Session 1: A Precocious Heart and Mind: The Childhood of Charles Spurgeon

Kootenai Church

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Well, good evening everyone Welcome, if you're out in the foyer, please come into the main sanctuary here and find a spot at one of the tables

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Alright now that we've kind of all settled down. Let's open our time here with the word of prayer. It's powerheads Our father you are you are so good to us in so many ways and you are better to us than we deserve you have

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Graced us with salvation in Jesus Christ with this place to hold this conference you have blessed us with the fellowship that we enjoy in your son and we thank you for these rich graces and we thank you for The history of your church and the men and women who have served you and sacrificed so much and have been such godly examples throughout the ages we are grateful for those giants who have gone before and We know the

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Spurgeon is one of those and we pray that tonight as we Give our hearts and minds in meditation upon the work that you have done in his life that you would be glorified through What is taught here?

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we pray for your grace upon Phil as he as he brings the message tonight that we would be instructed and and that we may truly see your hand of of grace and glory in the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and we pray that you would strengthen and embolden us as your servants to To mimic that faithfulness and to be faithful in the times in which we live that you may be honored

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In and through your church in this world and of course for all of eternity. We ask this in Christ's name.

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Amen Well, welcome to our conference. I thought that the subject matter the life and the legacy of Charles Spurgeon would be something of a niche

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Subject. So when I originally came up with the idea for a conference on the life and legacy of Charles Spurgeon I was

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I thought I don't know how many people would actually be interested in going to a conference like that I thought that it would probably be a very unique Collection of people and maybe just a few people that would be interested in a conference

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But I was surprised at how fast this conference sold out especially compared to some of the other conferences that deal with other issues that we seem to be

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Pressing upon that seem to be pressing upon the church right now like the abortion and end -of -life issues that we dealt with with Scott Klusendorf and creation evolution issues that we've dealt with in the past So this conference sold out quickly and within almost three or four weeks

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We had almost reached capacity of what we had set the limit for here and I didn't know if that was because the subject matter is

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Charles Spurgeon and I'm just there's so many more people who want to hear about Charles Spurgeon than I would have ever guessed or If it's because the speaker is

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Phil Johnson or some combination of the two It may be that the speaker is

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Phil Johnson I probably could have done a seminar a conference on the subject of the history of the rubber eraser

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Featuring Phil Johnson and he would have come up here and we could have sold out in four weeks So I think that people are excited to hear about Charles Spurgeon and the legacy that he has left us

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Here's just a couple of comments on the schedule of events Tonight's Q &A that you see there in your in your brochure is already scripted

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I've already come up with the questions for that. There will be a Q &A tomorrow after and during the lunchtime break and I'll explain more about that tomorrow you when you show up tomorrow

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You have some three by five index cards on your on your table So during the morning if you think of a question that you want to have asked

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During the lunch Q &A or at some point at the end of some of the sessions Then I'll have you fill that out tomorrow and bring them up to the table that I'm sitting at up here front and center and Then we can deal with some of those questions that you might have and we're gonna start promptly tomorrow at 8 30 a .m

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The doors will open at 7 30 So you'll be able to come in and enjoy a little snack in the morning and some coffee before we get started

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And now I'll introduce our guest speaker Phil Johnson Phil Johnson is the executive director of grace to you the radio ministry of John MacArthur He is an elder at Grace Community Church and teaches the

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Grace Life Sunday School Fellowship class along with his fellow elder Mike Riccardi Phil was the curator of the online

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Spurgeon archive and a contributing Blogger with the pyromaniacs blog for years

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He is the editor of for John MacArthur's books and a prominent and regular preacher at Grace Community Church and the

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Shepherds Conference And is frequently heard on Christian radio And he is the voice of John MacArthur's radio ministry the intro and the exit to the grace to you

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Broadcast that is Phil who does that and Phil is a frequent or was a frequent guest on Wretched radio with Todd Friel under the two wretched for radio segments.

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I've been listening to Phil preach for the last 20 years I don't think that probably since 2004 I have missed a single

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Sunday school class that he has taught at Grace Community Church I have certainly listened to all of his Shepherds Conference Sessions that he has taught and I followed his writings online his blog at the pyromaniacs blog

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For years and I own I owe part of my own love for Spurgeon to Phil Johnson What got me interested in Charles Spurgeon originally was listening to a set of lectures that he had given at the

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Shepherds Conference years ago And I heard him talk about the life and the conversion of Charles Spurgeon is preaching and I was hooked and so now to this

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Very day whenever I'm preparing a message on a text of Scripture I read any sermon that Spurgeon wrote on that or preached on that text

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Because normally you can find something very quotable from almost anything that Spurgeon wrote One of my children and I won't say which one because I don't want to embarrass her in front of her husband but one of my children one of my children refers to Phil Johnson as her favorite preacher and I'm fine with that because I have the designation favorite biological father

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Phil works with someone who shares a birthday with Charles Spurgeon Phil looks a little bit like Charles Spurgeon and like Charles Spurgeon Phil is a wordsmith with an immense vocabulary and When I came up with the idea for a conference on Charles Spurgeon, I regard and I don't know if this is true or not

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I regard Phil Johnson is probably one of if not the world's leading expert on the subject of Charles Spurgeon If he's not he's certainly high up on that list with few people ahead of him on that list

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And there's nobody else on that list that would have returned my email to come and speak on the subject of Phil Johnson So like Phil Johnson Charles Spurgeon, sorry

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Yeah, Phil like Charles Spurgeon is a wordsmith with an immense vocabulary and it's one of the things I appreciate about Phil I am thankful to Phil that he introduced me to not only

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Charles Spurgeon, but also to the word petty fogger Now that sounds like a swear word, but it's not it's one of those glorious English words

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That like the whole English language was created for that word petty fogger But mostly

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I'm grateful to Phil for coming up here and for teaching us about the life and legacy of Charles Spurgeon So, please welcome

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Phil Johnson Drive across the street to hear me.

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So So Thank you for that. I am NOT one of the world's leading experts on Spurgeon but I probably have put more of Spurgeon's preaching and writing on the internet than anybody else and So he's been a favorite of mine since the early 90s when

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I edited a book for John MacArthur called ashamed of the gospel and The book was sort of I'll explain this as part of one of my lectures

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But the book was sort of woven together with the story of the downgrade controversy, which was the the huge Conflict that happened at the end the last four years of Spurgeon's life

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I think the stress of it is one of the things that contributed to his early death and He was trying to pull

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British Baptists back from the precipice of liberalism and compromise and Modernism early modernism was a huge problem and some of the things he said and wrote during that time were some of the most profound and insightful things about the importance of sound doctrine and and Theological steadfastness that I had ever read and that's what sparked my interest in Spurgeon when

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I first got on the internet I looked to see if there was any Spurgeon material online

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This is 1995. The World Wide Web was less than two years old and in all of the

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Internet there were only eight sermons by Spurgeon that had been transcribed and put online and so I took it upon myself to To add as many more as I could and so a lot of a lot of the

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Spurgeon material that is there Originated with my website. It became too much for me to deal with so I gave it to I donated it to Southwest or rather a

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Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City because they own the physical library of Spurgeon I'll talk about that as well, but so I've washed my hands of the website

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But I still love Spurgeon and this is really my first opportunity to talk about him in quite a long time

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Tonight I want to talk about His childhood we're going to survey his life and ministry and once I finished my notes for all these six sessions

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The thing that struck me is how much I have to pass over So many things about Spurgeon that we're not even going to have time to talk about But I want to talk about his childhood tonight because I think it explains a lot of who he was and what?

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forces shaped him There is no one in church history who is actually comparable to him no pastor

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Since the apostolic era surpasses him as both a preacher and an evangelist there have been greater scholars

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John Calvin comes to mind and John Knox was maybe a more fierce and effective

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Polemicist defender of the faith George Whitfield was a more eminent Evangelist who ministered in person

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Whitfield did to crowds of Up to 20 ,000 people on two separate continents and it happened regularly with Whitfield Whitfield's fame and influence

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Were arguably greater than Spurgeon's if you adjust for population and size and all of that Augustine has had and will continue to have a more far -reaching and longer lasting influence than Spurgeon So in various ways there are figures in church history who surpass him

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But all of those men would have appreciated Spurgeon's ministry They probably would have highly esteemed

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Spurgeon himself because he drew from every one of them. He stood on their shoulders And in particular he aspired to be a preacher like George Whitfield But the truth is

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Spurgeon could do all of those things. He was extraordinarily gifted with a whole range of genius level aptitudes that equipped him for ministry

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So that he was a capable theologian. He was a powerful defender of the faith

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He was an exceptionally fruitful Evangelist he preached he wrote he taught he was a visionary leader

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He was a beloved pastor and above all he was a great if not the greatest of all time preacher

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History nicknamed him the prince of preachers, and it's a fitting moniker

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I don't think there's been a greater preacher who pastored such a large Congregation and remained in the same place for so long a time

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John MacArthur is a close match in in some ways MacArthur and Spurgeon even share the same birthday as as he mentioned but MacArthur has the advantage of radio and audio recordings and the internet and the ease of worldwide travel and Advantages that Spurgeon never was able to utilize and so he remains and always will remain a towering figure in Baptist and evangelical history

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That you can be certain that he will never be forgotten and It's unlikely that anyone will ever surpass him in the sheer variety of ministry skills that he displayed you can take any individual aspect of Spurgeon's expertise and you find people here and there who maybe could do better During Spurgeon's lifetime for example there were several superior theological writers on both sides of the

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Atlantic with You know keen biblically minded minds men who produced textbook level works that will last

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I think until Christ comes I'm thinking of men like Charles Hodge and William Cunningham and B .B.

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Warfield and Augustus Strong and William Shedd and all of those men's lives

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Overlapped Spurgeon they were all contemporaries at least for a time You might even add

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J. Gresham Machen who was 10 years old already when Spurgeon died

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So that some of the best theological works I own were written in that era by those men none of Spurgeon's published works were as weighty or as masterful as What those men wrote but Spurgeon's published writings outnumbered and outsold all of them

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He was doctrinally sound without ever being ponderous or pedantic he preached for working -class people and Not not really the

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Oxford and Cambridge elites But even the Oxford and Cambridge elites listened to him a preach appreciatively and as a matter of fact

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Spurgeon himself Had no university degree. He never enrolled in college.

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He produced Sermons not really scholarly works but sermons and yet because all of his sermons were transcribed for publication

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Spurgeon left a body of published work that represents The single most prolific output of any

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Christian in history now I've done an exhaustive study to verify that fact But I believe it's true that he published more words than any other

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Christian author in history He certainly sold and Distributed more pages of printed text than any other

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Christian author ever and over the past hundred years or so He has influenced millions of pastors and laymen for good

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And the current resurgence of Calvinism even is the fruit of his continuing influence

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His books which are primarily collections of sermons that he preached. They were reprinted 50 years ago and They sold briskly for decades all of his sermons have been converted to digital

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Digital data and you can get the entire collection Very cheaply if not for free for about $50

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You can get a disc with PDF copies of all of his sermons and eventually all of his sermons will be downloadable on the

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Internet And I'm happy to have had a hand in Starting that project and I think Spurgeon would be delighted to know that people are using the

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Internet to read and distribute his sermons He was not put off by old by new technologies

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He's considered to be kind of an old -fashioned guy, and he was even in his lifetime But he wasn't afraid of new technologies.

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He was I think strangely both Old -fashioned and newfangled at the same time

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And in fact if you'd read many biographies of great Preachers of the past George Whitfield for example was similar sort of old -fashioned and newfangled

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Whitfield was considered something of a scandalous innovator because he preached in the open air to people and yet at a time when

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Deism was gaining popularity and whole churches were Apostatizing because of it

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Whitfield's theology actually represented a return to orthodoxy of an earlier

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Era and the same thing was true of Jonathan Edwards who was a personal friend of Whitfield's all of these guys were eager and happy to stay in step with the times in terms of technological advances like travel and Communications, but they were not willing to change their doctrine and or adapt their principles to to the shifting winds of cultural trends

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At the height of Spurgeon's popularity an article about him was published in Vanity Fair magazine the

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British edition This is the December 1870 issue and the writer of that article said of Spurgeon that he extracts edification out of slang and By slang that author meant that Spurgeon used simple words.

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He used the words of working -class people and commonplace expressions that anybody could understand he didn't he didn't

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Craft his sermons for scholars, but he was preaching to the average person and lots of people in Spurgeon's generation commented on this fact that he could deliver the profoundest truths in everyday language

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And Spurgeon himself gloried in that kind of Communication he strived to teach it to his own students

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And and he had no patience with preachers who would purposely use language from the pulpit that the people in the pews couldn't possibly even understand and His book lectures to my students is a collection of his messages to ministerial students at the college

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He founded he was training preachers and in one place. He tells them this I'm quoting He says

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I am persuaded that one reason why our working men so universally keep clear of ministers

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Is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways if they saw us in the pulpit and out of it

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Acting like real men and speaking naturally like honest men. They would come around us

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That's a pretty profound insight. I think and his desire was to communicate and he knew that Stuffy highbrow language and and especially he bought this frequently effeminate mannerisms

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He knew that that would not communicate well with men in his flock and he cautioned preachers not to be effeminate

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And I'll have more to say about this when we discuss his approach to preaching But the point here is that Spurgeon wasn't the least bit reluctant to adapt his

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Delivery style and his language to the culture that he was ministering in I'm pretty sure that if he if he lived today

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He would be using all of the tools the internet gives us To get the message out to the largest possible audience with as much force and clarity as possible but he wasn't willing to to try to contextualize the message or or make the make the theology more in step with the times and In fact a hundred years after Spurgeon now, it's been

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What a hundred and thirty years since Spurgeon died Language has changed greatly

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But the fact is Spurgeon sermons for the most part still convey that sort of plain language ease of understanding

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You can read the sermon some of his language may sound quaintly Victorian to our ears he used some of the

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King James These and those especially in his early preaching he got away from that a little later, but There are these

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Victorianisms buried in there and some people read that and and think maybe that he was rather old -fashioned in his language

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But the fact is even in Spurgeon's time He was notable for making old truths clear in what was modern language and unpretentious speech but his

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Informality actually shocked and outraged those Famous, you know prim

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Victorian sensibilities preachers were not expected to use the common man's working man's language from the pulpit and so all the social critics and newspaper pundits wrote these

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Blistering condemnations of his style. I'll share some of those with you in a later session

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But I just want to point out that we still today read Spurgeon for the simple uncluttered clarity of his message it still comes through today and in this

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Again, you see that while Spurgeon may have been keen to Stay in step with the changing means of communication

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He was he was not at all trendy when it came to the content of his doctrine

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He understood that the the message that we have been commissioned to take into all the world

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That can never change and we must not try to change it Even in the name of keeping up with a changing world, but he also understood that language and technology

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They do change and we need to use Language and technology to distribute the message that people will find familiar and understandable

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Whatever audience we're trying to reach You know the same reason you wouldn't go and speak

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Latin to to a bunch of kindergarten students Spurgeon would obviously

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Share the disdain we have for all the wickedness that gets broadcast on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube But he would also believe that Christians ought to be there

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We ought to use every means including social media to disseminate the gospel message and to defend truths

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And what I want to do in this hour is to begin to introduce you to Spurgeon By telling you what

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I can about the context of his life and times starting from the very beginning and we'll start this hour with a look at his background in his early life and Let me start with a word about his genealogy

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The line of descent in the Spurgeon family isn't clear, but there are records of people named

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Spurgeon Going back at least 12 generations before Charles Spurgeon was born one author named

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William Miller Higgs investigated Spurgeon's Ancestral lineage and he published a book titled the

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Spurgeon family in 1906 That was 15 years after Spurgeon had died

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Higgs explodes some of the myths that were going around that That even

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Spurgeon himself seemed to believe about his family background Spurgeon and most of his biographers say that the

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Spurgeon line came from Holland Higgs says this in all the accounts of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's life where a short space is given to his lineage

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Curiously enough a Dutch descent is attributed to him as a matter of fact the writer of this little work has been quite

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Unable to discover any proof for such a statement Certainly on his direct paternal descent

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So he traced his father's line and said there's no evidence that his ancestors came from Holland and he traces the

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Spurgeon name back to Essex and Suffolk Essex was the the county in England where Spurgeon actually lived and he said there were records of Spurgeons there as early as 1465 and the early

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Spurgeons included a farmer a carpenter a common laborer But no one prominent and Higgs says that by the end of the 1500s and that's just as the

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Protestant Reformation is beginning to break out and Come to England Spurgeons were well distributed.

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He says all over the county of Essex and he reproduces several pages of wills and legal documents and Information from church rolls that documented the existence of people named

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Spurgeon in Essex through almost four centuries prior to Charles Spurgeon and it's not possible to Untangle the direct line of relationship between all these older Spurgeons and Charles Spurgeons But it's not a common enough name to think that they're entirely

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Unrelated and the details and lots of the records have been lost to history and courthouse fires and things like that But it does make it fairly certain that Spurgeons Ancestors had lived in Essex in England in the

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UK for at least four centuries prior to Spurgeons birth It's also clear that a few people in the

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Spurgeon ancestry Were worth noticing they weren't famous.

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They weren't prominent They're worth noticing one of the most interesting was a man who lived in the 17th century

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This man's name was Job Spurgeon Spurgeon knew about him. He talked about him at times

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Job Spurgeon lived six generations prior to Charles Spurgeon, which means

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That if he was a direct ancestor of Charles Spurgeon He would have been

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Spurgeon's great -grandfather's great -grandfather. In other words, his fourth great -grandfather

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I looked up my own genealogy to get an idea of what it would be like to go back that many generations

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Your great -grandfather's great -grandfather. My fourth great -grandfather's were born in the second half of the 1700s and One of my great -grandfathers was born on the

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Potomac River in 1776 the year the country was founded. So that's a long way back and Spurgeon had this ancestor

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Job Spurgeon who Who Preceded him by that far lived more than a hundred years before the

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United States was founded In fact, the first record of Job Spurgeon comes in 1677 99 years prior to the birth of my fourth great -grandfather and by then

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Job Spurgeon was an adult He was leading a religious meeting in a private home So he's a religious man and by the way, those meetings had been outlawed 15 years before that The Reformation era in England was already beginning to draw to a close the

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Reformation had come and the Church of England had Tried its best to stifle the rest

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Reformation and the Church of England had outlawed religious meetings led by any and all ministers who refused to subscribe to the

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Book of Common Prayer and Britain had passed a law called the law the act of uniformity in 1662 most many of you

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I think will have heard of it because it was famous because it officially Ejected all ministers from their pulpits

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Who dissented from the Church of England if they wouldn't follow the prayer book and if they wouldn't wear

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Priestly garments when they preached and ministered then they were Ejected from their churches and that is what that was the main thing that drove so many

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Colonists to America in those years why so many of the original pilgrims, especially in Massachusetts were sound -and -solid believers who had fled

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England in search of more freedom of religion and It also explains why the heart of evangelical conviction in England has always been outside the established church

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Among non -conformists not with a Anglicans there have been and still are

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Anglican Evangelicals, but they are in the minority and they've never been the dominant force in the

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Anglican Church six years after the act of uniformity in 1683

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Job Spurgeon was arrested and imprisoned for attending a non -conformist religious meeting

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Higgs refers to Job Spurgeon as a Puritan but in reality he was probably an earth an early an early

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Quaker And the meeting that he was attending Seems to have been a

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Quaker meeting in Essex the Quakers kept You know detailed records about all of their meetings and the record of that one was preserved

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It says and I quote on the 22nd of the month called July this year

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John Matthews of Harwich Job Spurgeon of Dedham Stephen Moore and Stephen Arnold of Lawford taken at a meeting were committed to Chelmsford jail by warrant from Justice Smith They were after a few weeks bailed out till sessions, but on their appearance there on the 3rd of October They were required to give sureties for their good behavior, which refusing to do they were

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Recommitted to prison where three of them lay upon straw about 15 weeks in the midst of a winter

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Remarkable for extremity of cold But the fourth guy Job Spurgeon being so weak that he was unable to lie down Sat up in a chair for the most part of that time

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That's a pretty remarkable record isn't it and some of that sounds familiar doesn't it like it's what's going on in Canada right now

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Same thing they put him in prison and said if you'll promise not to do this again We'll let you go free and they all said

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We can't make that promise so back to prison they went in the coldest winter on Record and that literally is everything we know about Job Spurgeon today.

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There's no record of Baptism no will no census records But we know that he spent 15 weeks in prison during the cold of winter

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Because he refused to pay the fine and promised that he was going to stop participating in unauthorized religious meetings

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So what we know about him is he was a man of principle And he refused even though he was suffering with ill health in an unheated prison in one of the coldest winters on record

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And it must have put him in Unspeakable agony and it probably shortened his life, and if he recovered from this ordeal

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He's never mentioned again in any surviving record of that time now

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Charles Spurgeon knew that story and In a sermon very near the end of Charles Spurgeon's life.

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He said this about it This is the prince of preachers speaking. He says personally When my bones have been tortured with rheumatism

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I've remembered Job Spurgeon doubtless of my own stock Who in the

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Chelmsford jail was allowed a chair because he could not lie down by reason of rheumatic pain

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He says that Quakers broad brim overshadows my brow Perhaps I inherited his rheumatism

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But that I do not regret if I have his stubborn faith Which will not let me yield a syllable of the truth of God.

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I like that story There's one other brush with fame in the

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Spurgeon family And it's found in the parish register of a city called a town called

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Burnham Thorpe in East England and there on March 13th of 1769

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A woman named Elizabeth Spurgeon recorded a marriage certificate This is a copy of it

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One of the witnesses was a 10 year old boy who signed his name at the bottom of the record the last line with the red arrow

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Signed his name Horace Nelson and over that you see scribbled his father's handwriting

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Correcting the name to Horatio and that ten -year -old boy grew up to be Admiral Horatio Nelson If you've ever been to London, you've surely seen

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Nelson's column It's that massive tall pillar that stands on a pedestal in the center of Trafalgar Square With a statue of Admiral Nelson at the top now again that wedding was in 1769

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Nelson grew up to be a great Admiral He lost an arm in a battle in 1797 and then he was killed in 1805 at age 47

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During the Battle of Trafalgar near the Strait of Gibraltar just off Spain He lost his life, but he defeated

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Napoleon's Navy So this battle was a turning point that sealed

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Britain's naval dominance for the remainder of the 19th century 29 years after Admiral Nelson died on June 19th 1834 the most famous member of the

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Spurgeon clan was born in Kelvedon in ex -Essex The birthplace of Charles Spurgeon is a brick cottage that is still standing today.

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I've been there today it's on a busy street and What when

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Spurgeon was born it was in a rural area Here's an interesting fact of history

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Charles Spurgeon was born exactly ten days after William Carey died in India just to help you sort of get the idea of where these people fit in church history

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Spurgeon's mother's maiden name was Eliza Jarvis. She was only 19 years old when

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Charles Spurgeon was born his father John Spurgeon was a 24 year old part -time pastor and at the time of Charles's birth

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John Spurgeon was engaged in some kind of business during the week working and on Sundays He pastored a independent congregation in a town nearby called

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Tollesbury. The church is still there. The town is still there You can go there today. He later became a full -time pastor and and Charles Spurgeon's father actually outlived his famous son by ten years.

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He died in 1902 Spurgeon's mother died in 1888 that was just four years before her eldest son went to glory

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But the most important influence in young Charles Spurgeon's life was that of his grandfather

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James Spurgeon He was pastor of the church at Stambourne Which was not far but not really close either to where Spurgeon's parents lived

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It would be if you drove there by car today. I think it would take maybe 40 minutes And for reasons history doesn't record it's not mentioned in any biography of Spurgeon that I've ever read

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So I don't know the exact reason Charles Spurgeon was sent to live with his grandparents when he was only 18 months old

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And he remained there until he was six years old some Modern people have speculated that maybe there was trouble in the

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Spurgeon home Maybe the parents didn't get along or whatever, but there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support

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Theory like that what did occur when Spurgeon was 18 months old was that his mother gave birth to the second of her children?

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the second of get this 17 children that she Had nine of them died in infancy

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Such were those times and when that second child a daughter was born Either the mother or the daughter must have suffered from some illness or complication

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And so Charles was sent to stay with his grandparents and that stay was extended by necessity

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We don't know exactly why but the arrangement worked well for everybody involved and James Spurgeon loved having his eldest grandson around so much

35:57

That he often took Charles with him when he made pastoral visits and in the providence of God Those years of bonding with his grandfather set the course for the rest of his life

36:10

Charles Spurgeon was a precocious child who began reading Early, he loved his grandfather's

36:17

Puritan library And at first he said it was the leather covers that interested him the most but soon

36:24

He found the books themselves a goldmine of wisdom and interest and his grandfather's library was in a dark room in the upstairs portion of the house in those days the number of windows in a house

36:36

Determined the size of real estate taxes that's how the that's how the crown decided to tax people they they they could tell or they thought they could tell how

36:47

Valuable your house was by how many windows were there? And so, you know windows are abundant in mansions and they're scarce in cottages so someone decided to tax houses based on the number of windows and The house in the foreground of this picture is the preacher's manse and as you can see it was built with lots of windows

37:09

But you could avoid the window tax by boarding up and blacking out those windows you had to completely plaster over them and then they would put fake shutters and Window looking things on the outside.

37:22

So it still looked the same on the outside. But the windows were all boarded up and plastered over Spurgeon records that the law allowed eight windows free from any kind of tax

37:36

And so in order to avoid the heavy taxation, the parsonage was blocked up with several of the windows

37:42

Blacked out Spurgeon described it like this These are his exact words when the window tax was still in force and many people in country houses closed half their lights by plastering them up and then they had the plaster painted to look like window panes so that there was still the appearance of a window

37:58

Though no sunlight could enter well Do I remember the dark rooms in my grandfather's parsonage and my wonder that men should have to pay for the light of the

38:09

Sun? So as it turns out James Spurgeon's library was kept in one of those darkened rooms

38:17

But that didn't deter young Charles. He describes that room He says quote it was a dark den

38:24

But it contained books and this made it a gold mine to me therein was fulfilled the promise

38:30

I will give thee the treasures of darkness some of these were enormous folios folios are these large -sized books and He says as a boy could hardly lift them

38:42

He says the old edition of their works with their margins and old -fashioned notes are precious to me

38:48

It is easy to tell a real Puritan book even by its shape and by the appearance of the type

38:53

I confess that I harbor a prejudice against nearly all new editions and cultivate a preference for the originals

39:01

Even though they wander about in sheepskins and goatskins, and it's true. They bound them with sheepskin and leather

39:09

Or they're shut up in the hardest of boards It made my eyes water a short time ago to see a number of those old books in the new

39:17

Mance that's the parsonage He says I wonder whether some other boy will love them and live to revive that grand old divinity

39:26

Which will yet be to England her balm and venison and he goes on out of that target out of that darkened room

39:32

I fetched those old authors when I was yet a youth and never was I happier than when in their company out of the present

39:40

Contempt into which Puritanism has fallen many brave hearts and true will fetch it by the help of God Before many years have passed those who have dobbed up the windows will yet be surprised to see heaven's light

39:56

Beaming on the old truth and then breaking forth from it to their own confusion and you know that wish was actually fulfilled you've got companies like the banner of truth and and other companies here in America Republishing old

40:11

Puritan works and there's been a revival of interest in the Puritans for at least the last 30 years

40:17

I know that would please Spurgeon although he says he likes the old editions better than the modern ones

40:22

I have to disagree with him there the old editions use the type You know you've seen it where S's look like F's and and letters are

40:30

Oddly shaped and it's a little hard to read until you get used to it. So I do prefer the modern

40:36

Editions, but it was from his grandfather's library that Little Charles obtained his very first copy of Pilgrim's Progress and that book became his lifelong

40:48

Favorite for all of his life if you ask him What's his favorite book the one he would beside Scripture that he would never want to give up He would say without hesitation

40:57

Pilgrim's Progress before he was 10 years old. He was also reading and Comprehending some of the richest theological works that had ever been written

41:09

You think about it Spurgeon's father and grandfather both being pastors And he'd spent his first six years in the grandfather's house the next four years with his father reading their books

41:20

Puritan works And he himself grew up therefore talking and acting like a pastor and thinking like a pastor

41:30

James Spurgeon told the story about one time when his six -year -old grandson six years old

41:38

Overheard him talking about a wayward church member Thomas Rhodes. That was his name

41:43

Thomas Rhodes and He was an illiterate Working man who attended the worship services at the meeting house but he also during the week would hang out at the pub drinking beer and smoking a pipe and And his grandfather was complaining about the worldliness of this man and Charles overheard him

42:01

He says you don't worry about old roads. He says I'll kill him for you And a couple of days later he came home

42:10

Boasting that he had killed old roads he says he'll never grieve my grandfather anymore and James Spurgeon said what do you mean and a little

42:21

Charles said I've been about the Lord's work. That's all And he refused to say any more about it

42:29

Soon Thomas Rhodes himself showed up and Explained to the pastor that the little boy had come into the pub

42:36

Walked through the door gone straight up the table where Rhodes was smoking and drinking and he pointed his

42:42

Bony little finger in the old man's face and said what doest thou hear

42:47

Elijah? Sitting with the ungodly You're a member of the church and you're breaking your pastor's heart and Rhodes said

42:57

He turned and walked out and Rhodes was angry Really angry at first, but as he thought about it, he'd come to the pastor's house to apologize

43:08

In fact, let me read you the the account of that episode from Spurgeon's autobiography

43:15

Thomas Rhodes says well, I did feel angry, but I knew it was all true and I was guilty

43:20

So I put down my pipe and did not touch my beer But I hurried away to a lonely spot and cast myself down before the

43:28

Lord Confessing my sin and begging for forgiveness and I do know and believe the Lord in mercy has pardoned me and now

43:34

I've come to Ask you to forgive me. I'll never grieve you anymore My dear pastor and that incident totally turned the man's life around.

43:43

There's a note in Spurgeon's autobiography That says this about Thomas Rhodes. It says he was one of the men of the old table pew

43:51

That was the place where deacons sat When they were preparing to serve

43:57

Communion He says Rhodes was an active lively little man, but quite illiterate

44:03

Not much above a laborer But he kept a pony in a cart and he did a little buying and selling on his own account

44:10

He was an earnest and zealous Christian Striving to be useful in every way possible to him

44:16

Especially in the prayer meetings and among the young people opening his house for Christian conversation and prayer

44:22

He lived only about few four years more But his devotion to Christ was sustained with a cheerful confidence all the way to the end

44:31

I love that story and because it sort of epitomizes What a precocious little child

44:39

Charles Spurgeon was he was precocious in a lot of ways. He had unusual artistic gifts.

44:46

I'll show you that in a minute He had a mind like a sponge And an unusually keen memory and and a good and well -tuned sense of logic

44:57

He was a sober minded and industrious person even as a young boy at age 15

45:03

He wrote a 295 page book called Antichrist and her brood

45:10

Subtitled potpourri unmasked and that was more than a year before his actual conversion

45:17

And the book was never published, but Spurgeon kept the manuscript and it's a decent measured

45:24

Insightful critique of Roman Catholic error I'll have more to say about the book in a future session and we'll talk about the struggle and the inner turmoil that That led to Charles Spurgeon's conversion

45:36

But a lot of people have the idea that Spurgeon was an out -and -out

45:42

Pagan who was suddenly converted to Christ when he accidentally walked into a church to avoid a snowstorm and That's only partly true.

45:50

It's it's really not the case at all. But as you can see Christian influences shaped his thought

45:57

Literally from the time of his infancy and he loved those years at Stambourne And in fact the last book

46:05

Spurgeon ever wrote and published Recounted those years at his grandfather's house.

46:11

It's a little book called Memories of Stambourne and In the preface to that book he says this

46:18

The issue of this small volume will mark an epic in my life full of interest to my friends and and solemnly instructive to myself in the end of May 1891

46:30

I suffered from the virulent influenza then raging But all thought

46:36

I had recovered And it was judged wise that I should take a change of air

46:41

So I went for a few days to the region near Stambourne Delighting myself in what I called my grandfather's country.

46:48

I was very happy in the generous and hearty hospitality of mr Gertine of Haverhill and enjoyed myself mightily

46:54

But on the Thursday of the week I had an overpowering headache and I had to hurry home on Friday to go up to that chamber wherein for three months

47:03

I Suffered beyond measure and was often between the jaws of death now that I trust.

47:09

I am really recovering I amused myself with arranging what had been previously prepared and issuing it from the press

47:16

Do the timeline on that? He says he first got sick in May of 1891 and then he thought he recovered then he got sick again and spent several days

47:26

Sequestered somewhere until he thought he truly recovered. He actually died at the end of January the following year

47:34

So when he published this book What he didn't know or what he didn't want to admit in writing is that his health was not improving, but it was declining

47:44

Fewer than six months after the publication of this book Spurgeon died in a hotel on the

47:50

French Riviera Where he was trying to get relief from the bitter cold of a harsh

47:57

London Winter but it intrigues me that literally in the very last year of his life

48:02

He spent so much time fondly remembering and carefully recording the start of his life and although Spurgeon's wife and secretary assembled four really wonderful volumes full of stories and illustrations the the

48:19

Autobiography of Charles Spurgeon which really isn't a true autobiography that he sat down and wrote it's more of a scrapbook of things written by and and and about Spurgeon from his

48:30

During his personal and ministerial life, and they put it all together, but this little book memories of Stambourne Is also a kind of scrapbook if you pick it up thinking it's going to be autobiographical

48:43

You'll be disappointed because Spurgeon himself is not the focus of the book. It's not about his childhood.

48:49

It's about the place It's about the village the manse where Spurgeon's grandfather lived in the meeting house where his grandfather preached

48:58

And so the book covers some of the history of that congregation With several drawn -out anecdotes and and a couple of sermons

49:06

And it's a thin book about 80 pages in the edition I have and and the first half of the book was actually written by a fellow

49:13

Minister and a friend of Spurgeon's man named Benjamin Beddow and Beddow's own grandfather

49:20

Actually had preceded James Spurgeon as the pastor of the congregation at Stambourne And so he writes about the early history of Stambourne village and the church up through the era of his own

49:33

Grandfather's pastoral ministry there and then more than halfway through the book Spurgeon takes over and he begins with a transcript of the sermon

49:41

He preached at his grandfather's funeral That's followed by a description of the manse the the house where Spurgeon grew up as a toddler

49:50

It was the parsonage right next to the church and there's an extended description of the manse and the meeting house

49:58

That's what it looks like today all of it is is very quaint Stambourne even to this day is barely a wide spot in the road

50:08

I've been there the village where the meeting house is the part of that village It has fewer than than 50 houses and it's all along the stretch of a single road

50:17

There are no side streets and that this chapel that is there today is not the same building

50:23

Spurgeon knew this current building looks To me like it was probably built sometime after World War two and it's also considerably smaller than the building pictured in Spurgeon's Autobiography this looks to me like it would accommodate a congregation of about 35 people

50:39

And that is a good measure. I think of the size of this town The meeting house of Spurgeon's time wasn't much larger but Spurgeon remembered it fondly and by the way, he drew this sketch of The meeting house.

50:55

He drew that when he was 12 years old So that's what I mean when I say he had some rather formidable artistic

51:04

Abilities. Here's what he wrote in memories of Stambourne about the meeting house he says there's the

51:13

Same picture bigger. It was a rare old Chapel I wish it I could I wish it could have remained forever as I used to know it

51:21

Let me see if I can sketch it with my pen He says when I was a boy of 12, I made this drawing of the back of the old meeting house so this is what it looked like from from the back he says the pulpit was glorious as And he puts in quotation marks the tower of the flock.

51:38

He's describing the pulpit as an elevated platform You know, we tend to think of the the lectern or the desk on which the preacher places his notes as the pulpit but technically and in the way

51:51

Spurgeon spoke here the pulpit was the raised platform the whole area here where the

51:57

Pastor would stand and speak from that was the pulpit usually a large raised platform with a rail around it

52:03

I guess so the preacher didn't fall off but Spurgeon continues

52:09

Over the pulpit hung a huge Sounding board that would be just a piece of wood at an angle so that the echo of his voice because they didn't have

52:18

Amplification his voice would be projected out towards the audience. So it had a large sounding board

52:24

He says I used to speculate as to what would become a grandfather if it ever dropped down on him

52:29

He said I imagined him like my jack -in -the -box And I hope that my dear grandpapa

52:35

Would never be shut down and shut up in such a fashion like the jack -in -the -box he says at the back of the pulpit was a peg to behold or to hold the minister's hat and inside meaning inside the pulpit railing

52:50

There was room for two people Because I have sat there with grandfather when quite a little boy

52:56

So he apparently sat in the pulpit while his grandfather was preaching when he was tiny But he says looking at it years later the pulpit looked too small for two people

53:06

He continues just below and in front of the pulpit was the table pew That's the place where the communion was served wherein sat the elders of the congregation

53:15

The men of gracious light and leading their uncle hadn't generally stood hadn't was the uncle

53:21

He was named for his middle name was Haddon And he says uncle hadn't gave out the hymns and the notices in other words

53:29

He would tell people what what number of him they were going to sing and he goes on then to describe the pews

53:36

These were square -shaped Enclosures with doors like you see in lots of old -style,

53:43

New England churches. There was a balcony He calls it a gallery and he described how the musicians playing instruments were seated up in the gallery

53:54

One of the things that stood out in his memory from childhood And he describes it was how the flute players let spit from their instruments drip down on the people below Just the kind of thing a little boy would watch right and this stuck in his mind

54:09

He writes about it six months before he dies, and I love that he gave little details like that It's surprising frankly because under Spurgeon's own

54:20

Leadership in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London no musical instruments were ever allowed not even an organ

54:27

You know when Moody came with Sankey his singer Sankey had this little portable organ that the

54:34

Scots called a case of whistles and They made him take the case of whistles that he could play it at the

54:40

Metropolitan Tabernacle But only in the basement he couldn't do it in the in the auditorium

54:45

So if you wanted to hear Sankey sing in Spurgeon's Tabernacle you had to go down in the basement to do it, but anyway

54:53

By the way, the Metropolitan Tabernacle does have an organ today But the organist is there just to keep the tempo and melody prominent

55:02

That's his only role and he is strictly forbidden to play in any ornate way

55:08

But Spurgeon's grandfather evidently didn't have any compunction about musical instruments And so after describing several of the woodwind instruments

55:17

Spurgeon says there were a lot more of them he talks about a bassoon and a double bass and a clarinet and a lot more of them he says and Then in all capital letters he writes this they could play and He says there's no mistake about it at least it was almost as certain as that other

55:38

Undeniable fact our singers could sing and then he wrote it kind of mischievously

55:45

Mischievously qualifies that claim our singers could sing he says, but then he says well it was hearty singing

55:51

And say what you like about it. It's the heart in the singing which is the life of the business Spurgeon had a deep and Lasting respect for the rustic people from that village.

56:04

That's where he grew up. He loved them. He loved that environment Here's how he described them quote. They were real

56:09

Essex hardy people. They loved a good sermon and they would say mr. Spurgeon I heard you well this morning

56:16

Spurgeon says I thought the good man had preached well, but their idea was not so much to his credit they judged that they had heard him well and Spurgeon says there's something in that different way of putting it at any rate it takes from the preacher all ground of glorying in what?

56:33

He's done. I Like that too. I wish people would tell me I heard you. Well, there were there were a lot of people who could and Were it would hear the gospel he says, but I don't think they would have put up with anything else

56:49

He says they were skilled at criticism Some of them were very wise in their remarks and some were otherwise

56:57

That's a great play on words. Some of them were very wise and some of them were otherwise and then he remembers this anecdote he writes

57:06

Well, do I remember an occasion on which the preacher had spoken on the tears and they said he wouldn't know a tear if he saw one

57:14

It was painful to hear a man talk. So ignorant to say that you couldn't tell weed from tears when they're growing.

57:22

That's ridiculous Spurgeon says these rustic critics were wrong for once But on matters of doctrine or experience you'd have found them quite a match for you

57:33

And Spurgeon says there were no doubt in Stambourne a few rough fellows who did not go to any place of worship but those who came to the meeting house were the great majority and so it seems

57:44

Spurgeon's grandfather was quite an effective and well -respected preacher and most of that town

57:50

Came to hear him preach, but as it is in most churches Spurgeon says the midweek service was not so well attended

57:58

He says of that the prayer meetings during the week were always kept up But at certain seasons of the year grandfather and a few old women were all that could be relied upon and the grandfather

58:09

James Spurgeon was a godly man who preached from that same pulpit in Stambourne For 54 years and he was known especially for his evangelistic emphasis

58:23

Spurgeon and his grandfather both had a keen sense of humor Spurgeon recounted what his grandfather would say somebody

58:30

Somebody asked him how much he weighed and his grandfather said well that depends on how you take me if I'm weighed in the balances

58:38

I am found wanting but he says in the pulpit they tell me I'm heavy enough and His influence with this sense of humor was evident on his grandson preaching this preaching his sermon at his grandfather's funeral

58:55

Here's what Charles Spurgeon said And I was surprised Really to find something purposely funny in a funeral sermon for his own grandfather

59:05

But he said this my grandfather who is now with God once ventured on Publishing a volume of hymns

59:12

He said I never heard anyone speak in their favor or argue that these hymns ought to have been sung in the congregation

59:18

In that volume he promised a second volume if the first should prove acceptable We forgive him the first collection because he didn't inflict another

59:29

He says the meaning was good, but the dear old man paid no attention to the triviality of rhyme

59:35

We dare not quote even a verse He says it might be among the joys of heaven for my venerated

59:41

Grandsire that he can now compose and sing new songs As Spurgeon hastened to add that there was no problem with the doctrine in his grandfather's hymns, but he says the poetry was abominable

59:58

Now I need to mention that the person who practically raised little

01:00:03

Charles and had the greatest Personal in direct influence on him was his his aunt

01:00:08

Anne She was the only one of Spurgeon's father's siblings who remained unmarried all of her life and lived at home and Charles Spurgeon Grew up with her like almost an older sister, and he retained

01:00:22

Warm affections for her for the rest of his life once when he visited Stambourne as an adult

01:00:28

She asked him a question that evidently had plagued her for all those years Because she said when he was a little boy

01:00:35

He would hide for hours at a time and they would look and they never found him And so she wanted to know where he went during those times

01:00:44

Here's how Spurgeon answers it. He said I would get alone, but he said where I went to The guardian angels knew but no one on earth could tell so when he grew up is his aunt and asked him

01:00:57

Charles Where did you get to when you were such a little child? We used to look everywhere for you, but we never found you until you came walking in all by yourself

01:01:05

This virgin then described to her how he would hide in one of the tombs in the church graveyard

01:01:13

He says no I did not get into the grave But it had a sort of altar tomb above it and one of the side stones would move

01:01:20

Easily so that I could get inside and then by setting the slab of stone back again I was enclosed in a sort of large box where nobody would dream of ever looking for me

01:01:33

When the time came for Spurgeon to leave his grandfather's home It was a painful parting for both of them

01:01:40

James Spurgeon Comforted his grandson by telling him you can look up at the moon tonight when you get back home and call

01:01:47

Chester and remember that is the same moon I'll be looking at from Stambourne and Spurgeon said after that that he never the rest of his life looked at the moon without thinking of his grandfather

01:02:01

Darlene does that with our grandkids? Spurgeon Continued spending holidays in his grandparents house

01:02:09

He loved to go back there and his grandparents remained a constant influence on him once his grandmother

01:02:14

While he lived there offered him a penny for every Isaac Watts hymn that he could recite

01:02:20

Perfectly what she evidently didn't know when she made that promise was that Spurgeon had a nearly photographic memory

01:02:27

And so he began saying so many hymns that she reduced the reward to half a penny

01:02:33

But she still complained that he was reducing her to poverty And so his grandfather concocted a new scheme

01:02:40

Since there was a huge rat problem in those days He offered young Charles a shilling a dozen for all the rats

01:02:47

He could kill and so Spurgeon said that he gave up him learning for rat catching because the pay was better and he later spoke about the volume of those hymns that he had memorized and And he loved it because he was able to use them in his sermons

01:03:05

And in fact if you read his sermons one thing you will note that he quotes on average two or three hymns per sermon

01:03:13

He'll just break into the words of a hymn quoted it. He didn't sing it But many of those words had been embedded in his memory as a young boy

01:03:24

Because of the influence of his grandmother By the time he returned to his own parents home at age six.

01:03:31

He had already it already Obtained or his mother had already given birth to three younger siblings two sisters and a brother and Charles seemed already to feel very deeply his

01:03:44

Responsibility to influence his younger siblings for good It's a perspective

01:03:49

I think which was surely the legacy of his grandfather's influence and it made him from the start mature beyond his years

01:03:58

And this was a persistent trait of Charles Spurgeon's as a young boy even before he was a teenager his hobbies were writing poetry and editing a magazine and even even then he was honing the literary skills that would make him legendary and so you can look at Spurgeon at any stage of his development and what you will see is

01:04:20

Someone wise beyond his years And with an exceptionally mature outlook on life and even

01:04:26

Spurgeon himself made reference to this He knew it was unusual. He understood that and when he was 40 years old.

01:04:33

He gave a lecture to his students Titled young men that was the title of the lecture and he said in the lecture that he at age 40 was already an old man

01:04:43

He also said this quote. I might have been a young man at 12 But at 16

01:04:48

I was a sober respectable Baptist parson Sitting in the chair and ruling and governing the church at age 16

01:04:55

He says and at that period of my life when perhaps I ought to have been in the playground Developing my legs and and muscles which no doubt would have kept me from the gout now

01:05:06

I spent my time instead at my books studying and working hard sticking to it very much to the pleasure of my schoolmaster and It was then at age 6 when he returned to his parents home that he entered school for the very first time

01:05:22

He was already obviously able to read and and he'd been Trained personally by his aunt and his grandfather and so he was a gifted student and excelled

01:05:33

Except for one brief span the teacher was shocked when Spurgeon began to do badly and his schoolwork

01:05:41

Until it occurred to the teacher that the top students chair Was away from the fire and right next to a drafty door.

01:05:50

It was the most uncomfortable place in the room So he reorganized the way the students were seated and Spurgeon's academic performance rebounded

01:05:59

When he was just about 14 He and his brother James were sent to a school in a town called

01:06:06

Maidstone where his uncle was one of the teachers and it was there as a very young teenager in a conversation with one of the school staff

01:06:15

That Charles was first exposed to the Baptist view of baptism

01:06:20

His grandfather was a congregationalist Practiced infant baptism and and that was the only thing

01:06:27

Charles had ever known But now he's a student in an Anglican school and it's an unlikely place to embrace

01:06:35

Baptist beliefs, but he studied the subject from Scripture and made up his mind that if he ever experienced conversion

01:06:43

He would be baptized You know, we'll talk about Spurgeon's remarkable conversion in our next session tomorrow

01:06:54

He was still a youth when he was saved But because of his background steeped in the church raised in a pastor's home

01:07:01

Trained from childhood at the knee of an an aunt who nurtured him in his spiritual growth and a mother who prayed diligently for His soul

01:07:12

Spurgeon launched into ministry almost from day one as he said he was converted at age 16 but before he turned 17, he was already a respectable

01:07:22

Baptist pastor and The speed with which his preaching gift developed and was used by God is also really quite remarkable we'll talk about that in another session tomorrow and We'll look at those

01:07:38

Lessons from his life tomorrow, but I've already gone over time. So I will stop there

01:07:43

Five minutes All right. Well, I'm not gonna start a new session, but any any questions?

01:07:51

I'll take spontaneous questions Yes, sir.

01:08:02

The the two that I say are almost essential would be Spurgeon's autobiography

01:08:08

Which was originally published as four volumes large size if you can find the original copies of the original

01:08:16

They're not that expensive. I see them sold on eBay every now and then the original volumes

01:08:21

They're filled with pictures illustrations even some photographs and stuff Photography existed, you know during Spurgeon's life.

01:08:29

So there are it's a remarkably illustrated Like I said kind of a scrapbook You must have that and you must read it

01:08:37

Banner of Truth published the autobiography of Spurgeon in two volumes a few years ago And they reorganized the chapters in a more logical fashion

01:08:46

I believe everything all the text is there but the Banner of Truth edition leave out a lot of the photographs

01:08:53

So if you can find the original I think it's worth Worth getting those original four volumes.

01:08:58

They were published simultaneously in England and America The version I have is the American one, but it's identical to the the

01:09:05

British version page for page Very same you must have that and then there's a another

01:09:11

I think it's it was originally published as six volumes on Spurgeon by G Holden Pike PIK is middle name

01:09:20

Holden H O L D E N. I Think it's sadly it's out of print Banner of Truth published that one in two volumes as well

01:09:28

That's the only one I've ever seen are the two volume edition But the two volumes are complete in that each one contains the equivalent of three original volumes and Pike I think gives more personal details and better insight into Spurgeon than any other biographer who actually knew him

01:09:49

And then there are there are Scores of biographies of Spurgeon most of them tell the very same stories in different order so you could almost pick any one you want

01:09:59

I like the most recent one What's it called?

01:10:06

Hang on I've got it on Kindle I Always forget the title Anyway of the modern biographies

01:10:19

This is the one I recommend let me find it here living by revealed truth

01:10:37

Told you it's a hard title to remember living by revealed truth. It's written by Tom Nettles. Who's one of the the best

01:10:45

Baptist church historians still living and he did some original research on Spurgeon and pulled out some facts that I'd never read anywhere else so I recommend that book

01:10:55

It's a little more. It's a little less of a biography and more of a It's just a very readable story.

01:11:02

It's well written. You'll enjoy it Living by revealed truth.

01:11:12

It's a pretty thick book, so it's it's pretty You know it's pretty exhaustive treatment of Spurgeon's life, too.

01:11:20

It has a picture of Spurgeon on the front, so you can't miss it Yes, sir. Well.

01:11:31

I didn't exactly say that I just said he would approve of the use of social media

01:11:37

I think he would say look any any Medium by which you can get the truth out use it, but do it

01:11:46

He wouldn't he wouldn't approve of a lot of the stuff That's posted even by Christians on Twitter.

01:11:53

He might even scold me for some of the things. I've posted I won't go into that but But but I know he would say that that any any any

01:12:06

Mass medium that can expand the scope of Ministry ought to be used he was he was probably the first preacher ever whose sermons were

01:12:16

Transcribed and sent across the Atlantic to America the day. He preached them by telegraph

01:12:24

So you could actually read in the New York Times on Monday morning

01:12:30

What Spurgeon preached about yesterday and people did it he was strongly anti -slavery

01:12:36

Which made him? controversial in the South and even irritated some

01:12:41

Northerners so the time came when they they began to edit the anti -slavery stuff out of his sermons

01:12:48

But the published sermons the ones you get were published first of all in England, so You'll find that in there.

01:12:56

He was not Totally averse to politics And politics is an important thing in his time because the social fabric was

01:13:07

Was changing quickly much like it is today And if you had to classify him this will surprise a lot of people but in those days he was a liberal

01:13:18

He was a liberal not in the way We think of liberals today where the today's liberals he would not approve of because they're all about moral issues promoting abortion and You know other other you know gender fluidity and none of that would he ever approve of but in his time

01:13:38

Liberal meant that you were you were in favor of cleaning up the mess of poverty that Dominated London if you read

01:13:46

Dickens's novels Dickens had a similar political slant

01:13:52

I think in that he saw the injustice of how orphanages were run children were put to work and and treated cruelly and it was a it was in many ways a very unhealthy society and the

01:14:06

Tories of his day the what we would have called conservatives wanted to preserve all that injustice and and he was opposed to it so You know in his time.

01:14:16

He was a liberal. I think if he lived today Well a lot of people keep pointing this out classic liberalism is very conservative by today's

01:14:26

Today's you know left -wing standards, so don't take the fact that he was a liberal to mean

01:14:32

Too much about where he would stand today But that's that's where he fit in in those days, and he was outspoken in certain political issues

01:14:42

He would he would he would voice his opinion On key elections and things like that are we done all right?