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CHARLES H. SPURGEON (1834-1892)

LONDON'S FAMOUS PULPIT ORATOR

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MONG the Dissenters* of England, made notable in the past by

such famous orators as Wesley and Whitefield, there have been many preachers of great power in recent times, prominent among whom may be named Charles H. Spurgeon, a man of the oratorical type of Talmage in America, and resembling him in the great success of his ministrations. His career as a preacher of the Gospel began in 1854, when he was made pastor of the New Park Street Chapel, London; but his power of attracting an audience was so great that, a few years later, was erected for him the vast Metropolitan Tabernacle, capable of seating 6000 persons. Connected with this were afterward built almshouses, a pastor's college and an orphanage. Spurgeon's sermons were printed weekly from 1855 onward, and had an average issue of 30,000. A member of the Baptist Union, he withdrew from that body in 1887, through dissatisfaction with certain of its actions. As an orator Spurgeon was highly gifted, combining fervor of manner with a quaint humor; while his voice was marvelous in clearness and outreach. He published in all over a hundred volumes of religious literature.

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE BIBLE

[From a sermon of Spurgeon's on the subject of the Bible, we select the following characteristic example of his cloquent style and emotional power of expression.]

First, then, concerning this book, who is the author? The text says that it is God. "I have written to him the great things of My law." Here lies my Bible; who wrote it? I open it, and I find it consists of a series of tracts. The first five tracts were written by a man called Moses.

* The name given in England to those Protestants who dissented from the discipline or mode of worship of the Established Church, and formed new sects, with doctrinal or other differences.

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I turn on and I find others. Sometimes I see David is the penman, at other times, Solomon. Here I read Micah, then Amos, then Hosea. As I turn further on, to the more luminous pages of the New Testament, I see Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Paul, Peter, James, and others; but when I shut up the book, I ask myself who is the author of it? Do these men jointly claim the authorship? Are they the compositors of this massive volume? Do they between themselves divide the honor? Our holy religion answers, "No!" This volume is the writing of the living God; each letter was penned with an Almighty finger; each word in it dropped from the Everlasting lips, each sentence was dictated by the Holy Spirit. Albeit, that Moses was employed to write his histories with his fiery pen, God guided that pen. It may be that David touched his harp and let sweet psalms of melody drop from his fingers, but God moved his hand over the living strings of his golden harp. It may be that Solomon sang canticles of love, or gave forth words of consummate wisdom, but God directed his lips and made the preacher eloquent. If I follow the thundering Nahum when his horses plough the waters, or Habakkuk when he sees the tents of Cushan in affliction; if I read Malachi, when the earth is burning like an oven; if I turn to the smooth page of John, who tells of love, or the rugged, fiery chapters of Peter, who speaks of the fire devouring God's enemies; if I turn to Jude, who launches forth anathemas upon the foes of God, everywhere I find God speaking: it is God's voice, not man's; the words are God's, the words of the Eternal, the Invisible, the Almighty, the Jehovah of this earth. The Bible is God's Bible; and when I see it I seem to hear a voice springing up from it, saying, “I am the book of God; man, read me. I am God's writing; open my leaf, for I was penned by God; read it, for He is my author, and you will see Him visible and manifest everywhere." "I have written to him the great things of my law."

How do you know that God wrote the book? That is just what I shall not try to prove to you. I could, if I pleased, do so to a demonstration, for there are arguments enough, there are reasons enough, did I care to occupy your time to-night in bringing them before you; but I shall do no such thing. I might tell you, if I pleased, that the grandeur of the style is above that of any mortal writing, and that all the poets who ever existed could not, with all their works united, give us such sublime poetry and such mighty language as is to be found in the Scriptures. I might insist upon it that the subjects of which it treats are beyond the human intellect; that man could never have invented the grand doctrine of a Trinity in the Godhead; man could not have told us anything of the creation of the universe; he could never have been the author of the

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majestic idea of Providence, that all things are ordered according to the will of one great Supreme Being, and work together for good. I might enlarge upon its honesty, since it tells the faults of its writers; its unity, since it never belies itself; its master simplicity, that he who runs may read it; and I might mention a hundred more things, which would all prove to a demonstration that the book is of God. But I come not here to prove it. I am a Christian minister, and you are Christians, or profess to be so; and there is never any necessity for Christian ministers to make a point of bringing forth infidel arguments in order to answer them.

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There may be some one here to-night who has come without faith, a man of reason, a free-thinker. With him I have no argument at all. I profess not to stand here as a controversialist, but as a preacher of the things I know and feel. But I, too, have been like him. There was an evil hour when once I slipped the anchor of my faith; I cut the cable of my belief; I no longer moored myself hard by the coasts of revelation; I allowed myself to drift before the wind; I said to Reason," Be thou my captain;" I said to my own brain, "Be thou my rudder; and I started on my mad voyage. Thank God it is all over now; but I will tell you its brief history. It was one hurried sailing over the tempestuous ocean of free-thought. I went on, and as I went the skies began to darken; but to make up for that deficiency, the waters were brilliant with coruscations of brilliancy. I saw sparks flying upwards that pleased me, and I thought, "If this be free-thought, it is a happy thing." My thoughts seemed gems, and I scattered stars with both my hands. But anon, instead of these coruscations of glory, I saw grim fiends, fierce and horrible, start up from the waters, and as I dashed on they gnashed their teeth and grinned upon me; they seized the prow of my ship, and dragged me on, while I, in part, gloried at the rapidity of my motion, but yet shuddered at the terrific rate with which I passed the old landmarks of my faith. As I hurried forward with an awful speed, I began to doubt my very existence; I doubted if there were a world, I doubted if there were such a thing as myself. I went to the very verge of the dreary realms of unbelief. I went to the very bottom of the sea of infidelity. I doubted everything.

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But here the Devil foiled himself; for the very extravagance of the doubt proved its absurdity. Just when I saw the bottom of that sea, there came a voice which said, "And can this doubt be true? At this very thought I awoke. I started from that death-dream, which God knows might have damned my soul and ruined this my body, if I had not awoke.

JOSEPH PARKER (1830-1902)

FAMOUS PULPIT ORATOR

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ROM stonemason to the most popular pulpit in England is the record of one who was heard and read by more of the world's people than any other man of the Nineteenth Century.

Joseph Parker was the son of a stonemason, born in 1830, educated through his own efforts, with but small assistance from his parents. When scarcely out of his teens he showed great talent as a public speaker in religious meetings. He read and studied at odd moments the works of the great British Orators, which laid the foundation for his future brilliant career. Upon entering the ministry, he rapidly sprang into prominence, and became the pastor of the Temple Church, London, from which his fame spread the world over.

HUMAN FRIVOLITY

[This example of pulpit oratory shows the practical nature of Joseph Parker's sermons. They appealed to the multitude, and his pointed criticism and just indignation against popular errors bore fruit in many lives, in making them better and nobler.]

Frivolousness will ruin any life. No frivolousness succeeds in any great enterprise. No frivolous man succeeds in business of a commercial kind. Business is not a trick or an amusement, it is hard work, hard study, daily consideration, incessant planning, wakefulness that ought never to go to sleep. If so for a corruptible crown, what for an incorruptible? The danger is that we make light of the Gospel because of our disregard for the manner in which it is spoken. Were we anxious about the vital matter, we should not care how it was uttered. All mere study of manner, and way of putting familiar truth, is an accommodation to the frivolity of the age. When we are told to make our services more interesting, our music more lively, our preaching more animated, we are but

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told to stoop to the frivolity of the time, that we may entrap a truant attention and arrest a wandering mind. Given an anxious people, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, knocking at the church door, saying, "Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will enter in and be glad; this is the day the Lord hath made," we need not study any mechanical arrangements, or urge ourselves to any unusual animation of manner; the urgency of our desire, the purity and nobleness of our sympathy, would supply all the conditions required by the God of the feast, for the pouring out of heaven's best wine and the preparation of all the fatlings of the heavens for the satisfaction of our hunger. God makes all the universe contribute to the soul's growth. "My oxen and my fatlings are killed and ready, therefore come to the marriage." He keeps back nothing from the soul, He plucks the highest grapes in the vineyards of heaven for the soul, He seeks out the goodliest and choicest of His possessions and treasures that the soul may be satisfied; He has kept back nothing; last of all He sent His Son, saying, "They will reverence my Son." In that fact, see the symbol of all that can be crowded into the suggestions that God withholds no good thing that can minister to the soul's development, and the soul's growth in truth and love and grace.

Nor does the human condition in relation to the divine offer conclude itself under the limitation of mere frivolity. Light-mindedness in this matter does not complete itself. "The remnant took his servants and entreated them spitefully, and slew them," This is true frivolity. Frivolity is followed by rebellion, blasphemy, high crime and misdemeanor before the eye of heaven. You who laugh to-day may slay to-morrow, we who do make but gibes and sneers in relation to the Gospel offers now, will by and by sit with the scornful and in deliberate blasphemy mock the King of the feast. Easy is the descent towards this pit of rebellion, hardheartedness, and utter defiance of divine goodness. To defy the goodthere might be some courage of a wild kind in defying power, in setting oneself in defiant attitude against thunderbolts, but to defy goodness, to mock an offer of hospitality, to scorn the call to a divine delight-let a man once become frivolous in that direction, and the whole substance of his character will be depleted of everything that can be ennobled, and it will speedily sink to irremediable viciousness and baseness. Call it not a light thing to laugh at sacred words, and religious opportunities and engagements; it may seem at the time to be of small account, but it is an indication of character, it is the beginning of a descent which multiplies its own momentum, and he who but laughs fluently and lightly to-day at the preacher's earnestness, may in an immeasurably short space of time be reckoned with the scorners, and be the chief companion of fools.

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