The Voices
Charles Spurgeon
Spurgeon's theology is Particular-Baptist Calvinism unashamedly preached as gospel.
Short bio
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (June 19, 1834 – January 31, 1892) — "the Prince of Preachers" — was an English Particular (Reformed) Baptist preacher whose 38-year pastorate at New Park Street Chapel, expanded as the Metropolitan Tabernacle (London, 1861), made him one of the most-heard Christian voices of the 19th century. Born in Kelvedon, Essex, raised by his Independent grandfather Rev. James Spurgeon, he was converted at age 15 in a snow-bound Primitive Methodist chapel under the text "Look unto Me, and be ye saved" (Isaiah 45:22). He preached his first sermon at 16, took his first pastorate at 17, and was called to London at 19. His weekly sermons, published from 1855 as the *New Park Street Pulpit* and after 1861 as the *Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit*, ran to 63 volumes — the largest collection of sermons by one preacher in Christian history. He founded the Pastors' College (1856), the Stockwell Orphanage (1867), and the Colportage Association (1866). His final years were marked by the Down-Grade Controversy (1887–1892), in which he resigned from the Baptist Union over its drift on biblical authority and the gospel.
What they believed
- Fear of the Lord Emphasis — Fear of the Lord is the right disposition of the soul before God's holiness. Spurgeon preaches reverence and tender-heartedness joined; his sermons routinely begin with awe before the divine attributes and end with evangelistic appeal.
- Cost of Following — Spurgeon preaches counting the cost as integral to genuine conversion; nominal evangelical assent without ongoing repentance and obedience is rejected as not the gospel. His Down-Grade resignation is itself the dramatized cost of doctrinal fidelity.
- Wealth and Money — Wealth is to be held loosely under God; the believer is steward, not owner. Spurgeon's own life was a model — he founded and sustained the Pastors' College, the Stockwell Orphanage, and the Colportage Association out of book royalties and donations rather than personal wealth. Anti-prosperity in posture.
- Rapture Timing — Spurgeon held a clear premillennialism — Christ returns visibly to inaugurate a literal millennial reign — but pre-dates and rejects the dispensational pre-tribulation rapture system (Darby's framing emerged in the 1830s but did not capture British evangelicalism in Spurgeon's day). He is a historic premillennialist in modern terms.
- Cessation — Functionally cessationist in the 19th-c. Reformed Baptist mode. Spurgeon does not engage modern continuationism (which postdates him). His pneumatology emphasizes the Spirit's anointing on preaching and the Spirit's regenerating, sanctifying work.
- Modern State Prophetic Significance — Spurgeon held the future literal national restoration and conversion of Israel as a clear teaching of Romans 11 and the prophets. He preached this repeatedly, often noting that the conversion of the Jewish people would be one of the great events of redemptive history.
Notable works
7 listed
| Title | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|
| The Treasury of David | 1869 | His verse-by-verse commentary on the Psalms — about twenty years' work, published in seven volumes from 1869 to 1885. Old enough to be public domain, so it can be read in full. |
| The New Park Street / Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit | 1855 | The largest single-author sermon corpus in Christian history. The primary source for any Spurgeon position on any topic. |
| Lectures to My Students | 1875 | Spurgeon's instruction to his Pastors' College — the standard 19th-c. handbook on evangelical preaching, prayer, and pastoral life. |
| A Defense of Calvinism | Spurgeon's own account of his Calvinism, from his Autobiography — "I have my own opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism." | |
| All of Grace | 1886 | Spurgeon's gospel of grace written for the unconverted reader — the most widely distributed of his books. |
| Morning and Evening | 1865 | The standard Spurgeon daily devotional, in continuous print since publication. |
| The Down Grade Controversy correspondence and articles | 1887 | Spurgeon's defense of biblical authority, penal substitution, and eternal judgment against the Baptist Union's emerging modernism. |
Where to find them
Their words on MannaFest
2,220 quotes across 1 book
Where this voice speaks on the site — each quote links to the verse it was chosen for.
“. Ver. 35. Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. They are the only blot upon creation. "Every prospect pleases. And only man is vile." In holy indignation the psalmist would fain rid the world of beings so base as not to …”
“. Ver 1. O give thanks unto the Lord. Jehovah is the author of all our benefits, therefore let him have all our gratitude. Call upon his name, or call him by his name; proclaim his titles and fill the world with his renown. Make known his deeds among the peopl…”
“. Ver. 2. Sing unto him. Bring your best thoughts and express them in the best language to the sweetest sounds. Take care that your singing is "unto him, "and not merely for the sake of the music or to delight the ears of others. Singing is so delightful an ex…”
“. Ver. 3. Glory ye in his holy name. Make it a matter of joy that you have such a God. His character and attributes are such as will never make you blush to call him your God. Idolaters may well be ashamed of the actions attributed to their fancied deities, th…”
“. Ver. 4. Seek the Loan and his strength. Put yourselves under his protection. Regard him not as a puny God, but look unto his omnipotence, and seek to know the power of his grace. We all need strength; let us look to the strong One for it. We need infinite po…”
“. Ver. 5. Remember his marvellous works that he hath done. Memory is never better employed than upon such topics. Alas, we are far more ready to recollect foolish and evil things than to retain in our minds the glorious deeds of Jehovah. If we would keep these…”
“. Ver. 6. O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of Jacob his chosen. Should all the world forget, ye are bound to remember. Your father Abraham saw his wonders and judgments upon Sodom, and upon the kings who came from far, and Jacob also saw the Lord'…”
“. Ver. 7. He is the Lord our God. Blessed be his name. Jehovah condescends to be our God. This sentence contains a greater wealth of meaning than all the eloquence of orators can compass, and there is more joy in it than in all the sonnets of them that make me…”
“. Ver. 8. He hath remembered his covenant for ever. Here is the basis of all his dealings with his people: he had entered into covenant with them in their father Abraham, and to this covenant he remained faithful. The exhortation to remember (Ps 105:5) receive…”
“. Ver. 9. Which covenant he made with Abraham. When the victims were divided and the burning lamp passed between the pieces (Gen. 15.) then the Lord made, or ratified, the covenant with the patriarch. This was a solemn deed, performed not without blood, and th…”
“. Ver. 10. And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law. Jacob in his wondrous dream (Ge 28:10-15) received a pledge that the Lord's mode of procedure with him would be in accordance with covenant relations: for said Jehovah, "I will not leave thee till I have …”
“. Ver. 11. Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance. This repetition of the great covenant promise is recorded in Ge 35:9-12 in connection with the change of Jacob's name, and very soon after that slaughter of the Shechemit…”
“. Ver. 12. When they were but a few men in number. bpom ytm. Literally, "homines numeri", men of number; so few as easily to be numbered: in opposition to what their posterity afterwards were, as the sand of the sea, without number. Samuel Chandler.”
“. Ver. 13. When they went from one nation, to another, from one Kingdom to another people. Migrating as the patriarchs did from the region of one tribe to the country of another they were singularly preserved. The little wandering family might have been cut of…”
“. Ver. 14. He suffered no man to do them wrong. Men cannot wrong us unless he suffers them to do so; the greatest of them must wait his permission before they can place a finger upon us. The wicked would devour us if they could, but they cannot even cheat us o…”
“. Ver. 15. Saying, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. Abraham and his seed were in the midst of the world a generation of priests anointed to present sacrifice unto the most High God; since to them the oracles were committed, they were also t…”
“. Ver. 16. Moreover he called for a famine upon the land. He had only to call for it as a man calls for his servant, and it came at once. How grateful ought we to be that he does not often call in that terrible servant of his, so meagre and gaunt, and grim, so…”
“. Ver. 17. He sent a man before them, even Joseph. He was the advance guard and pioneer for the whole clan. His brethren sold him, but God sent him. Where the hand of the wicked is visible God's hand may be invisibly at work, overruling their malice. No one wa…”
“. Ver. 18. Whose feet they hurt with fetters. From this we learn a little more of Joseph's sufferings than we find in the book of Genesis: inspiration had not ceased, and David was as accurate an historian as Moses, for the same Spirit guided his pen. He was l…”
“. Ver. 19. Until the time that his word came. God has his times, and his children must wait till his "until" is fulfilled. Joseph was tried as in a furnace, until the Lord's assaying work was fully accomplished. The word of the chief butler was nothing, he had…”
“. Ver. 20. The king sent and loosed him. He was thrust into the roundhouse by an officer, but he was released by the monarch himself. Even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. The tide had turned, so that Egypt's haughty potentate gave him a call from…”
“. Ver. 21. He made him lord of his house. Reserving no power, but saying "only in the throne will I be greater than thou." The servitor of slaves becomes lord over nobles. How soon the Lord lifteth his chosen from the dunghill to set them among princes. And ru…”
“. Ver. 22. To bind his princes at his pleasure. He who was bound obtains authority to bind. He is no longer kept in prison, but keeps all the prisons, and casts into them the greatest nobles when justice demands it. And teach his senators wisdom. The heads of …”
“. Ver. 23. Israel also came into Egypt. The aged patriarch came, and with him that increasing company which bore his name. He was hard to bring there. Perhaps nothing short of the hope of seeing Joseph could have drawn him to take so long a journey from the to…”
“. Ver. 24. And he increased his people greatly. In Goshen they seem to have increased rapidly from the first, and this excited the fears of the Egypt, inns, so that they tried to retard their increase by oppression, but the Lord continued to bless them, And ma…”