Session 5: A Marvelous Ministry: The Preaching of Charles Spurgeon, Part 2

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Apostasy Described Part 3 (Hebrews 10:28-29)

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Give everybody a little chance to get back in here before I start. And I don't have

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PowerPoint slides that go with this one. It takes an amazingly long time to get these ready, and I misjudged how long

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I had. So I'm just going to talk to you in this hour. All right,

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I want to continue talking about the preaching style of Charles Spurgeon. The truth is his sermons and his homiletical style are so well known, and they've been so thoroughly dissected by so many people, that what

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I want to focus on is an unintended consequence of Spurgeon's candor and clarity.

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I want to talk mostly about how Spurgeon was a polemicist, a defender of the faith.

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We were talking about this during the break, that one of the outstanding things about Spurgeon was his courage, his willingness to speak with clarity and conviction.

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Regardless of how people might respond to it, and that's an important quality for preachers, that was largely missing from British preachers in Spurgeon's day, and it's largely missing from preachers everywhere these days.

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And so I want you to understand how Spurgeon defended the truth when controversy followed in the wake of his preaching, and controversy followed him a lot.

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But he answered it with grace and maturity. He mastered the art of being staunch and unwavering without being caustic or predatory towards his opponents.

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His whole life is an illustration of 1 Corinthians 15, 58. Be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. And Paul wrote that, basically saying it really doesn't matter what people think of what you're doing.

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If you're steadfast and immovable and abounding in the work of the Lord, it's not in vain.

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And from the very start of his ministry, Spurgeon was a man of strong convictions. Throughout the course of his entire life, he never reversed his position on any major point of doctrine, because he didn't need to.

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It was not because he was arrogant or stubborn. His beliefs weren't mere bigotry.

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But before he would form any doctrinal conviction, he would study it carefully. And he was a meticulous student of both scripture and church history.

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And therefore, before he ever taught on any issue, he had a thorough understanding of it, and he had settled it in his own mind and heart.

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And in my judgment, the major controversies he is remembered for, in every single case, he was on the right side of the issue.

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And in most cases, history has vindicated him so clearly that he really doesn't have that many critics anymore.

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There are some, but not many, and they're not important. To be clear, I am not saying that I agree with everything

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Spurgeon ever taught. There are some things he taught that I would disagree with. He was a Sabbatarian, for example, and I'm not.

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He was more sympathetic to Preterism, a view of eschatology that says the prophecies

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Jesus gave in Matthew 24 have mostly been fulfilled in history already.

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He was sympathetic to that. I wouldn't say he adopted it, but he was more sympathetic to it than I would be. He spoke more favorably about Baptist successionism than he should have.

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In other words, he seemed to buy into the trail of blood mythology.

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Some of you will know what that means. It's a twisted notion of church history that tries to construct an unbroken string of Baptist churches and Baptistic believers that goes all the way back to John the

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Baptist. In order to do that, if you go back through church history, if you want to have that unbroken chain and document it, you end up artificially sanctifying a lot of people who in reality were heretics.

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Spurgeon never went to war on any of those issues where he and I might take different views.

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What I'm saying is that in all of the major controversies that he is remembered for, all of the issues that he fought hard to defend, in my opinion, he was always 100 % right.

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And I love the fact that once he arrived at a well -informed position, he never softened his personal convictions or sacrificed the truth on the altar of public opinion.

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But before we get into that, I do want to say some things about his preaching style. We'll talk a little bit about his approach to preaching and then we'll examine his role as a polemicist.

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You understand, I hope, that Spurgeon was not a verse -by -verse expositor. He wasn't a model of the expository method that they teach at the

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Master's Seminary or that I try to follow. He would start with a biblical text.

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Usually it was a single verse or a phrase from a verse. But then normally he would use that text to suggest or introduce a biblical theme or a topic, and then he would preach what was basically a topical message on that theme.

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And from week to week then he would skip all around in the Bible following no discernible pattern.

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He didn't preach on the next section of Scripture like that.

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But he didn't utterly ignore biblical exposition. Every week in the morning service he would give a more formal verse -by -verse exposition of an extended passage of Scripture.

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But this was totally different. It was a different feature of the Sunday service, always distinct from the sermon.

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Just like the announcements are different from the sermon. The exposition was a part of the service that was different from the sermon.

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It was basically a reading of Scripture with Spurgeon's comments interspersed between phrases.

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Not even between verses. He would interrupt a verse to make a comment on a phrase and then continue reading the passage.

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His comments were very short, usually just a sentence or two. Then he would generally take a short phrase from whatever passage he did the exposition on, and he would use that as a launching point for his sermon.

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In his sermons, he sometimes departed very quickly from the context of his original scriptural text.

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His sermons were, as I said, topical, sometimes with only a very tenuous connection to the original text.

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My favorite example of this is a sermon he preached on God's providence.

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There is no date recorded about this one when it was published, so we don't know when he preached it, and it wasn't published even until 1908, which was more than 16 years after Spurgeon's death.

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His text was Ezekiel 1, where the prophet describes his vision of the heavenly throne with a wheel in the middle of a wheel, and all the lights and flashing things and all that.

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Spurgeon says this, this is at the very start of his sermon, the wheels signify divine providence.

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When I first read that, I thought, really? Why? He explains himself like this.

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Providence is like a wheel because sometimes one part of the wheel is at the top, and then it is at the bottom.

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Now, I've read that sermon a few times, and I still don't see how

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Spurgeon got divine providence out of a wheel within a wheel. I mean, yeah, it's true that what goes around comes around, but that doesn't mean that the point of Ezekiel 1 is about divine providence.

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But nevertheless, you read that sermon, and Spurgeon manages to give a very good sermon on the principle of divine providence.

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It just isn't tied to the text he started with. Whatever else you might say that's critical about his approach to preaching, we ought to acknowledge that no preacher ever made the gospel more clear or proclaimed it more faithfully than Spurgeon did.

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I don't recommend his approach to preaching, his style of formulating a sermon, but he was a truly great preacher because his content was doctrinally sound and thoroughly biblical in the sense that what he said was true, and he supported it all with quotations from Scripture.

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It just wasn't an exposition of a text, which is what I would prefer. So even though I can't recommend his way of dealing with biblical texts, and I hope you don't aspire to model your sermons on the pattern he followed, it would be totally wrong to characterize his preaching as unbiblical.

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It wasn't. It was thoroughly biblical. He had unique abilities that overshadowed whatever deficiencies you might find in his approach to homiletics and exegesis.

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For one thing, he had this photographic memory, and it's clear that his mind was saturated with Scripture.

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He used to say that he wanted to be so full of Scripture that if you cut him, he would bleed biblene rather than blood.

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And that's actually a pretty good description of what he was like. That's how he managed to have an immensely fruitful ministry, even though he was preaching topical sermons, sometimes with out -of -context verses.

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And by the way, that approach to sermonizing wasn't unique with Spurgeon. That was very common in Victorian times.

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It's what he learned from his father and his grandfather. And Spurgeon, like all of us, was a product of his times.

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But he was extraordinary, even by the standard of his times, because on top of that photographic memory, he had a keen, logical mind, a powerful voice, and an amazing capacity for hard work, even though he wasn't feeling well most of the time.

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And his method of preparation, how he prepared his sermons, is something no preacher should ever try to emulate.

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But it reflects the high level of natural giftedness Spurgeon possessed.

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Here is what Spurgeon himself said when he was asked, Here is his answer.

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He told his students this. Mrs.

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Spurgeon wrote this. She said, Mr. Spurgeon would often playfully say,

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So he basically emptied his house at 6 p .m. Would you ever start preparing a

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Sunday sermon at 6 p .m.? I hope nobody else ever does this. But in his preparation time,

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Spurgeon then would use a piece of scrap paper, usually the back of a used envelope or something like that, to write down his outline.

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He rarely took any more notes other than that bare outline into the pulpit.

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But if he had that outline, that basic roadmap of where he wanted to go, he was able to compose the rest of his sermon extemporaneously while he was speaking from the pulpit.

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Now, don't get the wrong idea. A lot of prior thought and soul -searching went into the development of the outline.

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He said this about those Saturday night sessions in his study. He said, I believe that almost any

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Saturday in my life I make enough outlines of sermons, if I felt at liberty to preach them, that would last me for at least a month.

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Just one Saturday night's collection of working outlines. I can relate to all of that.

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I do all of these things in my preparation to preach. But the difference in me and Spurgeon is, I have to then take time and fill out that outline and write down every word

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I expect to say. Because I just can't speak off the top of my head like he could. Nobody can.

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I don't know anyone who could speak extemporaneously as profoundly and as thoroughly biblical as he did.

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You never find a place where he backed up and had to redo it or had to correct next week what he said last week.

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It just doesn't happen. And it's true that before these sermons went into print, he edited them.

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I might talk about that a little later. But I have, actually, I own some of the sheets of paper where he made edits on the stenographer's notes.

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The stenographer would take down what he said, and he would make edits to it. And he didn't profoundly change anything from the sermon.

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He would sometimes make the wording more colorful or whatever. But I've never seen a place where he had to correct his own doctrine.

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He said this, As soon as any passage of Scripture really grips my heart and soul,

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I concentrate my whole attention upon it. I look at the precise meaning of the original. I closely examine the context to see the special aspect of the text in its surroundings and roughly then jot down all the thoughts that occur to me concerning the subject, leaving to a later period the orderly marshalling of them for presentation to my hearers.

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You can sample almost any random Spurgeon sermon, and you will probably be amazed at the richness and depth of his preaching.

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The key to this was Spurgeon's own voracious reading habit. He read, it was said, on average six books a week, six complete books.

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His mind was filled with the truth of God's Word from the beginning to the end of the week, every single week of his life.

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And he therefore could preach from the overflow of his heart. And his unique mind and verbal abilities enabled him to give a sermon extemporaneously that most of us would be hard -pressed to write in a whole week's time.

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I mentioned the power of his voice. After the

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London congregation outgrew the New Park Street building, which happened very quickly, by the way.

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Within a year, it was full to overflowing. And there's a famous story about how he broke the windows upstairs just to let a little ventilation in.

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He was mischievous at times. But after they outgrew their building, he preached for several years at Exeter Hall.

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It's an auditorium that could accommodate 4 ,500 people, 4 ,500 people in one room.

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And it was jammed with people who came to hear Spurgeon every week. He also preached, as I said, at the

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Surrey Gardens Music Hall. That was built to be a concert and entertainment venue.

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It held 10 ,000 people at once. And it was always full. And as I said, one time he spoke to more than 20 ,000 people in the

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Crystal Palace. And in no place was there any amplification. Always only it was a soundboard that hung over the speaker to reflect his voice into the audience.

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And people always testified that they could hear every syllable clearly. Now remember, he was only 19 when he was called to London to pastor what was the oldest, most famous congregation of Baptists in the whole world.

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A mere teenager stepping into a pulpit that had previously been occupied by Benjamin Keech, John Ripon, John Gill.

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These were three magisterial Baptists. And within a couple of years, he was regularly preaching to audiences of 10 ,000 at a time.

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How is it that someone so popular with so many natural gifts became embroiled in controversy as frequently as Spurgeon did?

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Because you can look at almost any period in his career and he was always dealing with a controversy, one or another.

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And that, I think, is one of the most interesting features of Spurgeon's legacy. So now

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I want to look at his role as a polemicist. Given his youthfulness and his theological stance and his meteoric rise to fame out of nowhere,

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I think it was predictable that he would face critics. And still, the force of the antagonism that these critics threw at him caught

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Spurgeon by surprise. And that began the year he began his ministry in London.

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I mentioned that most of the controversies we remember Spurgeon for were doctrinal conflicts, but that wasn't true at first.

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The early critics of Spurgeon were just petty and mean -spirited in what was a very personal way.

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He was, as I said, lampooned by cartoonists. He was attacked in print by newspaper columnists.

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He was criticized by other ministers who were jealous of his success or hostile to his doctrine or contemptuous of his youthfulness.

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And he was relentlessly mocked by the critics of everything holy. And you know that in that era there were lots of ardent atheists in England.

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Now, let's face it, as I've said a few times, Spurgeon was a bit of a country bumpkin when he first came to London.

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He had no sense of style or sophistication. This is another area where I absolutely identify with him.

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I don't care. I would preach in overalls if Darlene would let me. And Spurgeon was like that.

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No sense of style in a town that was probably the most style -conscious in the world.

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And it made it hard for him to get by in London, which was the most cosmopolitan city in the world, hands down.

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Spurgeon's wife, as I said, was a teenage girl when Spurgeon first preached at the

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New Park Street. She showed up that first evening and she recalled how the thing that caught her attention on that first Sunday, what do you think it was?

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The polka -dotted handkerchief. That she said he kept waving it as if to add flourish to his gestures.

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Here's what she wrote about it years later. This is his wife. If the whole truth were told,

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I was not at all fascinated by the young orator's eloquence, while his countrified manner and his speech excited more regret than reverence.

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Alas, she says from my vain and foolish heart, I was not spiritually minded enough to understand his earnest presentation of the gospel and his powerful pleading with sinners.

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But that huge black satin stock, the big thing he wore around his neck, the long badly trimmed hair, and the blue pocket handkerchief with white spots, which he himself has so graphically described, these attracted most of my attention and it awakened some feelings of amusement, she says.

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That's the girl who married Spurgeon. His critics were unmerciful. Let me read you one sample from an article that was published in April 1855.

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This is from the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, a newspaper. The critic writes, Great dramatic entertainment.

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The huge hall is crowded to overflowing morning and evening. For a parallel to such popularity, we have to go back to Dr.

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Chalmers or Edward Irving or the earlier days of James Parsons. But, he says,

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I will not dishonor such men by comparison with this young religious demagogue.

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They preach the gospel with all the fervor of earnest natures. Mr. Spurgeon preaches himself.

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He's nothing unless he's an actor, indulging in coarse familiarity with holy things, declaiming in a ranting and colloquial style, strutting up and down the platform as though he were at Surrey Theatre, and boasting of his own intimacy with heaven with nauseating frequency.

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His fluency, self -possession, oratorical tricks, and daring utterances, they seem to fascinate his less thoughtful hearers who love excitement more than devotion.

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I've glanced at one or two of Mr. Spurgeon's published sermons and turned away in disgust from the coarse sentiments, the scholastical expressions, and claptrap style that I discovered.

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It would seem that the poor young man's brain is turned by the notoriety he has acquired and by the incense offered at his shrine.

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From the very pulpit, he boasts of the crowds that flock to listen to his rodimentade.

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That's a fancy word for boasting. By the end of the year, not less than 200 ,000 of his published trashy sermons would be scattered over the length and breadth of the land.

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I don't think he has been invited to take part in any denominational meetings, nor indeed does he seek such fellowship.

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He glories in his position of lofty isolation, and he is intoxicated by the drafts of popularity that have fired his feverish brain.

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He's a nine days wonder, a comet that has suddenly shot across the religious atmosphere.

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He's gone up like a rocket, and before long he'll come down like a stick. He says, the most melancholy consideration in the case is the deceased craving for excitement, which this running after Mr.

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Spurgeon by the religious world indicates. I would charitably conclude that the greater part of the multitude of that weekly crowd to his theatrical exhibitions consists of people who are not in the habit of frequenting a place of worship.

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That's pretty smarmy, isn't it? And on the same day that that article appeared, another

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London periodical, the Buck's Chronicle, published an equally vitriolic attack on Spurgeon, written this time by an anonymous critic who, among other mean -spirited things, referred to Spurgeon's preaching as ginger pop sermonizing.

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That is the last thing any objective person would say about Spurgeon's preaching, but London was populated with angry critics and academic elitists who were determined to do or say anything that might discredit

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Spurgeon. In fact, the writer of that second critique, the one that was published in the

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Buck's Chronicle, was an Armenian who was provoked by Spurgeon's Calvinism because listen to how he caricatured

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Spurgeon's message. He said this, quoting, Spurgeon teaches that if Jack Scroggins was put down in the black book before the great curtain of events was unfolded, that the said

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Jack Scroggins, in spite of all he might do or say will and must, tumble into the limbo of a brimstone hell to be punished and roasted without any prospect of cessation or shrinking into a dried cinder because Jack Scroggins had merely done what

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Jack Scroggins could not help doing. It is not pleasant to be frightened into the portal of bliss by the hissing bubbles of the seething cauldron.

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It is not Christian -like to say God must wash brains in the hyper -Calvinism as Spurgeon teaches before man can enter heaven.

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Nor does it harmonize with the quiet majesty of the Nazarene. It does not fall like manna for hungry souls.

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It's the gush of the pouring rain in a thunderstorm which makes the flowers hang their heads, looking up afterwards as if nothing happened.

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When the Exeter Hall stripling talks of deity, let him remember that he is superior to profanity and that blasphemy from a parson is as great a crime as when the lowest grade of humanity utters the brutal oath at which the virtuous stand aghast.

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So he's comparing him to a low -class person with foul language. He says that's basically what his preaching is like.

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Hearing something like that might actually comfort some of you who thought that vitriol and verbal abuse were invented on Twitter.

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They were doing it then too. In fact, that same flavor of controversy was popular not only in Spurgeon's time but all the way back to the beginning of the

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Reformation and before that. It's a common failure of humanity.

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Spurgeon, for his part, never sought conflict. He didn't take any delight in debates or controversies, but he wasn't intimidated by critics either.

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He was gifted with words and quick -witted and certainly adept at using sharp -edged humor.

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You saw that in the episode I described in the previous session where he answered those two guys who insulted him about his age.

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He was capable of leveling stinging reproaches against his doctrinal adversaries.

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He could use sharp -edged humor very capably. In fact, he staunchly defended the use of humor and sarcasm, and even ridicule, against evil things.

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But he didn't think it was appropriate to default to that kind of argument. And he was never mean -spirited towards his adversaries themselves, even when he was heaping scorn and derision on their false doctrines.

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He didn't attack people in a personal way. He believed that the level of spleen -venting should be commensurate with the gravity and the immediacy of the error that we're answering.

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In fact, there's another incident that illustrates Spurgeon's patience and his good humor with his adversaries.

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When he first came to London, one of the best -known preachers in the city was a hyper -Calvinist named

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James Wells, one of the most famous preachers in London at the time. He pastored

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Surrey Tabernacle in South London. It was not far from where they later built the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

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James Wells was quite a gifted preacher himself who, at the height of his fame, drew 1 ,500 people to hear him preach every

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Sunday. But he was often cantankerous and cruel with his criticism, frankly, which seems to be the besetting sin of hyper -Calvinists.

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And in January 1855, while Spurgeon was still new at New Park Street, James Wells sent a long letter to the editor of a high -Calvinist periodical called

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The Earthen Vessel. He wrote anonymously under the pseudonym Job, but it was well -known by everyone who actually wrote this.

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And in that letter, James Wells cited Spurgeon's testimony of his conversion at 15, and then

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Wells said this about Spurgeon, Quote, Spurgeon didn't reply to that.

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He said nothing in reply. But the paper was besieged with more letters from their readers, taking both sides of the conflict, some defending

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Spurgeon, some siding with Wells. And so the next month, Wells wrote again, and he doubled down.

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He stubbornly refused to soften or withdraw or qualify his suggestion that Spurgeon might be an unconverted man.

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He said this, quote, I beg, therefore, to say that anything said on the subject by Mr.

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Spurgeon's friends will be to me as straws thrown against a stone wall of which

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I shall take no notice. He would have been good on Twitter, right? As far as I know,

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Wells never did relax his bitter contempt for Spurgeon. One day they encountered one another on the street, passed each other and recognized one another, and Wells asked

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Spurgeon whether he had ever seen the inside of Surrey Tabernacle, where he preached. And trying to be polite,

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Spurgeon said no, but he would very much like to see it. And Wells told

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Spurgeon that if he would come around on a Monday morning, he would show him the auditorium.

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That, he said, would give them enough time to ventilate the place before Sunday. Spurgeon asked

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Wells if he'd ever seen the inside of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. And Wells said yes, he had come by there on a recent

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Saturday and looked around. Ah, Spurgeon said, so that accounts for the delightful fragrance in our service that Sunday.

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He was an immensely patient man and a careful critic who preferred to dismantle errors meticulously with scripture rather than blasting every target with large cannons.

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And in fact, regarding that sort of mean -spirited style of discourse, Spurgeon said this, that is a style to which anyone can easily be educated.

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I don't think anyone ought to pay a very heavy fee to be a nasty critic. One can grow into that with just a little watering very speedily.

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He was never the kind of character who purposely provokes controversy because he thinks it's fun to fight.

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And those earliest controversies especially came to him and were mainly sparked by other people's petty resentments against this young man who was enjoying so much success and who was even at an early age already so firm in his opinions.

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That fact alone made people angry. And I already touched on this, but it's worth revisiting.

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One of the remarkable things about Spurgeon was the fact that from the start of his ministry until the day he died, his theology remained substantially the same.

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As I said, I don't know of a single major issue on which Spurgeon ever changed his opinion.

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He was not a reed shaken in the water. It was the furthest thing from his personality to be carried about by every wind of doctrine.

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And I'm not aware of any instance in which Spurgeon had to retract anything that he had preached or published.

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There may be some incidental details that he refined or changed, but Spurgeon did not budge on any major doctrine from the start of his ministry until the end of it.

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I mentioned that fact once when I was blogging on my blog. And an army of post -modernized young readers were absolutely outraged that I would think that was a good thing.

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Because the conventional wisdom today suggests that it's the very essence of humility to undergo regular paradigm shifts where from time to time you have to acknowledge that you've been totally wrong in some fundamental aspect of your belief system or change your whole worldview.

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And that's okay, that's praiseworthy, that's courageous. You can renounce and ridicule everything you ever said or believed last year and still claim to be humble, but if you hold steady to the same worldview you embraced ten years ago and refuse to budge on it, that's supposedly proof that you are an arrogant person.

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You're the arrogant one because you haven't changed. But for the record, the reason Spurgeon was so steady in his beliefs is that he didn't speak on any issue at all until he had carefully studied it and settled the matter in his heart.

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And in the early years after he came to New Park Street Chapel, look at his sermons, they're recorded in order.

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He was preaching systematically on the basics of Christian doctrine and theology proper.

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He never indulged in anything that was speculative or doubtful.

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He didn't play around with issues that he didn't understand. And in fact, he never reached beyond his own understanding in order to sound more intelligent than he was.

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He built a firm foundation of confidence before he would speak on an issue, so he never needed to change his mind.

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It wasn't that he aspired to be vague or ambivalent on important doctrines.

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You listen to him and he never sounds uncertain or blows an uncertain trumpet.

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He loved soundness and thoroughness and clarity and firm convictions.

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And so he cultivated all of those things in his own approach to theology. And that is the very thing that made controversy inevitable for him.

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Because he wouldn't bend. He didn't need to. He was the voice of clarity and conviction during an era when practically everyone else was willing to put all of the core doctrines of Christianity back on the table for negotiation.

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You know, that eagerness to reinvent and reimagine Christianity to make it more suitable to the modern mind.

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That was the central error of the modernists. And it's also the most dangerous aspect of people in the church today who are steeped in post -modernism.

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Everything is supposed to be perpetually on the table for renegotiation. Spurgeon was of the opposite mind.

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He was convinced that faithful Christians need to hold fast and contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.

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So conflict was inevitable. Ian Murray wrote the best book on Spurgeon the

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Controversialist. And I'm certain many of you have it or may have read it. It's one of the classics of 20th century

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Christian publishing. The Forgotten Spurgeon. Murray traces three major controversies that spanned

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Spurgeon's career. There was a conflict over Calvinism. There was a massive debate that Spurgeon accidentally sparked but held firm on with the

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Anglican Church over the question of baptismal regeneration. Is baptism necessary for salvation?

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And that went on for several years. And then finally there was the downgrade controversy. Now there were, of course, a lot more controversies than those.

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But those are the major representative cases that Ian Murray's book deals with.

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And Murray's book is the single best resource to read if you want proof that Spurgeon was not the safe, broadly tolerant, always congenial type of person that 20th century evangelicals always seemed to want to make him out to be.

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And the fact is Spurgeon's own autobiography makes the very same point that Ian Murray was making, that Spurgeon was no stranger to controversy.

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Never. Not even in the very beginning of his ministry. Some of you may own the two -volume edition of Spurgeon's autobiography that was published by the

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Banner of Truth. As I said yesterday, it's slightly reorganized and re -edited a little bit.

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The original autobiography was a four -volume work that was compiled posthumously by Mrs.

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Spurgeon and Spurgeon's personal secretary, Joseph Harold, the guy that Spurgeon referred to as his armor carrier.

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And the notable difference is that the original edition has a lot more pictures. The Banner of Truth edition may be organized more logically.

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Either way, this is the one biography of Spurgeon that you cannot skip reading. Having stood shoulder to shoulder with Spurgeon during those grueling years of the downgrade controversy,

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Joseph Harold was eager to make it clear for posterity that the truth was about Spurgeon, that he was always a warrior.

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Harold wanted to show readers Spurgeon's courage and his steadfastness and his willingness to suffer for Christ's sake.

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And in the original volume of the autobiography, it's chapter 53. This is a big book, four volumes.

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Chapter 53 has all the earmarks of being written by Joseph Harold. It was

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Harold and Spurgeon's wife who put it together, and he didn't always identify who wrote which chapter, but I'm certain this was

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Joseph Harold. The chapter is titled,

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The Downgrade Controversy Foreshadowed. And it chronicles all of the early controversies that Spurgeon was involved in.

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And the chapter opens with some quotations from Spurgeon about the necessity of controversy.

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Spurgeon points out, for example, that the majority of Christians seem more concerned about taste and decorum and respectability than they genuinely care about the truth.

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That's a problem today too, isn't it? Victorian evangelicals, for the most part, considered it crude and vile to refute false doctrine and point out the faults of the

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Church of the Age. Spurgeon's answer was, if that's vile, we propose to be viler still.

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That was 1856, less than two years after Spurgeon took the pulpit in London that he said that.

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Here's another quote Joseph Harold cites from 11 years later than that. This is 20 years still prior to the downgrade controversy where Spurgeon said this,

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As good stewards, we must maintain the cause of truth against all comers. Never get into religious controversies, someone says.

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That is to say, being interpreted, Be a Christian soldier, but let your sword rust in its scabbard.

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Sneak into heaven like a coward. That's how Spurgeon put it. And then he went on to say this,

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Such advice I cannot endorse. If God has called you by the truth, maintain the truth, which has been the means of your salvation.

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We're not to be pugnacious, always contending for every crotchet of our own, but wherein we have learned the truth of the

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Holy Spirit, we are not tamely to see that standard torn down, which our fathers upheld at the peril of their blood.

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This is an age in which truth must be maintained zealously, vehemently, continually, playing fast and loose, as many do, believing this today and that tomorrow is the sure mark of children of wrath.

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But having perceived the truth, to hold fast to the very form of it, as Paul bids Timothy to do, this is one of the duties of the heirs of heaven.

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Stand fast for truth, and may God give the victory to the faithful. Spurgeon's stature then in the public perception rose steadily over the years.

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The passage of time always vindicated his positions, and it got to the point where when he spoke, people listened, and his critics could no longer sort of reflexively write off his strong opinions as merely the dreams of an idealistic youth.

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He kept those strong opinions and held them just as strongly as he grew older, and as a result,

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Spurgeon's ministry went through a relatively peaceful time from the early 1870s until 1886, so about 14 or 15 years during which

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Spurgeon was not constantly embroiled in controversies. There were minor controversies even then, but they weren't publicized on the front pages of the city newspapers or talked about on a public scale like that, so that when the downgrade controversy broke out in 1887,

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Spurgeon's critics tried to write off his opposition to the modernist juggernaut as this was, they said, the half -demented ravings of a once kindly preacher who now is suddenly showing the signs of losing his mind and his inhibitions.

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They treated him as old and, you know, well, I'm not going to say that, but...

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Joseph Harold answers this claim definitively in chapter 53 of the autobiography.

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He says this is not a new trend with Spurgeon. It's not a sign that he's losing his mind or becoming old and crotchety.

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Spurgeon has always been like this, and anyone who's followed his career can see it, and here's how Harold opens that chapter.

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Immediately after those three quotations from younger Spurgeon about the importance of fighting for the truth,

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Harold says this. When in 1887 there arose the great downgrade controversy in which

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Mr. Spurgeon was to prove himself Christ's faithful witness and martyr, many people were foolish enough to suppose that he had adopted a new role, and some said that he would have done more good by simply preaching the gospel and leaving the so -called heretics to go their own way.

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Harold says such critics must have been strangely unfamiliar with his whole history, for from the very beginning of his ministry he had earnestly contended for the faith to be once for all delivered to the saints.

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Long before the sword and the trowel appeared, that was Spurgeon's magazine, with its monthly record of combat with sin and labor for the

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Lord, that was the meaning of sword and trowel. The sword was to fight, the trowel was to build with. Long before that, he said, the editor,

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Spurgeon, had been busily occupied both in battling and building, vigorously combating error in all its forms, and at the same time, edifying and establishing in the faith those who had been brought to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.

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And then Harold goes on to give details of Spurgeon's earliest controversies. I only have time to introduce you to one of them and give you the gist of it, and then you need to read that chapter, and the rest of Spurgeon's autobiography, if you want to get a better sense of Spurgeon, the controversialist.

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But Joseph Harold says that the first actual theological or philosophical controversy about Spurgeon, not just people who criticized him for his age and all that, but a doctrinal conflict that he was drawn into was, of all things, a dispute about church music.

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That's not surprising, is it? More specifically, it was a debate over the propriety and the substance of a hymn book that had been written by a congregational minister named

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Thomas Toke Lynch. His hymn book was a collection of mediocre doggerel, mostly celebrating

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God's handiwork in nature. The title of the hymn book was The Rivulet.

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You can look that one up, by the way. Google Rivulet Controversy, because the whole matter is a fascinating story and is filled with many lessons about how our contemporary worship wars go.

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And all the disputes that occur today over music in the church, this is nothing new.

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If you look at Google Books or the Internet Archive, you'll even find a full copy of the hymn book,

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The Rivulet. You can read it for yourself. And there's also a copy of the full memoir of Thomas Toke Lynch online, and he includes a very interesting narrative about the controversy over his hymn book from the author's point of view, his point of view.

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Anyway, the poetry in The Rivulet was mostly awful, and the hymns were mostly insipid, and clear doctrine and biblical truth were mostly absent from any of Lynch's hymns.

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They were all just poems about nature. Here's a sample. This is a hymn about the virtues of meditation.

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Our heart is like a little pool Left by the ebbing sea Of crystal waters

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Still and cool When we rest musingly I thought that would get more laughter because I think that's as funny as it is bad.

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Because think about it, he's talking about a tide pool left by the ebbing sea. Tide pools are actually best known for the horrible stench they generate.

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But anyway, that sort of thing was wildly popular with a certain class of genteel religious people in Victorian times.

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And not all of Lynch's hymns were that bad, of course. A couple of them actually survived and are in our 20th century hymn books.

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We used to sing one when I was a student at Moody. Gracious spirit dwell with me I myself would gracious be.

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We don't sing that anymore, but I know that hymn. And it survived from this. Well, here's the thing.

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Spurgeon did not start the Rivulet controversy. It was actually started by a newspaper editor,

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James Grant, who published an unfavorable review of the Rivulet in a periodical titled

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The Morning Advertiser. And Grant said things like this. From beginning to end, there is not one particle of vital religion or evangelical piety.

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He said that nearly the whole of the hymns might have been written by a deist. He said a very large portion might be sung by a congregation of freethinkers, atheists.

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And another critic wrote that Thomas Lynch's hymns were crude, disjointed, unmeaning, unchristian, ill -rhymed rubbish.

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Now, frankly, I think those complaints aren't terribly exaggerated. That's the kind of thing

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I might tweet. And Spurgeon probably wouldn't like it that much, that I would. But these were terrible hymns and some of the subsequent criticism that was aimed at the

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Rivulet began to use rhetoric that was deliberately overblown and exaggerated and maybe a little bit mean -spirited.

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Everybody wanted to jump on this bandwagon. And so the argument grew all out of proportion.

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The hymn book really wasn't getting that much use or having that much influence.

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And Spurgeon, who knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of malicious critics, wasn't fond of hyperbole in church controversies.

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So he stayed out of this whole debate for five months, even though friends on both sides of this debate were urging him to weigh in.

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But the rhetoric and the passions on both sides became seriously overheated.

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Spurgeon hadn't uttered a peep about it, but because of his popularity and influence, many of his closest friends and fellow ministers were insistent, you need to take one side or another.

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Now, if I read things correctly, it seems to me Spurgeon wasn't at all happy about being forced into this position.

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He didn't approve of exaggerated criticism and he didn't like it when inflated passions crowded or clouded rational arguments out of the war for truth.

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On the one hand, his theological convictions put him on the side of the critics of this hymn book.

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On the other hand, his gentle spirit inclined him to be more gracious than them.

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And so he published what was really a kind -hearted, reasonable critique, patient critique of the hymnal.

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And the review was titled, Mine Opinion. Finally, Mine Opinion.

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Thomas Lynch later said that Spurgeon was the only one of his major critics who actually treated him with true respect.

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Here's a sample of what Spurgeon wrote. Notice how he uses humor to defuse the dark passions.

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He says, quote, These hymns rise up in the rivulet like mermaids. There's much form and comeliness on the surface, but their nether parts

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I think would be hard to describe. Perhaps they're not the fair things they seem.

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When I look below their glistening eyes and flowing hair, I think I discern some meaner nature joined with the divine form.

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But the surface of this rivulet is green with beautifully flowering weeds, and I can scarcely see into the depths where lurks the essence of the matter.

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That's a great, very clever review, isn't it? He was using actually a parody of Lynch's own style to show the silliness of these hymns.

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And Lynch got the point. In his account of the controversy, he said that Spurgeon, and these are his exact words,

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Spurgeon saw enough in the glistening eyes of the mermaids to suspect that they might have a fishy body and a snaky tail.

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But he confessed he couldn't see that tail. Actually, what

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Spurgeon was really saying, and I think Lynch misunderstood, he took it thankfully in a kindly way, but I think what

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Spurgeon was really saying was that beyond the flowery, shallow surface of these glib verses in the rivulet, things looked pretty murky.

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But Spurgeon closed his review by suggesting it's time for this raging controversy to end because this little volume really doesn't warrant that much fuss.

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He wrote this, quote, liberty of conscience is every man's right. Our writer has spoken his mind.

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Why should he alone provoke attack when many others who agree quite as little with our views, they're allowed to escape.

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The battle is either a tribute to his superior ability or else it's a sign of the times. Spurgeon says,

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I believe it to be both. The work has its errors in the estimation of one who does not fear to subscribe himself as a

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Calvinistic Christian, but it has no more evil leaven than other books with far less merit.

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No one would have read this book with a jealous eye unless it had been made the center of a controversy.

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For we should either let it quietly alone or forget the deleterious mixture and retain the little good that it certainly contains.

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The author did not write for us. He wrote for men of his own faith. And thus ended

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Spurgeon's first controversy. It was a relatively minor one for him and I think it's fair to look at him as the peacemaker, the one who brought this controversy to an end.

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But he found it necessary soon afterwards to attack even more sinister trends toward humanism and Socinian doctrines.

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And then came the famous baptismal regeneration controversy. There was a series of controversies over creeping high church and Romanist tendencies within the

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Anglican establishment. He had conflicts with hyper -Calvinists.

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He had disputes with stylish innovators like Dr. Parker. Joseph Parker, we'll talk about him in the last session today.

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You will not want to miss that one because it says so much, his conflict with Parker, about the problems in the church today and where we are.

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Spurgeon showed resistance to Arminian and revivalist tendencies. He had opposition from various Darby -ite brethren churchmen, the early dispensationalists.

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There was the struggle against scientific rationalism. There was a sustained defense that he carried for the authority of scripture.

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And finally, the downgrade controversy, which more or less brought all of these things together. And in fact, as Joseph Harold points out, all of those lesser conflicts were merely prelude and preparation for the downgrade controversy in which all of those other issues came together.

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I wish we had time to survey all of those controversies. I'll brush over a few of them in the next hour as well.

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But let me summarize the point I want to leave you with. Spurgeon's ministry was controversial in its day, not because he was pugnacious.

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He was not. He was a tender -hearted, patient, good -humored man with a large heart.

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But he was devoted to the truth, and that made him a dedicated enemy of error.

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The Lord had blessed him with a voice and a brain and the influence to be the kind of warrior that he was, and providence often then placed him in circumstances that demanded battle.

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And thankfully for the church, Spurgeon was willing to fight. And in many ways, his influence as a polemicist, a warrior for the truth, is an even more valuable legacy for the church in our generation than his example as a preacher.

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In fact, I've said, I wouldn't follow his example as a preacher when it comes to the construction of sermons and things like that.

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He was a great preacher, so he is a good one to emulate in lots of ways.

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But his chief legacy for us is his example as a warrior for the truth. We need to follow that example.

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Taking a steadfast stance on matters of doctrine is probably more politically incorrect today than it was in Spurgeon's time.

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But for that very reason, the church is desperately in need of men who will fight the good fight, much as Spurgeon did, even though we know that's not going to win us any accolades from the world, much less from the main bastions of evangelical opinion.

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But we need to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the word of the

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Lord because our labor for Christ is not in vain. Let's do lunch.