Chapter 21: Mr Spurgeon and the Patriot

Chapter 21.
Mr. Spurgeon And The Patriot An Extended Review of the Preacher's Life and Work—Characteristics—High Qualities and Shortcomings—A Watch-Night Service at New Park Street Chapel.

The oldest of the London Nonconformist newspapers, The Patriot, appears to have been the first to give any extended notice of Mr. Spurgeon as a preacher, and, on the whole, the opinions expressed of the young pastor were generous and encouraging. The review of his life and work which appeared in the fall of 1855, soon after the visit to Scotland, would fill four columns of The Times.

Some biographical facts having been given, special reference was made to the temptation to infidelity noticed by the preacher himself at Exeter Hall. A very generous estimate is then given of his preaching:—

"We found him neither extravagant nor extraordinary. His voice is clear and musical; his language was plain; his style flowing, yet terse; his method lucid and orderly; his matter sound and suitable; his tone and spirit cordial; his remarks always pithy and pungent, sometimes familiar and colloquial, yet never light or coarse, much less profane. Judging from this single sermon, we supposed that he would become a plain, faithful, forcible, and affectionate preacher of the Gospel in the form called Calvinistic; and our judgment was the more favourable because, while there was a solidity beyond his years, we detected little of the wild luxuriance naturally characteristic of very young preachers." The weekly numbers of The New Park Street Pulpit were now being very widely diffused; and The Patriot reviewer admitted that after a perusal of some of these his opinion of the preacher had become "somewhat modified." In a number of printed discourses, the characteristics of the preacher showed him to be even a more extraordinary man than had at first been supposed; but, at the same time, he was not quite so far removed "from extravagance" as had been thought. This was not mentioned "with a view to criticism," however; for "there would be little use in pointing out the faults and errors of a public speaker so absolutely independent of opinion." According to his own confession, Mr. Spurgeon was not over-scrupulous about the means he used for doing good. He had told the people of Scotland that they did not understand him—"Why, bless your hearts, I would preach standing on my head, if I thought I could convert your souls, rather than preach on my feet. I am not very particular about how I preach." Then "that ranting fellow," as some called him, had said, "My motto is Cedo Nulli—I yield to none. I have not courted any man's love; I asked no man to attend my ministry; I preach what I like, when I like, and as I like." He refused to be bound by any rules of art, so that while he was evidently free from conceit, the critic had to take such a preacher as he found him, and to value him for what he was. This was fair; but the critic may possibly have made a mistake in too readily accepting Mr. Spurgeon's own too humble estimate of himself—an estimate which in some measure may have accounted for the opinion getting abroad that he had burst upon the world without education or proper equipment for his lifework. "Recollect who I am, and what I am," he had said: "a child having little education, little learning, ability, or talent." Without the Spirit of God he declared himself to be unable to speak. "I have not those gifts which qualify men to speak; I need an afflatus from on high; otherwise, I stand like other men, and have nought to say." He would not have spoken like this at a later date, and when it was spoken, it was probably misunderstood. Despite his own lowly opinion of himself, The Patriot detected his originality:—

"From whatever cause it springs, whether from force of native character, or from a vigour superinduced upon that basis by the grace of God, there is that in Mr. Spurgeon's reported sermons which marks him a superior man. Models of different styles of preaching are so numerous, that originality must be of rare occurrence; but he appears to be an original genius. To the pith of Jay and the plainness of -Rowland Hill, he adds much of the familiarity, not to say the coarseness, of the Huntingtonian order of ultra-Calvinistic preachers. 'It has been my privilege,' he says, 'to give more prominence in the religious world to those old doctrines of the Gospel.' But the traits referred to present themselves in shapes and with accompaniments which forbid the notion of imitation, and favour the opinion of a peculiar bent. Neither in the style and structure, nor in handling, is there appearance of art, study, or elaboration. Yet each discourse has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and the subject is duly introduced and stated, divided and discussed, enforced and applied. But all is done without effort, with the ease and freedom of common conversation, and with the artlessness, but also with the force, of spontaneous expression. 'This,' he says, 'I am sure of: I tell you all I know, and speak right on. I am no orator, but just tell you what springs up from my heart.' 'Speak, my heart!' he exclaims in another place, 'for heart-thoughts are the best thoughts.'" In his early days, Mr. Spurgeon was persistently accused of being an egotist; but in the eyes of The Patriot this reproach is toned down to "characteristic references to his own history, feelings, and habits." This is a true representation of the case; and any careful reader of the early sermons and other utterances might, collect sufficient to give a tolerably full portraiture of the man as he then lived and worked. Thus we find him, as The Patriot went on to show, speaking of the delight he found in reading old books, and his almost total disregard of new ones—a disregard which was certainly given up in later years. Then we find him confessing that he was almost wholly indebted to the Bible for the discipline of his mental faculties. Christ was his Sun; and in his quaint way he advised his hearers to allow other acquirements only to revolve as satellites around that centre. Mount Calvary was the place for a young man to build either his studio or observatory. It was thus early, moreover, that he made the confession that formerly he had his knowledge in "glorious confusion," but now everything was in its place ready for use when called for or wanted. His great facility for borrowing illustrations from nature, books, and all things around him, is also taken notice of; and that of course, in its way, showed the bent of a peculiar genius. Attention is drawn to the less attractive characteristics of the preacher's style, and this is how The Patriot refers to them:—

"Sometimes, no doubt, he lapses into a rude colloquialism bordering upon coarseness. 'If,' he observes, 'I were to preach nothing but what would please the whole lot of you, what on earth should I do?' The questionable colloquialism in the second clause occurs more than once or twice; and, what is worse still, such appeals as 'Good God!' and 'By Heaven!' At the same time that he insists upon preaching that only which he believes true and fit, he declares himself to have no fear that 'an honest British audience will turn away from the man who does not stick, and stutter, and stammer in speaking the truth.' In citing the following as a specimen of his sayings, justice requires the acknowledgment that appropriations so little felicitous are extremely rare:—'I should like to take you this morning, as Samson did the foxes, tie the firebrands of prayer to you, and send you in among the shocks of corn till you burn the whole up.'" By way of contrast to this, many things are quoted which show "a high degree of eloquence"; and it is admitted that the sermons abound with aphorisms and pointed sayings, many of them quaint, and all of them having the genuine mark of genius upon them. Some passages are given at length, and all are more or less powerful. The review comes to a close by enumerating certain shortcomings. Mr. Spurgeon was not thought to be sufficiently tolerant towards those who differed from him, and his habit of judging others was held to be both "unlovely and presumptuous." The reviewer proceeds:—

"If asked who is fortunate enough to escape his sarcasm and invective, we should really be at a loss to answer. All, in turn, come under the lash of the precocious tyro. He alone is a consistent Calvinist; all besides are either rank Arminians, licentious Antinomians, or unfaithful professors of the doctrines of grace. College training does but wean young men's sympathies from the people; and 'really ploughmen would make a great deal better preachers.' The doctrine of election is, 'in our age, scorned and hated.' 'The time-serving religion of the present day' is 'only exhibited in evangelical drawing-rooms.' 'How many pious preachers are there on the Sabbath-day who are very impious preachers during the rest of the week!' He 'never hears' his brother ministers 'assert the positive satisfaction and substitution of our Lord Jesus Christ.' These fishers of men 'have been spending all their life fishing with most elegant silk lines and gold and silver hooks, but the fish will not bite for all that; whereas we of the rougher sort,' adds the self-complacent censor, 'have put the hook into the jaws of hundreds.' Still 'rougher,' if possible, is Mr. Spurgeon's treatment of theologians not of his own especial school. 'Arminian perversions, in particular, are to sink back to their birthplace in the pit.' Their notion of the possibility of a final fall from grace is 'the wickedest falsehood on earth.' Mr. Spurgeon was quite at liberty to uphold the comfortable and Scriptural doctrine of the final perseverance of the true believer with all his might; but this was possible without indulging, as he has indulged, in vituperation of opponents more gross than any words we have quoted. Nor, to any right-minded man, Arminian or Calvinist, will it be a compensation that he has dealt with the Antinomians just as bitterly. To the erring professor who conceives himself to be a child of God because he is in trouble, he replies, 'I know a great many rascals in the same condition.' He is too charitable, however, when he ascribes Antinomian licentiousness to a perversion of the Gospel; for it is attributable more correctly to the substitution of 'another Gospel.' But these are subjects on which we cannot enlarge, or we might point out several mistakes into which Mr. Spurgeon's doctrinal zeal has betrayed him. We therefore take our leave of him with this admonition—to cultivate more assiduously the modest spirit of which, after all, he is far from destitute; to remember his own youth and inexperience; to reflect upon the inconsistency of complaining that he is himself subject to hostile animadversion, when he deals wholesale in sweeping censure of ministerial brethren older and more experienced than himself; and, in fine, to bear in mind his own very just remark, that 'John Knox did much, but he might, perhaps, have done more if he had had a little love'—that love which 'thinketh no evil.'" As one of the first and one of the ablest notices of Mr. Spurgeon's life and work which appeared in the Nonconformist Press, the lengthened article in The Patriot, from which the above extracts are taken, attracted much notice at the time. On the whole, this seems to have been written without prejudice, and the writer showed an honest desire to recognise the more extraordinary qualities of the young preacher which accounted for his popularity, although what were regarded as weaknesses were at the same time candidly mentioned. Every great man has some flaws of character, or he would not be human; but probably some of the things complained of in Mr. Spurgeon would not have been so apparent if at the outset he had been less exposed to detraction and misrepresentation. On the last night of the year 1855, New Park Street Chapel was densely crowded at the watch-night service. Mr. Spurgeon expounded the first twelve verses of Psalm xc.; he also preached a sermon from Lam 2:19—"Arise, cry out in the night," etc. At two minutes to twelve the preacher stopped in his discourse and asked all to engage in silent prayer. It was altogether a striking scene, and one which some who were present still remember. The occasion appears to have been taken advantage of for preaching the Gospel, and many penitents are said to have been present at this midnight service. The watch-night service was not then so popular an institution as it is now; but, as Mr. Spurgeon explained, he was ready to preach the Gospel at any hour. The crowded assembly might have been called a prayer-meeting, for others beside the pastor prayed; and very fervent were the petitions for a prosperous time during the year 1856. How little did pastor or people know what was before them! The great and comprehensive work in hand would assuredly extend in all directions; but times of fiery trial were also near, when the work and the workers would be tested in no ordinary way.