Influential Baptist minister in England. Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, Essex, on June 19, 1834, and became apart of the Nonconformist tradition from his early childhood. His grandfather, James, and his father, John, were both ministers of Independent congregations. He spent his early years at his grandfather's home, but attended schools at Colchester and Newmarket.
Although he had been reared as an Independent and converted in a primitive Methodist chapel, he was baptized and joined a Baptist church in 1849. In 1850 he enrolled in a school near Cambridge and became an active member of a Baptist church. At the age of sixteen he preached his first sermon in a cottage at Teversham, near Cambridge. By 1851 he was preaching regularly to a Baptist congregation at Waterbeach, a village near Cambridge.
In April 1854, he accepted a call to the Baptist chapel at New Park Street in London and began a ministry which lasted thirty-eight years. He received some unfavorable publicity at first because of his lack of a formal education and his rural origins. The congregation began to grow, however, and soon he was preaching at Exeter Hall while the church building was being enlarged. Then some members of the church rented the Surrey Gardens Music Hall, and at age twenty-two Spurgeon was perhaps the most popular preacher of his day.
In 1861 the Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant and Castle streets was built, a church that would seat six thousand people. The building was completely paid for when the congregation occupied the site, and Spurgeon ministered there continually until his death. The tabernacle became a center for the religious life of the area, housing a pastor's college and a colportage society which emphasized the distribution of religious literature. The congregation grew yearly, and it has been estimated that fourteen thousand members were added during Spurgeon's ministry.
Spurgeon was married to Susannah Thompson in 1856, and they had two sons, Charles and Thomas. A liberal in politics, he supported the liberal-unionist party and their opposition to home rule in Ireland. He refused the title of "reverend" as a matter of principle, and he refused to be ordained. He lived well, but was generous to those in need, and was responsible for founding an orphanage in 1867. He died at Mentone in France after a lenghty illness.
Spurgeon was a product of his Calvinist upbringing, and the Metropolitan Tabernacle was the center of Nonconformist activity during the 1870s and 1880s. He took pride in the fact that his Calvinist theology did not change during his years of ministry, and he claimed roots from Paul, Augustine, Calvin, and John Knox. One of his many biographers described him as an heir of the Puritans.
He was involved in doctrinal controversies on at least two occasions. In 1864 he preached a sermon against infant baptism and offended a large group of evangelicals who had been his supporters. A pamplet war ensued and subsequently Spurgeon withdrew from the Evangelical Alliance, a group supported by the low church party of the Anglican Church. On October 26, 1887, he withdrew from the Baptist Union, pointing to what he considered to be doctrinal aberrations. He was particularly concerned about the development in modern biblical criticism and the lack of stress on the deity of Christ. This so-called downgrade controversy came near the close of his ministry and led to a great deal of pamplet writing, a host of news articles, and the writing of a great many letters.
A prolific writer, he published some 2,241 of his weekly sermons during his lifetime, and some 3,800 in all were published. From 1865 on he edited a monthly magazine entitled The Sword and the Trowel. His primary emphasis was always focused on evangelism. Often criticized for not having received formal college training, his sermons revealed that he did a great deal of reading, and his personal library contained more than ten thousand volumes.
J. E. JOHNSON