No one who has sat in the great London Tabernacle, with its six thousand or more eager listeners, and heard Spurgeon preach, natural, brotherly, earnest, and eloquent, can ever forget it. I have seen a whole congregation moved to tears, as he talked of the relationship between God and His children, from the words, "Abba, Father." To hear a man like this, is always to ask the secret of his power. What was the childhood and youth that ushered in this rare manhood? Did he have more talent, more grace, more learning, than other men? He had no wealth, no superior education, no fortuitous circumstances, yet his career has been a remarkable one.

"He is a wonderful man," said Lord Shaftesbury, "full of zeal, affection, faith; abounding in reputation and authority, and, yet—perfectly humble, with the openness and simplicity of a child."

The London Speaker calls him "one of those born orators of whom this generation has seen only two,—himself and John Bright. Gifted with splendid common-sense, with a genuine humor, with a large-hearted love for his fellow-creatures." ...

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, Essex, England, June 19, 1834, the eldest of seventeen children. His father, the Rev. John Spurgeon, was a pastor of the Independent or Congregational Church, a genial, warm-hearted man, and of fine presence. His mother, a Miss Jarvis, was a devoted Christian woman, esteemed for her good works wherever she resided. The Rev. John Spurgeon tells this story of his wife: "I had been from home a great deal, trying to build up weak congregations, and felt that I was neglecting the religious training of my own children while I toiled for the good of others. I returned home with these feelings.

"I opened the door, and was surprised to find none of the children about the hall. Going quietly up the stairs, I heard my wife's voice. She was engaged in prayer with the children. I heard her pray for them, one by one, by name. She came to Charles, and specially prayed for him, for he was of high spirit and daring temper. I listened till she had ended her prayer, and I felt and said, 'Lord, I will go on with Thy work. The children will be cared for.'"

It is related of her, after her brilliant son Charles had become a Baptist; that she said to him, "I have often prayed that you might be saved, but never that you should become a Baptist;" to which he answered, with his accustomed humor, "The Lord has answered your prayer with His usual bounty, and given you more than you asked."

Mrs. Spurgeon died May 18, 1888, having lived to see the wonderful success of her son, and be thankful for it. Mr. Spurgeon was much devoted to his mother, and her death brought on a severe attack of illness.

When Charles was quite young he was carried to the house of his grandfather, the Rev. James Spurgeon, who preached for fifty-four years in the Independent Church in Stambourne. When more than eighty years old he said, "I have not had one hour's unhappiness with my church since I have been over it.... I will never give up so long as God inclines people to come, and souls are saved."

He possessed the not unusual combination, a large family and a small income, and therefore cultivated a few acres of ground, and kept a cow. The latter died suddenly, and Mrs. Spurgeon was much worried over the matter.

"James," she said, "how will God provide for the dear children now? What shall we do for milk?"

"Mother, God has said that He will provide, and I believe that He could send us fifty cows if He pleased," was the reply.

That very day in London, a committee were distributing funds to poor ministers. The Rev. James Spurgeon had never asked aid, but all must have known how meagre was the salary of a village pastor.

One of the committee remarked, "There is a Mr. Spurgeon down at Stambourne, in Essex, who needs some help."

One person said he would give five pounds. Another said, "I will put five pounds to it; I know him: he is a worthy man." Others added, till there were twenty pounds subscribed and sent by letter.

When the letter reached the preacher's house, Mrs. Spurgeon hated to pay the postage, ninepence. When it was opened she was greatly astonished to find twenty pounds, about one hundred dollars. Her husband said, "Now can't you trust God about a cow?"

The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, dressed in his knee-breeches, buckled shoes, silk stockings, and frilled shirts, must have been an interesting figure. He died when he was eighty-eight years old.

At the home of this grandfather in his early years, Charles found especial delight in reading Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," and De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe."

He read the Scriptures at family prayer, and on one occasion persisted in knowing what the "bottomless pit" in the Book of Revelation meant. If it had no bottom, where did the people go to who dropped into it? These were inconvenient questions to answer.

The Rev. Richard Knill visited the family, and was shown about the garden by the young Charles. In the great yew-tree arbor the good man knelt with the lad, and, with his arm about his neck, prayed for his conversion. In the house, taking him on his knee, Mr. Knill said, "I do not know how it is, but I feel a solemn presentiment that this child will preach the gospel to thousands, and God will bless him to many souls.

"So sure am I of this, that when my little man preaches in Rowland Hill's chapel, as he will do one day, I should like him to promise me that he will give out the hymn commencing,—

Years later the famous Charles Spurgeon preached in the pulpit of Rowland Hill, in the largest Non-conformist Church in London, before the Metropolitan Tabernacle was built, and read the hymn desired by Mr. Knill.

Charles attended school in Colchester, to which town his family had moved, and became well versed in Latin and mathematics. At an Agricultural College at Maidstone he spent a year, and then went to Newmarket, as an assistant in the school. After a year at the latter place, he removed to Cambridge, to assist a former teacher, Mr. Henry Leeding, in a school for young men. Here he taught, and carried on his own studies as well.

In January, 1850, at the age of sixteen, young Spurgeon was converted in Colchester. He had been for some time troubled at heart, and determined to visit every place of worship in the town, to see if he could not find help. "What I wanted to know," he says, "was, 'How can I get my sins forgiven?' and they never told me that. I wanted to hear how a poor sinner, under a sense of sin, might find peace with God; and when I went I heard a sermon on, 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked,' which cut me up worse, but did not say how I might escape. I went again another day, and the text was something about the glories of the righteous; nothing for poor me!...

"At last one snowy day—it snowed so much I could not go to the place I had determined to go to, and I was obliged to stop on the road; and it was a blessed stop to me—I found rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and there was a little chapel. I wanted to go somewhere, but I did not know this place. It was the Primitive Methodist Chapel."

Spurgeon went in and sat down, waiting for the service to begin. "At last," he says, "a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit, and opened his Bible, and read these words, 'Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' Just setting his eyes upon me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, 'Young man, you are in trouble.' Well, I was, sure enough. Says he, 'You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ.' And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, 'Look, look, look! It is only look,' said he. I saw at once the way to salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it; I was so possessed with that one thought."

While at Newmarket, young Spurgeon was immersed in the River Lark, at Isleham Ferry, May 3, 1850, on his mother's birthday. He had read the Scriptures for himself, and believed that they favored this method of Baptism, rather than sprinkling. At first the youth of sixteen, in his round jacket and broad white turn-down collar, felt timid at seeing the crowds on either side of the river; but once in the water, his fears left him, and he enjoyed great peace at heart.

Some years later, Spurgeon related a most suggestive incident. "I was a member of the church at Newmarket," he said, "when I first joined the church, and was afterwards transferred to the church at Cambridge, one of the best in England. I attended for three Lord's Days at the communion, and nobody spoke to me. I sat in a pew with a gentleman, and when I got outside I said, 'My dear friend, how are you?'

"He said, 'You have the advantage of me; I don't know you.'

"I said, 'I don't think I have, for I don't know you. But when I came to the Lord's table, and partook of the memories of His death, I thought you were my brother, and I thought I would speak to you.'

"I was only sixteen years of age, and he said, 'Sweet simplicity!'

"Oh, is it true, sir?' I said. 'Is it true?'

"He said, 'It is; but I am glad you did not say this to any of the deacons.'"

The stranger asked the lad home to supper, and they become good friends.

At once young Spurgeon began the Christian work for which he has ever been renowned. He revived a society for tract distribution. He talked in the Sunday-school, and in the vestry of the Independent Chapel, where many gathered to hear him.

Removing to the school in Cambridge, he joined the "Lay Preachers' Association." He was asked to go to the village of Teversham, four miles from Cambridge, to accompany a friend, for an evening service. On the way, Spurgeon said, "I trust God will bless your labors to-night."

"My labors?" said the friend; "I never preached in my life; I never thought of doing such a thing. I was asked to walk with you, and I sincerely hope God will bless you in your preaching."

Spurgeon was astonished; as he says, "My inmost soul being all in a tremble, as to what would happen." The youth of sixteen preached his first sermon from the words, "Unto you, therefore, which believe he is precious," and spoke to the edification of all present.

He was soon asked to go to Waterbeach, a small village, to supply the pulpit. The chapel was a rude one, made out of a barn. In a few months the membership rose from forty to nearly one hundred. The Rev. Mr. Peters had been their pastor for twenty-two years, receiving five pounds for each quarter of the year.

At this time, says one of the deacons, speaking of the young teacher. "He looked so white, and I thought to myself, he'll never be able to preach. "What a boy he is!... I could not make him out: and one day I asked him wherever he got all the knowledge from that he put into his sermons."

"'Oh,' said Spurgeon, 'I take a book, and I pull the good things out of it by the hair of their heads.'"

The mayor of Cambridge one day asked Spurgeon if he had really told the people at Waterbeach "that if a thief got into heaven, he would pick the angels' pockets."

"Yes," replied Spurgeon, "I told them that if it were possible for an ungodly man to go to heaven without having his nature changed, he would be none the better for being there; and then, by way of illustration, I said that were a thief to get in he would remain a thief still, and go round the place picking the angels' pockets."

"But, my dear young friend, don't you know that the angels have no pockets?"

"No, sir," answered the youthful preacher; but added, with ready wit, "but I am glad to be assured of the fact from a gentleman who does know. I will set it all right."

Being urged by his father and some others to take a college course, he agreed to meet Dr. Angus, the tutor of Stepney College, now Regents Park, at the house of Macmillan, the publisher, at Cambridge. Spurgeon went at the time appointed, and was shown into a room, where he waited for two hours for the tutor. Meantime, Dr. Angus had waited in another room, each not having been informed of the presence of the other by the servant; and, unable to wait longer, had taken the train for London. The result was that Spurgeon never went to College. At Cambridge, on the anniversary of the Sunday-school Union in 1853, Spurgeon, then nineteen, was asked to make an address. Mr. Gould, a Baptist deacon, liked the address so much, that he spoke of it to Mr. Thomas Olney, one of the deacons in New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, which had been one of the largest and richest of the Baptist churches in London. Mr. Gould thought the Waterbeach youth might put new life into the deteriorating church.

Spurgeon was invited to London to preach a sermon in December, 1853. Scarcely two hundred were in the chapel, which would seat twelve hundred. He preached earnestly from the words, "Every good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above." He was invited to come again for three Sundays in January, and soon asked to preach six months on probation.

He would not promise for more than three months. At the end of that time the church had filled so rapidly, that he was called to the pastorate; and before he was twenty, in 1854, was installed over the Baptist Church, with a salary of £150 a year. He came, as he says, to the great city of London, "a country lad," "wondering, praying, fearing, hoping, believing, ... all alone, and yet not alone; expectant of Divine help, and inwardly borne down by our sense of the need of it."

The church building soon became too small for the crowds which gathered to hear him. He was caricatured in the newspapers, standing beside a "polished" preacher, with his sermon on a velvet cushion. Spurgeon being called "Brimstone and Treacle." Again he was placarded as a man selling fly-paper, with judges, lords, and workingmen all sticking to his hat, or buzzing around him. This was called, "Catch-em-alive-O!" He was represented as "The Fast Train," his hair streaming in the wind, driving the engine. He was again pictured as a gorilla. But Mr. Spurgeon kept on preaching, and the interest deepened.

He has followed the dying words of the great Welsh Baptist minister, Christmas Evans, who used to drive from town to town in his evangelistic work, "Drive on! Drive on!"

"There is such a tendency," Spurgeon once said, "to pull up to refresh; such a tendency to get out of the gig and say, 'What a wonderful horse! Never saw a horse go over hill and down dale like this horse—the best horse that ever was; real sound Methodist or Baptist horse.' Now, brother, admire your horse as much as ever you like, but drive on!"

He worked day and night among his people when the cholera scourge came in the first year of his London pastorate. Neither praise nor blame deterred him in his work. His constant question of his deacons was, both there and at Waterbeach, "Have you heard of anybody finding the Lord?" One said, "I am sure there has been." "Oh," said Spurgeon, "I want to know it, I want to see it;" and he would at once seek out the inquirer.

"I have had nothing else to preach," said Mr. Spurgeon, "but Christ crucified. How many souls there are in heaven who have found their way there through that preaching, how many there are still on earth, serving the Master, it is not for me to tell; but whatever there has been of success has been through the preaching of Christ in the sinner's stead."

The church building soon became too cramped; and while it was being enlarged, from February to May, 1855, the congregation met in Exeter Hall. As the Strand became blocked with people, a Music Hall in Surrey Gardens was used, where ten thousand people gathered to hear him.

A serious accident soon occurred here through the cry of "Fire!" by some malicious person; and in the eagerness to rush out, seven persons were killed and twenty-eight removed to hospitals, badly injured. For days Mr. Spurgeon was prostrated on account of the accident, and unable to preach.

After this, services were held only in the morning, attended by the Prime Minister, the nobility, and the poor. Large numbers were converted. Thirty-five years after this time a Surrey Gardens Memorial Hall was erected near this spot, at a cost of £3,000, as one of the many mission-homes in connection with the Tabernacle work. This commemorates the many conversions in these early days, before the Tabernacle was built.

The "Greville Memoirs" thus describes the minister of twenty-three, preaching to nine thousand people in the Music Hall. "He is certainly very remarkable, and undeniably a fine character,—not remarkable in person; in face resembling a smaller Macaulay; a very clear and powerful voice, which was heard through the hall; a manner natural, impassioned, and without affectation or extravagance; wonderful fluency and command of language, abounding in illustration, and very often of a very familiar kind, but without anything ridiculous or irreverent. He gave me an impression of his earnestness and sincerity; speaking without book or notes, yet his discourse was evidently very carefully prepared.... He preached for about three-quarters of an hour, and, to judge by the use of the handkerchiefs and the audible sobs, with great effect."

The corner-stone of the new Tabernacle was laid Aug. 16, 1859, by Sir Samuel Morton Peto. The building was ready for occupancy in 1861. The opening services lasted a month, the first service being a prayer-meeting, held at seven o'clock on Monday morning, March 18. One thousand persons were present.

The Tabernacle is one hundred and forty-six feet in length, and eighty-one in width. There are five thousand five hundred sittings, and many more can be accommodated. Besides the audience-room, there are rooms for Sunday-schools, working-meetings, and the like. The cost was a little over £31,000, all raised by voluntary effort. All denominations gave, and all parts of the country responded. Mr. Spurgeon spoke in Scotland, giving half the receipts to some needy pastorate, and reserving half for his new church. The church building has always been crowded, so that pewholders were admitted at the side doors by ticket. For many years there have been over five thousand members in the church.

Mr. Spurgeon once said, "Somebody asked me how I got my congregation. I never got it at all.... Why, my congregation got my congregation! I had eighty, or scarcely a hundred, when I first preached. The next time I had two hundred—every one who had heard me was saying to his neighbor, 'You must go and hear this young man.' Next meeting we had four hundred, and in six weeks, eight hundred."

It was not enough for Mr. Spurgeon that crowds were flocking to hear him preach; that in Scotland twenty thousand gathered at a time to listen to him; that at the Crystal Palace, when he was but twenty-three, more than twenty-three thousand people came together to hear him preach, Oct. 7, 1857, the day of national humiliation on account of the Indian mutiny.

Others had been converted, and he wanted them to preach the gospel. They were for the most part poor, and could provide neither clothing nor books for their term of study. He needed a Pastor's College.

It began with one student, and increased to several, cared for in a minister's home, and supported by Mr. Spurgeon.

This incident is related by the Rev. James J. Ellis, of the first student, Mr. T. W. Medhurst. He called upon Spurgeon, and said that he feared he had made a mistake in entering the ministry.

"What do you mean?" asked Spurgeon.

"Well, I've been preaching for five or six months, and have not heard of any conversions."

"You don't expect conversions every time you preach, do you?"

"No, I don't expect them every time," said Mr. Medhurst.

"Then be it unto you according to your faith," was the reply. "If you expect great things from God, you'll get them; if you don't, you won't."

"The large sale of my sermons in America, together with my dear wife's economy," writes Mr. Spurgeon, "enabled me to spend from £600 to £800 a year in my own favorite work; but on a sudden—owing to my denunciations of the then existing slavery in the States—my entire resources from that 'Brook Cherith' were dried up. I paid as large sums as I could from my own income, and resolved to spend all I had, and then take the cessation of my means as a voice from the Lord to stay the effort; as I am firmly persuaded that we ought, under no pretence, to go into debt."

This was Mr. Spurgeon's life-long rule. He once related this story of his childhood. He wanted a slate-pencil, and had no money to buy it. So he went to the shop of a Mrs. Dearson, who kept nuts, cakes, and tops, and got trusted for one, the amount of debt being one farthing. His father heard of it, and reprimanded him severely; told the young Charles, "how a boy who would owe a farthing, might one day owe a hundred pounds, and get into prison, and bring his family into disgrace." The child cried bitterly, and hastened to pay the farthing.

Mr. Spurgeon said in later life, "Debt is so degrading, that if I owed a man a penny, I would walk twenty miles, in the depth of winter, to pay him, sooner than to feel that I was under an obligation.... Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible.... Without debt, without care; out of debt, out of danger; but owing and borrowing are bramble-bushes full of thorns. If ever I borrow a spade of my neighbor, I never feel safe with it for fear I should break it."

"I was reduced to the last pound," says Mr. Spurgeon, "when a letter came from a banker in the city, informing me that a lady, whose name I have never been able to discover, had deposited a sum of £200, to be used for the education of young men for the ministry.... Some weeks after, another £100 came in from the same bank, as I was informed, from another hand.... A supper was given by my liberal publishers, Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster, to celebrate the publishing of my five-hundredth weekly sermon, at which £500 were raised and presented to the funds. The college grew every month, and the number of the students rapidly increased from one to forty."

A "weekly offering" was soon taken at the church for the Pastor's College. This in the year 1869 amounted to £1,869. When "seasons of straitness" came, as Spurgeon says, the "Lord always interposed." On one occasion, £1,000 came from an unknown source.

Mr. G. Holden Pike says of these weekly offerings, "How high a figure the total reached nobody knew; for, as Sunday is a day of rest, the money would not be counted until the following morning. Gold, silver, and copper pieces, together with little packets neatly tied with thread, made up the motley heap. One miniature parcel enclosed fifteen shillings from 'A workingman.' When the whole mass was placed in a strong black bag, I ventured to raise it for the sake of testing its weight.... It was certainly the 'heaviest' collection I had ever set eyes upon, for it was as much as one could conveniently raise from the table with one arm."

A yearly supper was provided by Mr. Spurgeon, at which guests gave as they were able or inclined. At this supper in 1891, £3,000 were subscribed.

After a time the College buildings were erected near the Tabernacle property. A lady gave £3,000 as a memorial to her husband; £2,000 were left as a legacy by a reader of the sermons. The cost of the buildings, £15,000, was paid as soon as the work was done.

The whole number added to the churches by these men educated at the Pastor's College is, as nearly as can be ascertained, considerably over one hundred thousand. Some of these men have gone to India, China, the West Indies, Africa, Australia, among the Jews, and elsewhere.

The annual address of the President, Mr. Spurgeon, was eagerly looked for. That given in 1891, "The Greatest Fight in the World," in defence of the Inspiration of the Bible, has been translated into French, German, Danish, and other languages.

In 1866 another important work was laid upon the busy preacher, whose hands seemed already full. The widow of an Episcopal clergyman, Mrs. Hillyard, was desirous of giving £20,000 to found an orphanage for boys. She was personally unknown to Mr. Spurgeon, but had read his sermons, and had great faith in his spirituality and sense.

Another lady, her husband having given her £500 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage, made a present of it to the Orphanage. One house was built with it, called "The Silver Wedding House." A gentleman gave £600 for another house; an unknown donor £1,000 for two other houses, and soon after £2,000 more.

In 1868 the Baptist churches of England gave Mr. Spurgeon £1,765 for the Orphanage. One building is called "The Merchant's House;" another, "The Workmen's House."

At the close of 1869, all the buildings or houses for the orphan boys were completed in Stockwell, on the Clapham Road, free from debt, at a cost of £10,200, Mrs. Hillyard's funds being used for endowment.

When the funds were low,—for Mr. Spurgeon says, "Our boys persist in eating, and wearing out their clothes,"—money was raised by a bazaar, by a fÊte on his birthday, or in some other way.

The long row of attractive houses for boys did not fill Mr. Spurgeon's heart; there must be similar homes for girls.

In September, 1879, Mr. Spurgeon writes, "Our friends know that we bought a house and grounds called 'The Hawthorns,' for £4,000. This we needed to pay for. For various reasons the payment of the purchase-money for 'The Hawthorns' was delayed until July 30; and on that very morning we received a letter telling us that a gentleman had died, and left £1,500 for the Girls' Orphanage, thus bringing up our total to within a very small sum of the amount required. The whole £4,000 is now secured, including this legacy, and the property is our own."

Not long after, the £11,000 necessary for the first block of buildings was obtained.

In January, 1882, a great bazaar was held, which in three days netted the sum of £2,000 for the Girls' Orphanage. In his opening speech at this bazaar Mr. Spurgeon said, "We don't want to sell anything that is not worth the money paid for it; for we think that such should not be the case when the object is to benefit orphan children. When you leave here, you need not be in the plight of the gentleman who was met by footpads on his way home. 'Your money or your life!' demanded one of them.

"'My dear fellow, I have not a farthing about me. Do you know where I have been? I have been to a bazaar.'

"'Oh, if you've been to a bazaar, we should not think of taking any money from you. We'll make a subscription all round, and give you something to help you home.' That is a bazaar as it ought not to be."

About one thousand boys and girls are now in the Stockwell Orphanage, the larger number of the children coming from Church of England families. Some are also from Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Methodist families, as well as Baptist.

Mr. Spurgeon tells this story: "Sitting down in the Orphanage grounds, upon one of the seats, we were talking with a brother trustee, when a funny little fellow, we should think about eight years of age, left the other boys who were playing around us, and came deliberately up to us. He opened fire in this fashion, 'Please, Mister Spurgeon, I wants to come and sit down on the seat between you two gentlemen.'

"'Come along, Bob and tell us what you want.'

"'Please, Mister Spurgeon, suppose there was a little boy who had no father, who lived in an orphanage with a lot of other little boys who had no fathers; and suppose those little boys had mothers and aunts who comed once a month and brought them apples and oranges, and gave them pennies; and suppose this little boy had no mother and no aunt, and so never came to bring him nice things; don't you think somebody ought to give him a penny? 'Cause, Mister Spurgeon, that's me!'"

Bob received a sixpence from Mr. Spurgeon, and went away with face all aglow.

The Orphanage covers four acres. Each house is complete in itself, and has its own "mother." The boys dine in a common hall; the girls in their respective houses. Both boys and girls assist in domestic duties. "The children are not dressed in a uniform," says Mr. Spurgeon, "to mark them as the recipients of charity."

In 1876 the Redpath Lecture Bureau of Boston asked Mr. Spurgeon to come to America and lecture, they offering to pay him $1,000 in gold for each lecture, and all expenses from England to America and return; but he declined the offer. He did not care to lecture, and would not preach for money.

On Wednesday evening, June 18, 1884, a remarkable jubilee service was held in the Tabernacle on Mr. Spurgeon's fiftieth birthday. Among the speakers was Mr. Spurgeon's father, the Rev. John Spurgeon; his brother, the Rev. James A. Spurgeon, of whom Charles said, "If there is a good man on the earth, I think it is my brother;" and the son of the great preacher, young Charles Spurgeon, one of the twins, affectionately called by the people, Charlie and Tommy. Both are ministers of the gospel. D. L. Moody from America also made an earnest address.

On the following evening the good Earl of Shaftesbury presided, and spoke with his wonted power. "Whatever Mr. Spurgeon is in private he is in the pulpit," said the earl; "and what he is in the pulpit he is in private. He is one and the same man in every aspect; and a kinder, better, honester, nobler man never existed on the face of the earth."

Canon Basil Wilberforce, the son of the Bishop, the Rev. Dr. Newman Hall, and others spoke. The Rev. Dr. O. P. Gifford presented an address from the Baptist ministers of Boston and vicinity.

A Spurgeon Jubilee Fund of £45,000 was given at this time. Five years previously a larger sum was given him, £3,000 of it being raised by a bazaar; and a large part of this money was used for seventeen almshouses, in which are the aged members of the Tabernacle. These are near the Elephant and Castle Station.

Another important agency for Christian work in connection with the Tabernacle is the Colportage Association, founded in 1866. The colporteurs sell religious books, conduct temperance and open-air meetings, distribute tracts, visit the sick, and are really home missionaries. The yearly distribution is about a half million Bibles, and as many, or more, books and periodicals.

Mr. Spurgeon loved to give away the Bible. He once said before the British and Foreign Bible Society, "Somebody may say it is of very little use to give away Bibles and Testaments. That is a very great mistake. I have very seldom found it to be a labor in vain to give a present of a Testament. I was greatly astonished about a month ago. A cabman drove me home, and when I paid him his fare, he said, 'It is a long time since I drove you last, sir.'

"'But,' said I, 'I do not recollect you!'

"'Well,' he said, 'I think it is fourteen years ago; but,' he added, 'perhaps you will know this Testament?' pulling one out of his pocket.

"'What,' I said, 'did I give you that?'

"'Oh, yes!' he said; 'and you spoke to me about my soul, and nobody had done that before, and I have never forgotten it.'

"'What,' said I, 'haven't you worn it out?'

"'No,' he said, 'I would not wear it out; I have had it bound.'"

Besides this society, there are ten Bible classes in the Tabernacle; a Loan Tract Society, for the distribution of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons in the neighborhood, and another to spread them in country districts; a Flower Mission, Maternal Society, Mothers' Meetings, Training Class for workers, and the like. There are twenty-three mission stations in connection with the Tabernacle, and twenty-seven Sunday-schools, with over eight thousand scholars.

With all this work, Mr. Spurgeon was a voluminous writer, as well as speaker. He published thirty-seven volumes of sermons, all of which have had an immense circulation. These were regularly printed in many papers. In Australia some of these were published and paid for as advertisements, at a fabulous price, by a gentleman deeply interested in doing good.

The Rev. Thomas Spurgeon wrote home to his father, from Australia, "I received a visit, in Geelong, from a man who produced from his pocket a torn and discolored copy of The Australasian, dated June, 1868, which contained a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon, entitled, 'The Approachableness of Jesus' (No. 809). To this sermon my visitor attributed his conversion.

"He lived alone, about twenty miles from Geelong, and had not entered a place of worship more than four or five times in twenty years, and had taken to drink, until delirium tremens seized upon him. When partially recovered, with not a human being near, his eye lighted on the sermon in the newspaper, which brought him to Jesus."

Mr. Pike says an admirer of Mr. Spurgeon gave away a quarter of a million copies of these sermons. Many were elegantly bound, and presented to the crowned heads of Europe. Others were sent to every member of Parliament, and to all the students of Oxford and Cambridge. Many of these sermons have been translated into German, French, Welsh, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Spanish, Gaelic, Hungarian, Arabic, Telegu, Hindustani, Syriac, and other languages.

These sermons have been scattered all over the world. At Bryher, one of the Scilly Isles, with a population of one hundred and twenty persons, Spurgeon's sermons are often read in the chapel. In Silesia and Russian Poland, many asked about "Brother Spurgeon," and read his sermons. On the Labrador coast they were read in a mission church Sunday after Sunday.

In 1880 a Red Kaffir, living at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, wrote to Mr. Spurgeon:—

"Dear Sir,—I don't know how to describe my joy and my feelings in this present moment. We never did see each other face to face, but still there is something between you and me which guided me to make these few lines for you. One day, as I was going to my daily work, I met a friend of mine in the street. We spoke about the word of God, and he asked me whether I had ever seen one of Mr. Spurgeon's books....

"He said he bought it from a bookseller. I asked the name of the book, and he said it was 'The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit;' and I went straight to the shop and bought one. I have read a good bit of it. On my reading it, I arrived on a place where Job said, 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'

"I am sure I can't tell how to describe the goodness you have done to us, we black people of South Africa. We are black not only outside, even inside; I wouldn't mind to be a black man only in color. It is a terrible thing to be a black man from the soul to the skin; but still I am very glad to say your sermons have done something good to me." ...

David Livingstone carried one of these sermons with him, No. 408, entitled "Accidents not Punishments," in his last sad journey to Africa. Yellow and travel-stained it was found by his daughter Mrs. Bruce in his boxes after his death. He had written across the top, "Very good. D. L."

His son Thomas writes his mother from Auckland, New Zealand, concerning sermon No. 735, "Loving Advice for Anxious Seekers," copied into the Melbourne Argus, "This scrap of newspaper has been given to me by a town missionary here, who regards it as a very precious relic. It came to him from a man who died in the hospital, and bequeathed it to his visitor as a great treasure. The man found it on the floor of a hut in Australia, and was brought by its perusal to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. He kept it carefully while he lived (for it was discolored and torn when he found it), and on his death-bed gave it to the missionary as the only treasure he had to leave behind him."

In writing "The Treasury of David," seven volumes, Mr. Spurgeon spent a considerable part of twenty years. "During the whole of that period," says the Rev. Robert Shindler, in his valuable life of Spurgeon, "Mr. J. L. Keys, one of Mr. Spurgeon's secretaries, continued to search the library of the British Museum, and other libraries, and to cull from every available source everything worthy of quotation upon the book of Psalms." Over one hundred and twenty thousand volumes have been sold. Dr. Philip Schaff thought it "the most important homiletical and practical work of the age on the Psalter."

Of Spurgeon's "Morning by Morning" and "Evening by Evening," for home reading and devotions, over two hundred thousand copies have been sold.

"Commenting and Commentaries" was a work of great labor, showing his students and others what to use. "If I can save a poor man," he wrote, "from spending his money for that which is not bread, or, by directing a brother to a good book, may enable him to dig deeper into the mines of truth, I shall be well repaid. For this purpose I have toiled, and read much, and passed under review some three or four thousand volumes."

Twenty-seven volumes of the Sword and Trowel, Mr. Spurgeon's magazine, have had an enormous circulation. This is also true of "Lectures to My Students," abounding in sensible suggestions. To those about to become ministers he says:—

"Avoid little debts, unpunctuality, gossiping, nicknaming, petty quarrels, and all other of those little vices which fill the ointment with flies....

"Even in your recreations, remember that you are ministers.... His private life must ever keep good tune with his ministry, or his day will soon set with him, and the sooner he retires the better; for his continuance in his office will only dishonor the cause of God and ruin himself."

Spurgeon urged private prayer upon his young men, and related this incident from Father Faber: "A certain preacher, whose sermons converted men by the scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one of the conversions was owing to his talents or eloquence, but all to the prayers of an illiterate lay brother, who sat on the pulpit steps, pleading all the time for the success of the sermon."

The great John Knox used to say he "wondered how a Christian could lie in his bed all night and not rise to pray."

Of public prayer, Spurgeon said, "Do not let your prayer be long.... 'He prayed me into a good frame of mind,' George Whitefield once said of a certain preacher, 'and if he had stopped there, it would have been very well; but he prayed me out of it again by keeping on.'"

Of the sermon he said, "Preach Christ always and evermore. He is the whole gospel.... Your pulpit preparations are your first business. A man great at tea-drinkings, evening parties, and Sunday-school excursions is generally little everywhere else.

"The sensible minister will be particularly gentle in argument," said Spurgeon. "He should take care not to engross all the conversation," and at the same time, "do not be a dummy."

"Have a good word to say to each and every member of the family,—the big boys and the young ladies and the little girls and everybody. No one knows what a smile and a hearty sentence may do. A man who is to do much with men must love them, and feel at home with them. An individual who has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living."

"Be cool and confident. As Sydney Smith says, 'A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.' ... When a speaker feels, 'I am master of the situation,' he usually is so."

"If a man would speak without any present study, he must usually study much." This Mr. Spurgeon exemplified in his own life. Dr. Theodore Cuyler of New York wrote, after visiting Spurgeon at his home, "Westwood," Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, "a rural paradise," as he says, "Saturday afternoon is his holiday. For an hour he conducted us over his delightful grounds, and through his garden and conservatory, and then to a rustic arbor, where he entertained us with one of his racy talks, which are as characteristic as his sermons....

"It was six o'clock on Saturday when we bade him 'Good-by,' and he assured us that he had not yet selected even the texts for next day's discourses. 'I shall go down in the garden presently,' said he, 'and arrange my morning discourse and choose a text for that in the evening; then to-morrow afternoon, before preaching, I will make an outline of the second one.' ... He never composes a sentence in advance, and rarely spends over half an hour in laying out the plan of a sermon. Constant study fills his mental cask, and he has only to turn the spigot and draw."

Again he says, "To acquire the art of impromptu speech, one must practise it. It was by slow degrees, as Burke says, that Charles Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever lived. He attributed his success to the resolution which he formed when very young of speaking well or ill at least once every night. 'During five whole seasons,' he used to say, 'I spoke every night but one, and I regret only that I did not speak on that night too.' At first he may do so with no other auditory than the chairs and books of his study."

Mr. Spurgeon's suggestions about voice, gesture, and throat are helpful. "Think nothing little," he says, "by which you may be even a little more useful. But, gentlemen, never degenerate in this business into pulpit fops, who think gesture and voice to be everything.... When you have done preaching, take care of your throat by never wrapping it up tightly.... If any brother wants to die of influenza, let him wear a warm scarf round his neck, and then one of these nights he will forget it, and catch such a cold as will last him the rest of his natural life. You seldom see a sailor wrap his neck up." Mr. Spurgeon used beef-tea, strong with pepper, for his throat, or a little glass of Chili vinegar and water.

"Beware of being actors! Never give earnest men the impression that you do not mean what you say, and are mere professionals. To be burning at the lips and freezing at the soul is a mark of reprobation....

"Away with gold rings and chains and jewellery! Why should the pulpit become a goldsmith's shop?"

To gain and keep the attention, he says, "The first golden rule is, always say something worth hearing.... Let the good matter which you give them be very clearly arranged.... Be sure, moreover, to speak plainly.... Do not make the introduction too long.... Be interested yourself, and you will interest others.... Many ministers are more than half asleep all through the sermon; indeed, they never were awake at any time, and probably never will be unless a cannon should be fired off near their ear.

"A very useful help in securing attention is a pause. Pull up short every now and then, and the passengers on your coach will wake up.... The next best thing to the grace of God for a preacher is oxygen. Pray that the windows of heaven may be opened, but begin by opening the windows of your meeting-house.

"Be masters of your Bibles, brethren.... Having given precedence to the inspired writings, neglect no field of knowledge.... Know nothing of parties and cliques, but be the pastor of all the flock, and care for all alike."

He urged them not to mind gossips, "who drink tea and talk vitriol;" and "to opinions and remarks about yourself turn also, as a general rule, the blind eye and the deaf ear."

Of Mr. Spurgeon's most popular books, "John Ploughman's Talk; or, Plain Advice for Plain People," and "John Ploughman's Pictures; or, More of His Plain Talk for Plain People," over four hundred and fifty thousand volumes have been sold. These are full of helpful words in homely garb, but most useful for rich and poor alike.

"Don't wait for helpers," he says. "Try those two old friends, your strong arms.... Don't be whining about not having a fair start.... The more you have to begin with, the less you will have at the end. Money you earn yourself is much brighter and sweeter than any you get out of dead men's bags.... As for the place you are cast in, don't find fault with that. You need not be a horse because you were born in a stable.... A fool may make money, but it needs a wise man to spend it. If you give all to back and board, there is nothing left for the savings bank. Fare hard and work hard while you are young, and you have a chance of rest when you are old.... No matter what comes in, if more goes out you will always be poor.... Plod is the word. Every one must row with such oars as he has.... Never be security for more than you are quite willing to lose."

Spurgeon was an untiring worker. He had no respect for idleness. "Many of our squires," he said, "have nothing to do but to part their hair in the middle; and many of the London grandees, ladies and gentlemen both alike, as I am told, have no better work than killing time.... The greater these people are, the more their idleness is noticed, and the more they ought to be ashamed of it.

"I don't say they ought to plough, but I do say that they ought to do something for the state, besides being like the caterpillars on the cabbage, eating up the good things; or like the butterflies, showing themselves off, but making no honey....

"Let me drop on these Surrey Hills, worn out ... sooner than eat bread and cheese and never earn it; better die an honorable death, than live a good-for-nothing life.

"Rash vows are much better broken than kept. He who never changes, never mends.... Learn to say 'No,' and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

"An open mouth shows an empty head. Still waters are the deepest, but the shallowest brook brawls the most.... Beware of every one who swears; he who would blaspheme his Maker would make no bones of lying or stealing.... Commit all your secrets to no man ... seeing that men are but men, and all men are frail."

In "John Ploughman's Pictures" he says, "He who cannot curb his temper carries gunpowder in his bosom, and he is neither safe for himself nor his neighbors.... Anger is a fire which cooks no victuals, and comforts no households; it cuts and curses and kills, and no one knows what it may lead to.... It takes a great deal out of a man to get in a towering rage; it is almost as unhealthy as having a fit.... Shun a furious man as you would a mad dog.... A man in a thorough passion is as sad a sight as to see a neighbor's house on fire, and no water handy to put out the flames." Mr. Spurgeon's books number about one hundred volumes.

Mr. Spurgeon was blest in his home-life. On Jan 8, 1856, he married Susannah Thompson, daughter of Mr. Robert Thompson, of Falcon Square. He was married in new Park Street Chapel, before the Tabernacle was built. The church was full at the ceremony, while two thousand persons outside were unable to enter.

Their twin sons, Charles and Thomas, their only children, have always been a comfort to them. The wife has long been an invalid, but has been enabled to do great good in her home and out of it.

Mr. Spurgeon once said of her, "My experience of my first wife, who will, I hope, live to be my last, is much as follows: Matrimony came from Paradise, and leads to it. I never was half so happy before I was a married man as I am now.... I have no doubt that where there is much love there will be much to love, and where love is scant, faults will be plentiful. If there is only one good wife in England, I am the man who put the ring on her finger, and long may she wear it. God bless the dear soul! if she can put up with me, she shall never be put down by me."

From Hull he once wrote her a poem, beginning,—

"Unkind and domineering husbands," he said, "ought not to pretend to be Christians, for they act clean contrary to Christ's commands."

Mr. Spurgeon once said of home, "That word home always sounds like poetry to me. It sings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart."

Concerning beer-shops he wrote, "Beer-shops are the enemies of home, and therefore the sooner their licences are taken away the better.... Those beer-shops are the curse of this country; no good ever can come of them, and the evil they do no tongue can tell.... I wish the man who made the law to open them had to keep all the families that they have brought to ruin."

Again he writes, "Certain neighbors of mine laugh at me for being a teetotaller, and I might well laugh at them for being drunk, only I feel more inclined to cry that they should be such fools."

Mrs. Spurgeon's "Book Fund"[1] is well known. In the summer of 1875 Mr. Spurgeon published the first volume of "Lectures to My Students." His wife, feeling that they would do great good, desired to place them in the hands of ministers. Speaking to her husband about it, he said. "Why not do so? How much will you give?"

She had been keeping for years all the crown-pieces which came in her way; and on counting them, found that she had just enough to send away one hundred copies of the book. Others learned of this work, and were glad to aid it.

During the fifteen years since the Book Fund was started, up to 1890, there have been distributed by Mrs. Spurgeon to needy ministers of all denominations, a hundred and twenty-two thousand one hundred and twenty-nine volumes, largely Mr. Spurgeon's sermons, "The Treasury of David," and other works. The books of other authors have also been used.

Besides books, clothing and other needed things have been sent to ministers whose salary was the meager sum of sixty-five pounds per annum, or less. One village pastor for twenty years had received but sixty pounds yearly, and sometimes only forty-five pounds. Some had not purchased a new book in several years, and wrote back most thankful letters.

The money for this work has been furnished by the very poor as well as the rich. After the death of a woman who had had a struggle to support herself by her needle, more than two pounds, all in three-penny pieces, were found wrapped up in a drawer "dedicated to the Lord's work under the hand of Mrs. Spurgeon."

Mr. Spurgeon had suffered from rheumatism for many years, and had been obliged sometimes in winter to go to Mentone, in the South of France. In the middle of May, 1891, he had an attack of la grippe, from which, after a serious illness, he seemed to rally; but this was only temporary.

On all sides there was the greatest interest and sympathy. The Prince of Wales, Gladstone, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, and scores of the highest in the land, all religious sects, all classes, sent letters or telegrams, to hear about the distinguished sufferer. Gladstone wrote of his "cordial admiration, not only of his splendid powers, but still more of his devoted and unfailing character."

And Spurgeon added to the letter sent back by his wife, July 18, 1891, these lines, "Yours is a word of love such as those only write who have been into the King's country, and have seen much of His face—My heart's love to you."

Mr. Spurgeon was always an admirer of Mr. Gladstone, which was heartily reciprocated. In the year 1880 the former took, for him, an unusually active part in politics. Having to preach for a friend, the Rev. John Offord, Mr. Spurgeon said to him, "I should have been here a quarter of an hour sooner, only I stopped to vote."

"My dear friend," said Offord, "I thought you were a citizen of the New Jerusalem, and not of this world."

"So I am," was the reply; "but I have an old man in me yet, and he is a citizen of the world."

"But you ought to mortify him."

"So I do; for he's an old Tory, and I make him vote Liberal," replied Spurgeon.

In the autumn of 1891, the month of October, the preacher started for Mentone, his friends singing the Doxology as he left Hearne Hill Station, London. "Baron Rothschild's private saloon-carriage was placed at Mr. Spurgeon's service to travel in throughout France to Mentone."

Mr. Spurgeon grew better in the warm climate for a time, and wrote back letters to his church. He soon failed, however; and on the last day of January, 1892, on Sunday, at five minutes past eleven at night, at Hotel Beau Rivage, he passed away. At half-past three he had been unable to recognize his wife, or other friends. He grew weaker, and the end was painless.

The next day the body was almost hidden from sight by the flowers sent by friends. It was embalmed, sealed up in a leaden case, and this was enclosed in a coffin of olive-wood. On it were the last Scripture words uttered by Mr. Spurgeon to his secretary, Mr. J. W. Harrald, before his death, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

After service, Thursday, Feb. 4, at the Scottish Church at Mentone, the body was taken to London, where an immense crowd awaited its coming.

Through all of Tuesday, Feb. 9, the body lay in state in his beloved Tabernacle. Friends had been requested not to send flowers, but to use the money which they would have expended thus, for the Stockwell Orphanage. Yet the body was covered with flowers notwithstanding the request. Wednesday was spent in memorial services, the Tabernacle being crowded until after midnight.

At eleven o'clock Thursday, the 11th, the public funeral service was held. Deputations from sixty religious associations were present. Members of the House of Commons, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, bishops and laity, all came to honor the distinguished preacher.

The boys of Stockwell Orphanage sang the last hymn announced by Mr. Spurgeon before he became ill,—

Dr. A. T. Pierson of the United States delivered an earnest address, and the coffin was borne down the aisle, while the great congregation rose and sang,—

Through four miles of streets, crowds lining the way, the large mourning procession passed,—forty coaches and a vast number of private carriages. Flags were at half-mast, bells were tolled, and houses were draped with black.

At Stockwell Orphanage, on a raised platform covered with the emblems of mourning, five hundred boys and girls, who had loved the great man, once as poor as they, saw the solemn procession pass to the grave. Norwood Cemetery, where none had been admitted save by ticket, was already thronged. After a brief service, the Bishop of Rochester pronounced the benediction, and the sorrowing crowd went back to their homes.

More than two years afterwards, March 21, 1894 the Rev. Thomas Spurgeon was called to succeed his father at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

The manifold work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon will go on forever, through his books, and through those whose steps he has turned heavenward.