Charles Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was an English Particular Baptist preacher. Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, to some of whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers." He was a strong figure in the Baptist tradition, defending the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day.

Spurgeon was pastor of the congregation of the New Park Street Chapel (later the Metropolitan Tabernacle) in London for 38 years. He was part of several controversies with the Baptist Union of Great Britain and later he left the denomination over doctrinal convictions.

While at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, he built an Almshouse and the Stockwell Orphanage. He encouraged his congregation to engage actively with the poor of Victorian London. He also founded Spurgeon's College, which was named after him posthumously.

Spurgeon authored sermons, an autobiography, commentaries, books on prayer, devotionals, magazines, poetry, and hymns. Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages during his lifetime. He is said to have produced powerful sermons of penetrating thought and precise exposition. His oratory skills are said to have held his listeners spellbound in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and many Christians hold his writings in exceptionally high regard among devotional literature.

Born in Kelvedon, Essex, he moved with his family to Colchester at 10 months old.

The missionary Richard Knill spent several days with Spurgeon while visiting his grandfather in 1844; he announced to him and his family that the child would one day preach the gospel to great multitudes.

Spurgeon's conversion from nominal Congregationalism came on 6 January 1850, at age 15. On his way to a scheduled appointment, a snowstorm forced him to cut short his intended journey and to turn into a Primitive Methodist chapel in Artillery Street, Newtown, Colchester, where he believed God opened his heart to the salvation message. The text that moved him was Isaiah 45:22 ("Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else"). Later that year, on April 4, he was admitted to the church at Newmarket. His baptism followed on 3 May in the river Lark, at Isleham. Later that same year he moved to Cambridge, where he later became a Sunday school teacher. Spurgeon preached his first sermon in the winter of 1850–51 in a cottage at Teversham while filling in for a friend. From the beginning of Spurgeon's ministry, his style and ability were considered to be far above average. In the same year, he was installed as pastor of the small Baptist church at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, where he published his first literary work, a Gospel tract written in 1853.

In April 1854, after preaching three months on probation and just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 19 years old, was called to the pastorate of London's famed New Park Street Chapel in Southwark (formerly pastored by the Particular Baptists Benjamin Keach, and theologian John Gill). This was the largest Baptist congregation in London at the time, although it had dwindled in numbers for several years. Spurgeon found friends in London among his fellow pastors, such as William Garrett Lewis of Westballs Grove Church, an older man who along with Spurgeon went on to found the London Baptist Association.