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Portrait of Charles Spurgeon
Alexander Melville · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Missionary Century

Charles Spurgeon

1834–1892BritishParticular (Reformed) Baptist

Spurgeon's theology is Particular-Baptist Calvinism unashamedly preached as gospel.

Summary

Charles Spurgeon lived 1834–1892, and was British. This wing places Charles Spurgeon in The Missionary Century, 1790–1910.
  • Lived 1834–1892, British.
  • Stood in The Missionary Century (1790–1910).
  • Hangs on The Awakeners.
  • Read first: The Treasury of David (1869).
  • Tradition: Particular (Reformed) Baptist / Five-point Calvinist / 1689 Baptist Confession / 19th-c. evangelical.

The life

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (June 19, 1834 – January 31, 1892) was an English Particular (Reformed) Baptist preacher whose 38-year pastorate ran at New Park Street Chapel, expanded as the Metropolitan Tabernacle (London, 1861). 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. 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 was happening while he lived6 moments · 1790–1910
  1. 1840Livingstone sails, and the Burmese Bible is doneDavid Livingstone, a Scottish mill worker who studied medicine at night, left London in December for southern Africa; he had wanted China, but a war closed it and Robert Moffat's talk of "the smoke of a thousand villages" turned him south. That same year Judson finished revising his Burmese Bible, first completed in 1834, twenty-one years after he landed.
  2. 1854Hudson Taylor lands at ShanghaiHe was twenty-one, under-funded, and arrived in the middle of a civil war. Within a few years he had done what no missionary did, put on Chinese dress and gone inland, away from the treaty ports and the protection of gunboats.
  3. 1859The '59 Revival, and Spurgeon's foundation stoneAwakening ran through Ulster and Wales after a season of prayer meetings begun in New York two years earlier; contemporaries counted converts in the tens of thousands, though the figures were estimates made in the moment. In August the foundation stone was laid for Charles Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, which opened in 1861 and seated around five thousand.
  4. 1865The China Inland Mission and the Salvation ArmyIn June, walking the beach at Brighton in anguish over inland China, Taylor wrote in his Bible that he was asking God for twenty-four workers, a mission that would ask no one but God for money. The same summer William and Catherine Booth opened a mission in London's East End; it took the name Salvation Army in 1878.
  5. 1873Livingstone dies on his kneesHe was found on the morning of May 1 at Chitambo's village, kneeling by his bed. His African companions Chuma and Susi buried his heart under a tree, dried his body, and carried it roughly a thousand miles to the coast so England could bury him in Westminster Abbey.
  6. 1885The Cambridge SevenSeven young men from Britain's most privileged circles, including the cricketer C. T. Studd, gave up sport, money, and careers and sailed for China with the Inland Mission. Their farewell tour of the universities sent a wave of students into missions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Missionary Century: the whole era→

In their own words

  • “You will find those words six times upon the first page of Scripture. God spoke and said, "Let there be a firmament." "And it was so." He said, "Let the dry land appear." "And it was so." He bade the earth bring forth grass, "And it was so." He ordained the sun and moon for lights in the firmament of Heaven. "And it was so." Whatever it was that He willed, He did but speak the Word, "and it was so." In no single case was there a failure.”

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3064: “'And It Was So'” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) · on Genesis 1:7

    “So God made the expanse and separated the waters beneath it from the waters above. And it was so.”

  • “THIS is, no doubt, a literal and accurate account of God's first day's work in the creation of the world, but the first creation is not the subject of this morning's discourse—we would rather direct your minds to the second creation of God. Every man who is saved by Divine Grace is a new creation. The great work which Jesus Christ is accomplishing in the world, by the Holy Spirit through the Word, is the making all things new. We believe the old creation to have been typical of the new and we shall so use it.”

    The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 660: “Light—Natural And Spiritual” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) · on Genesis 1:1

    “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

  • “They shall stand there to be judged, but not to be acquitted. Fear shall lay hold upon them there; they shall not stand their ground; they shall flee away; they shall not stand in their own defense; for they shall blush and be covered with eternal contempt. Well may the saints long for heaven, for no evil men shall dwell there, "nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." All our congregations upon earth are mixed. Every Church hath one devil in it. The tares grow in the same furrows as the wheat.”

    The Treasury of David, Vol. 1 · on Psalms 1:5

    “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.”

Go further

Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.

Search Charles Spurgeon at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites

Why this voice is honored here

Spurgeon's value for MannaFest is the union of doctrinal precision (uncompromising five-point Calvinism, Particular Baptist, holding the 1689 Baptist Confession) with overwhelming pastoral warmth, accessible English prose, and a preaching catalog that talks to the soul before it argues to the mind. The Treasury of David (1869–1885) is the standard public-domain commentary on the Psalms. Spurgeon's catalog is the rare combination of Reformed-confessional fidelity, evangelistic urgency, and explicit pre-millennial / pro-Israel eschatology rare in his Calvinist contemporaries.

Standing beside himThe Missionary Century · 29 on this stretch of wall

Portrait of William Carey
William Carey1761–1834

A village cobbler who expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and opened the missions era.

Portrait of Adoniram Judson
Adoniram Judson1788–1850

Survived Burma's death prisons and buried his family there to give the Burmese the Bible they still read.

Portrait of George Müller
George Müller1805–1898

Housed ten thousand orphans in Bristol and never asked anyone but God for a penny.

Portrait of David Livingstone
David Livingstone1813–1873

Walked Africa open for the gospel, shamed the slave trade in print, and died on his knees.

Portrait of Horatio Spafford
Horatio Spafford1828–1888

Wrote 'it is well with my soul' on the deck of a ship crossing the exact water where his four daughters had drowned.

Portrait of William Booth
William Booth1829–1912

Built an army out of the people no church wanted, with soup, soap, and salvation.