Few preachers have shaped as many lives as Charles Spurgeon. His words, printed week after week for decades, still reach readers in English, Portuguese, and many other languages, long after his death.
Born in Kelvedon, England, in 1834, he grew up in a home of grandparents and parents connected to Congregational churches. Without formal theological training, his constant reading of the Bible became his principal school, a mark he would carry for the rest of his life.
At age 15, a snowstorm kept him from reaching the church he had planned to attend and led him instead to a small Primitive Methodist chapel. There, a lay preacher spoke on Isaiah 45:22, and Spurgeon described that moment as when he found faith in Christ.
Still a teenager, he became pastor in Waterbeach; at 19, he was called to New Park Street Chapel in London. The congregation grew so quickly that it needed a larger building, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, opened in 1861, where he preached for nearly four decades.
In 1856, a false fire alarm during a packed service caused a fatal stampede that left seven people dead. Spurgeon never fully recovered from the shock and reported, for years afterward, sudden sorrow and a deep distress that today would be recognized as depression.
He founded the Pastors’ College, to train preachers who lacked the means to attend university, and the Stockwell Orphanage, for children without families. His sermons, published every week, were gathered into dozens of volumes, one of the largest collections ever published by a single Christian preacher.
In his personal life, he had the habit of smoking cigars and defended that freedom before God even in the face of criticism from other Christians of his day, who saw the habit as improper for a pastor. The episode, made public after a reply he gave to a visiting preacher, shows a man of firm convictions, not always comfortable for those who expect from him only a flawless example.
In his final years, he became involved in what became known as the Down Grade Controversy, warning against what he saw as the abandonment of central doctrines within his own Baptist denomination. The dispute divided opinion even among Baptists, left Spurgeon isolated from part of the denomination he had helped build, and the strain, added to chronic health problems such as gout and kidney disease, contributed to the physical decline that would lead to his death.
Spurgeon died in Menton, France, in 1892, where he had gone seeking to recover his health. His insistence on preaching Christ with simplicity and turning biblical language into everyday life continues to inspire preachers and readers around the world.
