Tethered to the Cross

The Life and Preaching of Charles H. Spurgeon

Thomas Breimaier

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780830853311
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

"Tethered to the cross" is how the renowned nineteenth-century English Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon (1834–1892) described the task of ministry and his approach to preaching.For nearly four decades, Spurgeon served as the pastor of the church at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. But what specifically guided the reading of Scripture by the man known as the "Prince of Preachers"?Tracing the development of Spurgeon's thought and his approach to biblical hermeneutics throughout his ministry, theologian and historian Thomas Breimaier argues that Spurgeon viewed the entire Bible through the lens of the cross of Christ. This method led Spurgeon to interpret texts in a consistent fashion, resulting in sermons, articles, and instruction that employed cross-centered language, which was aimed at the conversion of unbelievers.With Breimaier as our guide, better understanding of how Spurgeon approached the task of interpreting Scripture and preaching the gospel might enable us, too, to be tethered to the cross of Christ.

ECHOES OF ESSEX

Theological Education from Stambourne to Waterbeach

Even as a boy he knew his Bible; and at an age when most of us were but boys, he began to preach the gospel, and, from the first, with such remarkable knowledge of the Word of God, and facility and felicity in its presentation as turned the eyes of all men to the boy-preacher of London. . . . And when that boy-preacher startled all London by the marvel of his preaching, and still more by the marvel of his praying; it was the result of early and long study of the Word on the one hand, and communion with God in the closet on the other.

A. T. PIERSON

BORN IN 1834 IN KELVEDON, ESSEX, Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the first of eight surviving children of John and Eliza Spurgeon.1 Shortly after Charles’s birth, the family relocated to Colchester, where John Spurgeon worked as a clerk for a coal firm while also serving as an itinerant Congregational preacher. The Spurgeons sent eighteen-month-old Charles to live in Stambourne with his paternal grandparents, James and Sarah. Later, Charles Spurgeon would idealize rural England, and he professed to a “sentiment of reverence” for Stambourne.2 The town, which had at one time been called the “headquarters of Protestant resistance,” boasted a long history of Nonconformity.3 James Spurgeon stood firmly within this tradition. The Spurgeons’ Congregational church in Stambourne boasted a significant library, much of which came from the collection of a previous minister, Henry Havers.4 This library was important for the young Charles, whom David Bebbington has described as “bookish.”5 Learning to read while in the care of his grandparents, he was a voracious reader.6 Indeed, Patricia Kruppa’s observation that Spurgeon’s “first playthings were books” is a fitting description.7

While Puritan works such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress were key influences, the Bible was central. Late in his life, he wrote, “Before my conversion, I was accustomed to read the Scriptures to admire their grandeur, to feel the charm of their history, and wonder at the majesty of their language, but I altogether missed the Lord’s intent therein.”8 The Lord’s intent, according to Spurgeon, was the “inner meaning” within the biblical text, one that drove him toward a crucified Christ and “His great atoning sacrifice.”9 Standing firmly within the Puritan tradition, Spurgeon learned as a child to view the Holy Spirit as essential for biblical interpretation, believing that it was only through the Spirit’s quickening that “the inner meaning shone forth with wondrous glory.”10

Spurgeon experienced a religious conversion in 1850, when he was fifteen years old. Electing to worship in a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Colchester rather than taking a longer walk through a snowstorm, Spurgeon listened to a lay minister’s sermon on Isaiah 45:22, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” This verse took on special meaning for Spurgeon, and it appeared frequently in his preached and written work in the years that followed. Furthermore, the method that the preacher employed, namely a crucicentric and conversionistic reading of a single verse, provided a model that Spurgeon himself would eventually follow. Newly converted and filled with a passion for souls, Spurgeon set out to preach a similar simple gospel message. He began by passing out gospel tracts in Cambridgeshire and teaching a Sunday school for boys. This work eventually gave way to preaching, which would eventually pave the way for his first pastorate in a small Baptist church in the rural village of Waterbeach.

This chapter will investigate the extent to which Spurgeon’s early life shaped his interpretation of the Bible and the development of the particular method with which he approached the biblical text: through the lenses of crucicentrism and conversionism. In his published sermons, which would eventually number over three thousand, there are echoes of both Puritan voices and of a simple Primitive Methodist sermon that he heard in 1850. Spurgeon’s early years were saturated with biblical passages, in written and preached form, and the various theological traditions he experienced in his youth culminated in him crafting a thoroughly crucicentric and conversionistic interpretation of the Bible. These traditions included rural Nonconformity, Primitive Methodism, the Established Church, and finally, the Particular Baptist denomination. This chapter will analyze significant moments from Spurgeon’s formative years—moments that exemplify his early interaction with the Bible, from his rural childhood to his first pastorate—and evaluate their contribution to his theology and biblical interpretation.

STAMBOURNE AND THE EMBERS OF PURITANISM: SPURGEON’S PASTORAL HERITAGE

Spurgeon frequently referred to his youth in rural England in his published works.11 His idealization of life in rural English countryside was portrayed in one of his final books, the autobiographical Memories of Stambourne.12 Gratitude for his family’s religious devotion found expression when he proclaimed to the congregation at the Metropolitan Tabernacle that “it is one of the highest privileges that God has ever been pleased to grant to me that I can rejoice in a father and a grandfather who trained me in the fear of God; and I congratulate every young person who has such a pedigree.”13

Charles’s grandfather James Spurgeon (1776–1864) was the pastor of the local Independent congregation.14 James had studied at the Hoxton Independent College, a Dissenting academy in London, and had taken up his pastorate in Stambourne in 1810.15 During James’s time as a student, the college was run by a Scottish minister, the Rev. Robert Simpson (1764–1817), who was described as a man who was “in every particular Calvinistic” and “well read in Greek and Latin, but in Hebrew greatly excelled.”16 The Evangelical Magazine recorded that Hoxton students’ examinations included reading “in Chaldee, part of Daniel; and in Greek, part of the 3rd Olynthiad of Demosthenes. . . . Third-year men read in Hebrew four chapters of Isaiah, in Greek, part of Book I of the Illiad; in Latin, part of Tacitus’s Life of Agricola.”17 Charles Spurgeon’s friend, assistant, and eventual biographer, G. H. Pike, regarded James as “one of the last representatives of Old Dissent” and observed that “his faith was old-fashioned in its childlike simplicity.”18 Pike may indeed be correct in his assessment of James Spurgeon as representative of an older generation of ministers; however, the Baptist historian Peter Morden cautions that Pike may have been “overpainting” in his attempts to present Charles as a representative of a Puritan tradition.19

While thoroughly committed to the Independent church, James was remembered by his grandson as having a cordial relationship with the local established church parish minister, James Hopkins.20 James Spurgeon also served as an inspiration for the character John Ploughman, a pseudonymous character created by his grandson. The John Ploughman books, which contained a combination of rural anecdotes and Christian devotional material, were among Spurgeon’s most popular works.21 Holding fast to conservative evangelical Independency throughout his entire life, James’s last recorded words to his grandson were indicative of his commitment to the legacy of Puritanism. He said, “I have grown in experience; but from the first day until now, I have had no new doctrines to teach my hearers. I have had to make no confessions of error on vital points, but have been held fast to the doctrines of grace, and can now say that I love them better than ever.”22 Charles was deeply influenced by his grandfather’s hesitancy toward “new doctrine” and would later refer to it from his own pulpit as “old heresy with a fresh coat of varnish.”23

John Spurgeon (1810–1902), Charles’s father, was also a preacher, though unlike his father and son, much of his ministry was spent as an itinerant. During Charles’s youth, John worked as a clerk in a coal mining office in Colchester while traveling nine miles on Sundays to preach to an independent congregation in Tollesbury. He also ministered for a time in London at the Fetter Lane Congregational Chapel, in 1868.24 James Allen’s biography of Charles Spurgeon suggests that John was additionally involved with an Independent church in Cranbrook, Kent.25 Allen’s book contains a quotation from John in which he laments the burden that the itinerant nature of his ministry placed upon his family. He wrote, “I have been away from home a great deal, trying to build up weak congregations, and felt that I was neglecting the religious training of my own children while I toiled for the good of others.”26 In the same statement, John praised his wife for her dedication to their children in his absence.

Sources related to John Spurgeon are rather scarce and largely limited to incidental references in his son’s magazine, The Sword and the Trowel.27 The surviving material suggests that in some respects John’s influence upon Charles may best be seen in their work together as ministers. For instance, in his later years John worked alongside his son in supporting the nondenominational Stockwell Orphanage, which was established in 1867. The orphanage provided shelter for over two hundred boys, eventually adding a girls’ wing in 1879. While it is not clear whether John had permanent employment as a minister in his later years, there is some evidence to suggest that he continued preaching. In 1877, Charles placed a small advertisement in The Sword and the Trowel to recommend his father as an ideal candidate for an Independent congregation looking for “an old-fashioned gospel minister, and an experienced pastor.”28 In addition to working among his son’s parachurch ministries, John also occasionally preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Charles’s absence.

It should not be overlooked that the women in the family also had a significant influence on the young Spurgeon. His father’s sister, Ann Spurgeon, helped to care for the young Charles at Stambourne and maintained a keen interest in her nephew’s education and ministry in subsequent years.29 Spurgeon once observed that his future biographers would find no “difficulty in accounting for the position that God has given me. I can tell you of two reasons why I am what I am: My mother, and the truth of my message.”30 In a letter following his conversion, Charles referred to his mother Eliza as the “great means in God’s hand of rendering me what I hope I am.”31 Later, in an 1884 sermon called “The Joy of Holy Households,” Spurgeon recalled “when my father was absent preaching the gospel, my mother always filled his place at the family altar. . . . We could not have a house without prayer; that would be heathenish or atheistical.”32

The pastoral work of both the elder Spurgeons ingrained the significance of preaching upon Charles from a young age. James Spurgeon provided a working model o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Timothy Larsen
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Cross in the Tabernacle
• 1 Echoes of Essex: Theological Education from Stambourne to Waterbeach
• 2 The Bible Outside the Pulpit: Spurgeon’s Early Years in Ministry
• 3 The Cross and Conversion in Spurgeon's Old Testament Interpretation
• 4 The Cross and Conversion in Spurgeon's New Testament Interpretation
• 5 The Bible Beyond the Pulpit: Spurgeon’s Later Years in Ministry
• 6 The Cross in the College: Biblical Engagement in Spurgeon’s Training Institutions
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• Praise for Tethered to the Cross
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright