Do you know the name of the man who preached the sermon which led to the conversion of C.H. Spurgeon? Neither do I! Neither did he, so far as I am aware.
In recent months we have looked at totally obscure Christians who were used by God to influence individuals who were used by God in spectacular ways. The great Victorian English Evangelical layman and social reformer, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and the great Victorian American evangelist, D.L. Moody, were both led to true faith in Christ through the faithful witness of relatively unknown and unsung Christians (Maria Millis and Edward Kimball).
I thought it would be good to turn this month to the greatest pastor and preacher of the Victorian era and remind ourselves of how God used a totally obscure preacher to be His human instrument in the conversion of the greatest preacher of the age.
Spurgeon’s legacy
During the second half of the 19th century, Charles Spurgeon was preaching twice every Sunday in London to thousands of people. His sermons were printed and circulated widely almost as soon as they were preached, and that was before the invention of the tape recorder or the internet. They are still widely read today. He came to be referred to as ‘the prince of preachers’. He produced scores of books and magazines, ranging from lectures to trainee pastors and preachers, collections of pithy sayings for ordinary people, to daily devotional readings. He was a household name in Victorian Britain and beyond. He also started a college for the training of ministers as well as an orphanage, both of which still exist today. He was constantly in demand dedicating new Baptist churches and preaching at special services. He did all this while battling opposition and controversy, as well as struggling with ill-health and bouts of depression. Sixty thousand people visited his body as it lay for three days at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and 100,000 lined the streets as his funeral cortège travelled to West Norwood Cemetery.
Godly parents
The story of his own conversion is well-known, but it’s worth reminding ourselves of it. As a child and teenager, he was surrounded by godly influences. His parents were devout Christians who prayed regularly for him. For a while, as a small child, he went to live with his grandparents. His grandfather was a Congregational minister with a large library in the attic which the young Spurgeon devoured.
So he became familiar with the writings of Puritan authors like Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter and John Bunyan. I suspect that in many modern churches it would simply have been assumed that a teenager who chose to read such books must be a Christian.
The truth was that Charles had no assurance of salvation. He describes himself as ‘sitting at the foot of Sinai’ under an unshakeable sense of guilt. It seems that, while he may theoretically have understood that we are not saved by good works, he was in all kinds of subtle ways looking at himself and at his own heart, instead of looking totally to Christ alone for salvation. As someone brought up myself in an Evangelical family, I know what it is to look to such things as the intensity of my experience for assurance of salvation and to imagine that I can be saved by good feelings rather than confidence in Christ alone. The human heart is incurably proud and is massively resistant to the truth that salvation is, as Spurgeon put it, ‘all of grace from first to last, the free gift of God through His blessed Son, Jesus Christ’.
An unexpected preacher
On 6 January 1850, Charles was unable to get to his normal place of worship due to heavy snow. He reluctantly joined the small congregation at a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Artillery Street, Colchester. Unfortunately, the expected preacher was also unable to make it through the snow, so a deacon had to stand in for him at the last minute. He is described by Spurgeon as ‘a shoemaker or tailor or something of that sort … He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had little else to say’. He chose as his text Isaiah 45:22: ‘Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth’. For ten minutes or so, before he ran out of things to say, he urged his hearers to look to Christ alone for salvation.
Keep looking to Christ
He pointed out how anyone could look and that looking didn’t require a college education. Even a child or ‘the biggest fool’ can look. But it is to Christ we must look, not to ourselves; not even to the Father to ask if we are elect or not; not to the Spirit to ask if He is working in our lives or not. We can do this later, but to be saved we must look away from ourselves, our works, or our feelings, and look to Christ alone. After ten minutes of this, he looked directly at Spurgeon, the only stranger in the congregation, and pleaded with him: ‘Young man, look to Jesus Christ! Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!’
At that moment the truth dawned on Spurgeon. ‘I had been waiting to do 50 things, but when I heard that word “look!” what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away!’ In no time at all, Spurgeon was baptised and at the age of 19 was the pastor of a small church at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire.
At the age of 22 he was preaching in London to 6,000 people every Sunday. His message continued to be the message he heard from that unschooled, stand-in preacher at the little chapel at Colchester. We don’t even know the man’s name, and if Spurgeon knew it, he didn’t think it important enough to tell us!
Maybe your congregation is small. Maybe your church is in the sort of area where few ministers or ministry trainees want to come. Maybe you can’t afford the latest sound system and the music is nothing like what’s on offer in other churches. Maybe you don’t think you are much of a preacher. Keep preaching the same gospel that Spurgeon preached. One day you may have a Spurgeon in your congregation.
