Chapter 6: Schooldays and Conversion

Chapter 6.
Schooldays And Conversion

Quality of Spurgeon's Education—Preaching from a Hay-rack—His Mother's Teaching—His first Schoolmasters—A School Incident—Removal with his Brother to Maidstone—A precocious Letter-writer—Incidents connected with his Conversion—Scene in the Colchester Primitive Methodist Chapel—The Sermon—Mr. John Spurgeon's Testimony—Zeal in Christian Work—A Boy's Humour.

When Mr. Spurgeon settled in London in the year 1854 there were those who industriously circulated the report that the young preacher was quite uneducated. This was not the opinion of those who were better acquainted with the facts of the case, however. The truth was, that he was not only as well prepared as circumstances would allow for the distinguished position he was destined to occupy in the world, but was evidently prepared for his future eminent service in the best manner possible. That is the view the late Pastor would himself have taken of the matter, while the tutor to whom he was chiefly indebted—the late Mr. Charles Leeding—would have borne similar testimony. They would both have maintained that the hand of Providence had overruled all things from beginning to end. The parents of the future preacher were not people who undervalued education; they rather exercised becoming self-denial in order to give their children educational advantages. If, therefore, we follow young Spurgeon through the course of his education, and at the same time take full account of the discipline he received in his grandfather's manse, we shall probably also see for ourselves that he was singularly favoured in the days of childhood and youth; that, in point of fact, all things seemed to work together to fit the wonderful boy for the great sphere he was designed to occupy.

What his work in the world would really be appears to have been seen even in the early days of childhood. As a man of observation, Mr. John Spurgeon saw that his son was destined to become a preacher. "Yes, yes; he always was to preach," he told a correspondent of a daily newspaper who questioned him on this subject; and the veteran then went on to tell of a characteristic scene he once witnessed in his stable at Colchester. Looking into this building on a certain afternoon, the father observed that his son Charles had climbed into the hay-rack above the horse's manger, and, supposing that to be his pulpit, was addressing an audience below with all the energy he could command. As his chief auditor, the child-preacher's brother James was becomingly accommodated with a seat in the manger, while his sisters occupied a more humble, though probably a more comfortable, position on trusses of hay. There could be no doubt about the bent of such a lad's inclinations, although it might not be possible as yet to discover that he was a unique genius.

Like many other great personages before him, young Charles Spurgeon was no doubt greatly indebted to his mother as a teacher before he went to school at all. When he first left home to get instruction, his first schoolmistress was the wife of a certain Captain Cook, a namesake of the well-known eighteenth-century discoverer, but not related to him, so far as I am aware, although an ancient tobacco-box, which is supposed to have travelled round the world in the pocket of this intrepid discoverer, is still treasured in the family as a memento of the old days at Colchester. The promising lad next went to a school in the same town kept by a Mr. Lewis, under whom he made some progress. Perhaps the young scholar may thus early have been interested in the topography of the ancient Roman town, the old-time associations of which had extended to the Trinobantes among the Britons, to Claudius Cæsar and Boadicea at later dates, and to the Saxons still later. It was at Colchester that Charles first met with his favourite tutor, Mr. Leeding—the friend to whom he was chiefly indebted for painstaking instruction.

It was a good school which young Charles Spurgeon attended at Colchester; and, as many misrepresentations on this subject have gained currency, I am glad to quote the testimony of Mr. E. D. Cheveley, of Harrogate, given since Mr. Spurgeon's death. The writer was educated at the same academy, and, having grateful memories of the advantages he received, is anxious to correct misleading statements. "Stockwell House, Colchester," he says, "where Charles Haddon Spurgeon was being educated from the age of eleven to fifteen, was a thoroughly good middle-class classical and commercial school. Mr. Henry Lewis, the principal, was a man whose literary attainments were of a superior order, and for years he was assisted by a very scholarly man in the person of Mr. Leeding, whose death occurred only very recently. Mr. Leeding was the classical and mathematical tutor; his teaching was very thorough, and in Charles Spurgeon he possessed a pupil of a very receptive mind, especially with Latin and Euclid. I remember well that in both of these subjects he was very advanced, so that he left Stockwell House a thoroughly well-educated youth; in fact, quite as much so as it was possible for him to attain outside of the Universities. Such statements, therefore, as have appeared in the public press to the effect that Mr. Spurgeon's education, 'such as it was,' was obtained at a school at Colchester, convey the idea that it was education of a most elementary character, and are, in consequence, somewhat incorrect."

"J. B.," of St. Botolph's, Colchester, has also given in the same journal—The Christian World—some reminiscences of the old days at Colchester, when he was at school with Spurgeon. Speaking of the rollicking humour, combined with great industry, which was even then characteristic of Spurgeon, this correspondent says:—

"Spurgeon was always top boy of his class—in fact, top boy of the school. Once only I remember he lost his place in class, and lost every place until he reached the very bottom. In vain did his teacher remonstrate with him; he was at the bottom, and couldn't get away. At last it occurred to the teacher, perhaps the fire near the bottom of the class might have something to do with it. It was a very cold day, and the top of the class was close to a draughty door. The teacher reversed the class, making the top by the stove. Spurgeon immediately brightened up; not a chance was missed of getting up, and he was soon back in his old place at the top.

"About half-a-dozen boys, who lived at some distance from the school, used to carry their dinners and eat them in the schoolroom. Spurgeon was one of these, and it was his usual custom while eating his own dinner to be turning over the pages of a joke or riddle or anecdote book in search of something to amuse the rest. Anything extra good he would sometimes commence reading before his mouth was quite ready. Many were the laughs we had, and many the half-chokings we had, in trying to feed and read and laugh all at once. The playground was never Spurgeon's forte; play of the intellect was his delight." The anecdote about the stove I have myself heard Mr. Spurgeon tell at the Pastors' College. The next move was when, in the year 1848, the brothers Charles and James went together to a college at Maidstone, in which special attention was given to the study of agriculture as a science. The principal was Mr. Walker, a relative. The journey thither from the Eastern Counties was through London; and that was probably the first sight the brothers had of the great metropolis where in the future their united life-work was to be undertaken. Railways were not so universal then as they are at present; and memories of the coach and other things belonging to the journey appear to have lingered in the minds of the travellers.

After leaving Maidstone another move, fraught with still greater consequences, was made, when young Spurgeon became junior tutor in the academy of Mr. Swindell at Newmarket. Some particular account of the progress made in this town will need to be given; but in the meantime some reference must be made to that great crisis in life which we call conversion, which occurred before the situation of tutor was accepted. In connection with this subject we have to bear well in mind that, all along, the training of this child of genius had been of a distinctly religious character. One reason why he had so readily caught up the modes of thinking and feeling of his Puritan grandfather was because his mind had been prepared for the reception of such impressions by the training of the home. From his earliest childhood the future preacher had lived in a religious atmosphere, and the talk of religious people had been, as it were, his native dialect. In an extant letter, written at the age of fourteen and addressed to an uncle, this precocious child is found using language and scriptural phrases such as might have come from a seasoned Puritan of full experience in the seventeenth century. Mere knowledge of such things, however, does not necessarily affect the heart and life so as to ensure peace of mind. The great change of conversion appears to have occurred towards the close of the year 1848, or the opening of 1849, when the boy was in his fifteenth year. The family were then living at Colchester. Mr. John Spurgeon was engaged in business, but on Sunday mornings he regularly drove over to Tollesbury, nine miles away, there to minister to a congregation at the Independent Chapel. As the Spurgeon household was a tolerably large family, the custom was observed of the young people accompanying their father to Tollesbury in turn. On a certain Sunday morning in the winter of 1848-49 it had been arranged for Charles to accompany his father to the service, as he had so often done before; but, as the weather happened to turn out cold and stormy, it was thought advisable for the lad not to go. "You cannot go to Tollesbury, therefore you had better go to the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Colchester," his mother said to him, and Charles at once felt disposed to obey. On that particular morning he was not in a happy state of mind; and it was probably quite as agreeable to his feelings to go alone to public worship as it would have been to accompany his father in the chaise through the wind and snow. In point of fact, this son of the Tollesbury Independent minister was in that transition state of doubt and terror—eager for the pardon and peace of soul which he could not yet find—which Bunyan refers to in the opening of his immortal allegory: "Behold, I saw a man, clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, 'What shall I do?'" Tortures of mind, such as Bunyan himself may have endured, and such as he alludes to in another of his works, were at this time oppressing the heart and soul of young Spurgeon. When the anxious youth walked from his home into the Colchester street on that memorable tempestuous winter morning, he appears hardly to have settled in his own mind whether he would enter the Primitive Methodist Chapel, as his mother had recommended, or whether he would go further afield. He went onward, engrossed with his own thoughts, and little heeding the storm, on account of the weight which well-nigh bore him down. When he presently came up to the Methodist meetinghouse he entered, however, thinking he might as well do that as go further, or do anything else. As Mr. John Spurgeon has explained, "the preacher in the Primitive Methodist Chapel was a local man; a local preacher, who also worked at digging, planting cabbages, and so on." When he entered the pulpit this humble peasant evangelist saw so few persons in the pews that he began to question with himself whether it was worth while to conduct a service at all. The snow and wind would not allow of the people leaving their homes, so that no one was to blame; but, at the same time, what good end would be answered by his wearing himself out by preaching in a practically empty chapel? The good man still hesitated in regard to abandoning the service; however, on taking another survey of his audience his eye may have been attracted by the pale, round-faced, anxious-looking lad sitting by himself, who looked like a subject that needed a good word. At all events, he resolved that the service should go on; and when the time came for the sermon he opened the Bible at Isa 45:22 —"Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Presently he became more animated, and again surveying the nearly empty chapel, as though each pew contained an anxious listener ready to receive the life-giving message of the Gospel, he called out with all his energy, "Look! Look! LOOK!" The arrow thus shot at a venture went home into at least one heart.

That, indeed, was a supreme moment in the life of young Spurgeon. The word that he most needed to hear had not only been spoken, he had received it with gladness; in an instant he felt that he was not only free, he was a new creature in Christ Jesus. What had really happened corresponds so precisely with what happened to Christian at a certain stage in his pilgrimage, as depicted by our great allegorist, that the passage may well be given. "So I saw in my dream," says Bunyan, "that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, 'He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life by His death.' Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked, therefore, and saw again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks. Now, as he stood looking and weeping, behold, three Shining Ones came to him, and saluted him with 'Peace be to thee.' So the first said to him, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee'; the second stripped him of his rags and clothed him with change of raiment; the third also set a mark upon his forehead, and gave him a roll with a seal upon it, which he bid him look on as he ran, and that he should give it in at the Celestial Grate." This is Bunyan's language in "The Pilgrim's Progress," and Mr. Spurgeon would have acknowledged that the passage exactly described his own condition on the stormy winter's day in 1849, when, for the first time, he realised that he was accepted of God for Christ's sake. The storm had not abated when he again stepped forth into the street; but what cared he for snow or wintry blast now that the burden had rolled from his shoulders, while peace flowed into his heart? He went homeward with a lightened step, for, instead of all things seeming to be against him, all things appeared to be in his favour. Even the elements in their violence seemed to be friendly towards him. Life had now another meaning; the world opened up new prospects. The wonder was that so gloriously simple a matter had not been clearly apprehended before. "Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth!" In that brief sentence the Evangelical Prophet had summed up the Gospel which in the fulness of time was to supersede the dispensation of the law.

Referring to the latter part of that eventful day, Mr. John Spurgeon said to a newspaper representative;—

"We spent the evening as an evening should be spent, reading the Bible, and so on. Then by-and-by I said, 'Come, boys, it's time to go to bed.' 'Father,' remarked Charles, 'I don't want to go to bed yet.' 'Come, come,' said I, whereupon he told me that he wanted to speak with me. We sat up long into the night, and he talked to me of his being saved, which had taken place that day, and right glad was I to hear him talk.' In the text, "Look, look, look," Charles said to me, holding up his hands, 'I found salvation this morning. In the text, "Accepted in the Beloved," preached at the Baptist Church in the evening, I found peace and pardon.' These, I think, were his words, and so was his conversion to God brought about."

Concerning the preacher at the Primitive Methodist Chapel, Mr. Spurgeon, senior, remarked:—"Some years afterwards, when I was opening a church in Cambridgeshire, a man came up and spoke to me, telling me that he was the local preacher of the Primitive Methodist Church. We had only spoken a few words, when I was whisked away to speak to some other of the many friends, and I never saw him again. About his entering the Baptist Church, Charles used to say that I was a wise father to let my children read the Bible for themselves." In its attendant circumstances, this conversion was a striking episode in a great man's life; so that naturally efforts have been made to identify the man who occupied the pulpit on the stormy Sunday when the lad was converted. In after years the convert himself described the preacher as a "lean-fleshed" man, but who he really was does not appear to have been discovered. Some supposed for a time that a Mr. Eaglen was the friend who preached what is now known as the "Look" sermon; but when he was confronted with Mr. Eaglen on one occasion Mr. Spurgeon failed to recognise in him his Primitive Methodist benefactor. Probably it is quite as well that he is hidden among that unknown crowd of honourable workers who have done their duty with great results following, but without having their fame trumpeted through the world. For such a youth to become converted was for him to become zealous in the various kinds of Christian work that he was competent to undertake. As Mr. John Spurgeon himself has said: "Before he went to Newmarket Charles had been converted, and while at Newmarket he was zealous to do something for religion. He distributed tracts among the people, some of whom, I suppose, were not particularly anxious at that time to have them. Anyhow, Charles adopted a measure to keep him in his house-to-house visitation and distribution. He carried copybooks, and taught the boys of a household to write, while at the same time he distributed the tracts. Indeed, from the very first, Charles was active to do good."

Other characteristics, which became more and more developed as years passed by, are also referred to by the great preacher's father. "Charles," he says, "had always a strong vein of humour, or, if you like, fun, running through him. An illustration of my words strikes me, although it carries me back many, many years. After Charles had begun to preach he used often to drive into Colchester from meetings. I don't mean that he drove himself, because he never would, and on the occasion to which I refer James was driving. It was a four-wheeled machine, and one of my daughters was sitting behind, Charles and James being in front. 'You're asleep, Polly,' said Charles, turning round in his humorous way. 'No, I'm not,' she answered. A little later he turned round again with 'Now you're quite asleep, Polly. If you sleep I'll unhook you, and leave you behind!' Whether she had been dozing in the cold I don't know, but the prospect of being unhooked and left behind—an impossibility—kept her awake." This reminiscence somewhat anticipates events, however; for at the date at which we have now arrived, Charles Spurgeon was still only a schoolboy, whose education was as yet not nearly completed.