Readers may have seen the recent T V series 'Empire', presented by the distinguished historian Niall Ferguson.
No one can doubt that this was a serious, well informed series, so I was surprised to hear the account of C.H. Spurgeon's comments on the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857.
According to Ferguson, the 'incandescent Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon issued what amounted to a call for holy war: "The Indian government never ought to have tolerated the religion of the Hindoos" which "consisted of bestiality, infanticide and murder ... Their worship necessitates everything that is evil, and morality must put it down. The sword must be taken out of its sheath, to cut off our fellow subjects by their thousands".' Spurgeon's sermon, says Ferguson, was nothing short of an 'Evangelical dies irae' (Day of Wrath). Evangelicals generally switched from preaching redemption to revenge. It was 'a fearful paroxysm to behold - the vengefulness of the evangelicals' and 'sanctimony bred a special cruelty'.
