome of the sky—similar to that overhead at sea—would remind the visitor that he was on an extensive plain; but the land was rich and the people were prosperous. To a Londoner, escaping for a brief space from noise and smoke-charged atmosphere, the fine air and rustic charms were irresistible. The chapel itself, a quaint, square building, might almost have been mistaken for a rick of wheat or a haystack, if it had not been for the odd-looking little windows, one above another, which were supposed to let sufficient light into the sanctuary. Other things in the village so far corresponded with this commanding object that probably Waterbeach presented quite a similar outlook to that which greeted the early preachers of the Methodist revival when they gave forth the Gospel in this district a century before. To come upon such a place and such a community as this, at so interesting a period in his career, must be regarded as a providential circumstance in the experience of Mr. Spurgeon. If the young evangelist had gone straight from the Cambridge Lay Preachers' Association to London, his success would no doubt have been immediate; but the abrupt suddenness of such a transition would have been excessively trying. In after days the achievement of a unique popularity came with sufficient suddenness; but after the experience gained at Waterbeach, and while itinerating among the surrounding towns and villages, the boy-preacher was in some measure prepared for the trial attending the more exhausting labours which awaited him in London. The service rendered at Waterbeach was a time of preparation and of strengthening which could not well have been dispensed with. The preacher already, as it were, saw in miniature the popularity which awaited him in London. The quaint little chapel of which he had become the pastor was nothing like large enough to accommodate the numbers who came to hear the Gospel preached in fulness and freeness; and in proportion as people in other places became acquainted with Mr. Spurgeon's pulpit characteristics, crowds were drawn together when he undertook to preach at anniversaries or on special occasions. The whole period was therefore one of trial, as well as of preparation for a great and unique life-work in the future; for if the metal of which the preacher was made had not given forth the ring of sterling quality at Waterbeach, it could never have borne the severe tests to which it was exposed in London shortly afterwards.

Although Mr. Spurgeon was only about seventeen years of age when he commenced work at Waterbeach, he was thoroughly well equipped. He had not only learned things which were actually of use to him, he had acquired habits of study such as would yield him good profit. He already knew how to read to advantage, and a good book once read became his own. His own explanation of his method, to the effect that he tore things out of books by the hair of their heads, sufficiently explained his ways to those who understood him. In point of fact, his knowledge already took an enlarged range for a preacher of his years. There was nothing of the mere flash-in-the-pan kind of brilliance about his earliest sermons. Even among his rustic audience there were those who could readily enough distinguish between rhetorical fireworks and genuine sterling eloquence. It was seen by such that a pulpit genius had arisen; but, if that had been all, the impression made would not have been the profound one that it was. What chiefly astonished the members of mature age of the Waterbeach church was the advanced Christian experience of the youth of seventeen who had accepted the pastoral charge. If he had been speaking at the dictation of his grandfather, the pastor of Stambourne, this characteristic could not have been more prominent. His experience was apparently that of one who had progressed far in the Christian course. This probably may have occasioned some inconvenience, because some were led to doubt the preacher's honesty. To keen observers it must have appeared that the boy in the pulpit could not be giving his own sermon, but rather the words of some of the Puritan sages of extended knowledge and experience whom he so often referred to or quoted. On the other hand, there must have been that about the preacher which many were able to accept as evidence of his honesty and earnestness. He had an open face, which did not look like wishing to deceive anybody; his manners all seemed to testify to his ingenuous nature. Hence, while the common people heard him gladly, those who were not of the common people regarded the young preacher as being somewhat of a phenomenon which needed to be explained. "Who is this Spurgeon?" was often enough asked in Cambridgeshire before it came to be one of the stock questions of London quidnuncs. And as in London in after years, the answer to the question was generally coloured by the prejudgment, favourable or unfavourable, of those who gave it. In taking a retrospect of Mr. Spurgeon's early days one writer says:—

Mr. Spurgeon's Birthplace at Kelvedon: now the Wheatsheaf Inn

"There is something to be said for the paradox that the common people are the real leaders of opinion.. They have proved to be so at any rate regarding a great man who has recently left us, and who is now universally spoken about as the greatest of modern preachers. It was not in a sermon by a learned canon in St. Paul's Cathedral, nor in a leading article in The Times or The Standard, that the boy-preacher was welcomed to the Metropolis, when he came up to it in much fear and trembling from his little chapel at Waterbeach. The new note Spurgeon struck in pulpit oratory sounded harsh and discordant in the ears of cultured people. But it was sweet music to the rude peasantry and humble tradesfolk of Cambridgeshire, and in course of time people in high places came to be of the same opinion. The common people heard him gladly, and the lords and ladies of London, after much scoffing and jeering, were fain to hear him too. Suppose the good folk at Waterbeach had been as diffident about their own judgment in the choice of a preacher as many at the time would think they ought to have been; suppose they had gone to men of light and leading—say bishops of the National Church, or men distinguished in literature, or even experienced ministers of their own body, and asked them to listen to the boy-preacher and pronounce a verdict upon him, what a rating the good folk would have got for their imprudence in dreaming of choosing such a person! They would have heard much about his extreme youth, his inadequate learning, his lack of experience, perhaps of his presumption and the vulgarity of his style and bearing in the pulpit. And if the affairs of Waterbeach had been managed with such ideal perfection that the common herd would have given heed to the counsels of the wise, the career of the great preacher would have been nipped in the bud, and he might have lived and died as unnoted as thousands of others. Happily the Waterbeach people were left to choose for themselves. The seed of genius was allowed to germinate, the promising plant attracted ere long the attention of a slightly higher circle in London, and so step by step this nursling of the people fought his way until the successes of Exeter Hall, the Surrey Gardens Music Hall, and the Metropolitan Tabernacle became the talk of London, and rang over the world."

More than once I have visited Waterbeach in order, if possible, to obtain information from those who might be able to give personal reminiscences of Mr. Spurgeon's early days. One elderly deacon of the church declared that at the outset the youthful pastor astonished everybody who heard him. The good man spoke of those memorable days with enthusiasm; but that which seemed chiefly to strike him was the fact that the boy-preacher appeared to possess the experience of an elderly or mature Christian. It was as though the preacher had been perfected at once for his work. Others, as we have said, observed the same thing, and to them it was a phenomenon which could not be explained in any ordinary way, because it was of an altogether exceptional character. One who was a friend of Mr. Spurgeon in his early days, gave it as his deliberate opinion that the pastor became fully equipped in youth for his work, and that from youth to mature age he never improved like other people. In the nature of things this could not be, but such an opinion shows how the advanced Christian knowledge and experience of the preacher was viewed by friends in the days before he came of age.

Mr. Robert Coe, who was a deacon of the church at Waterbeach in Mr. Spurgeon's time, was quite a typical man of his class; and he maintained a lifelong friendship with the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. This worthy and his wife, as I found them, were more in love with old-time fashions than with new customs; and they could talk with delight of the great man who had been associated with their little chapel in the past. The good deacon had often been invited to London; but he did not really appear in the great congregation at Newington until he was partly drawn thither by the promise of a new flagon for the communion-table, which should supersede the common wine-bottle previously used. A quarter of a century after Mr. Coe had first seen the young lay preacher from Cambridge, pale with misgiving, enter the Waterbeach pulpit, he visited London for himself, was entertained at Nightingale Lane, and carried back the coveted flagon to his native village.

Mr. Coe's recollections of Mr. Spurgeon's early days in Waterbeach were not only entertaining, they may be regarded as a warning to those who are tempted to form an adverse conclusion respecting a preacher's capacity on account of his youth. When Deacon Coe for the first time met Mr. Spurgeon in the old chapel, he thought that his new friend was too pale and too young to do anything worth speaking of as a preacher; but when he discovered what kind of a voice he possessed, and what he was able to say, he could only sit and listen in admiration and astonishment. Then some of the early sermons had made impressions deep enough to be remembered. The preacher might be carried away with his descriptions of the glorious privileges of believers; but his denunciations of sin, his pictures of the doom of the impenitent, were terrific warnings. He in those days spoke as a decided Calvinist, but accustomed himself to milder phrases when he became a little older.

Many anecdotes respecting his early days are afloat in the neighbourhood of Waterbeach, but there is some difficulty in regard to their authenticity. One may hear that he suffered severely from sickness when he commenced to smoke; and then this is denied, and we are told that his first "churchwarden" never occasioned him the least inconvenience. Such trivialities, however, may well be left in obscurity. When Mr. Spurgeon first joined the church there were many good and grave people who failed to understand him, and to whom, consequently, he appeared uncouth, forward, or even irreverent. I have heard that a certain person once expressed surprise to the leader of a prayer meeting on account of his having "called upon that rude young man to pray." I have also heard it stated that at the time of his joining the church, Mr. Spurgeon at the conclusion of a meeting went up to one of the leading members and very cordially asked him how he did. The person looked a picture of surprise, and, while quite polite, confessed that he had not the pleasure of knowing his interlocutor. "Not know me! Then you ought to do. I have sat down with you three Sabbaths at the Lord's Table, and you ought to know me!" was the reply. It was now discovered that he was young Mr. Spurgeon. "Then perhaps you will go home with me to tea," was the next remark. "That's just what I'm going to do," was the reply.

Those were also days of adventure, many of which were of sufficient interest to oblige the preacher once to say that there had been almost enough in any one day of his life to make up the materials for a three-volume novel. The particulars of one diverting incident I was the first to give to the world some years ago, having received the facts from Mr. Spurgeon himself as he sat in his study at Clapham while in too weak a condition to work. At such a time, if free from pain, he always seemed to relish entertaining his friends with recollections of those good old times when, in the strength and freshness of youth, he could enjoy life to the full, the heavy burden of the London pastorate not yet having cast its shadow across his path. In the year 1852 he had already become uncommonly popular for a preacher who was a mere youth, and whose ministerial position was only that of a very small village pastorate, the stipend of which was less than a pound a week. The extraordinary fame of the young pastor occasioned his being invited to preach at anniversaries and on special occasions by friends at a distance, who in some instances may never have seen his face. One of these was an elderly man, whose chapel was not very far away, and who was in himself as faultlessly respectable as he was dry and orthodox. The day of the services would be an important one, because good collections would be expected. When the time at length came round, and Mr. Spurgeon actually appeared on the scenes, he cordially greeted his octogenarian brother; but until he heard his boy-visitor confess that he had come to preach the anniversary sermons, the old man hardly dared to believe his eyes. When polite inquiries respecting his health were made, the veteran abruptly replied, "I am none the better for seeing you!" Then he paced the room in great concern of mind respecting the success or failure of his anniversary; and in the course of the soliloquy in which he indulged he muttered something about boys who went up and down the country preaching before their mother's milk was well out of their mouths. A great concourse of people had assembled for the anniversary service; but the old pastor was at first half-ashamed to take a place in the chapel where he could be seen by the congregation.

Mr. Spurgeon was not one to be greatly disconcerted by the treatment he had received; but, on the other hand, he would not miss the opportunity of administering a becoming reproof. He already observed the custom, which he kept up to the last, of making explanatory remarks on the passage of Scripture read before the sermon. Now was Mr. Spurgeon's opportunity; and he read what Solomon had said about the honour attending a hoary head, this being accompanied by his own characteristic commentary. "A hoary head is a crown of glory." Was it really always so? The wise man was an authority not to be challenged; but, Solomon or no Solomon, it did not seem to be always so, for there was a tongue in one hoary head which had not been civil to the boy who had come to preach. "If it be found in the way of righteousness." That, of course, altered the case, and Solomon was right, after all; for unless an old man was found in the right path he might as well have red hair as white. The old minister, who had now emerged from his hiding-place, at once saw the reasonableness of this reproof. He had evidently acted wrongly, and it would look handsome to make some honourable amends. As the boy-preacher was descending from the pulpit, therefore, the octogenarian slapped him on the back, at the same time remarking, "You are the sauciest dog that ever barked in a pulpit!" It may be that he thus gave rise to the itinerant's being called "the saucy young rascal," as he sometimes was about this time.