Who Was
Charles Spurgeon?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born on June 19, 1834, in Kelvedon, Essex, England. The eldest of seventeen children, he was raised in a deeply devout Nonconformist family. His grandfather, James Spurgeon, was a pastor, and Charles spent much of his childhood in his grandfather's manse, surrounded by Puritan theology and the life of the church.

Even as a boy, Spurgeon was a voracious reader. By age six he had read The Pilgrim's Progress and would go on to read it over a hundred times throughout his life. His remarkable intellect and spiritual sensitivity marked him from the earliest days.

On January 6, 1850, a fifteen-year-old Spurgeon was making his way to church when a blizzard forced him to seek shelter in a small Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester. The scheduled preacher didn't show, and a lay minister stood to deliver a simple message from Isaiah 45:22: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."

The man looked directly at the young Spurgeon and said, "Young man, you look very miserable... Look to Jesus Christ." That moment transformed Spurgeon's life forever. He later wrote, "I did look, and the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun."

At just nineteen years of age, Spurgeon became pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in Southwark, London. Within months, the chapel's 1,200 seats proved insufficient, and the congregation moved to increasingly larger venues—including the Exeter Hall and the Surrey Music Hall—to accommodate the thousands who came to hear him preach.

In 1861, the Metropolitan Tabernacle opened with seating for 5,600. It remained filled Sunday after Sunday for the next thirty-one years. Spurgeon's sermons were transcribed weekly, selling 25,000 copies each, and were translated into dozens of languages. He became known as the "Prince of Preachers."

Spurgeon's ministry extended far beyond the pulpit. He founded the Pastors' College in 1856 to train ministers for effective, gospel-centered preaching. He established the Stockwell Orphanage in 1867, providing a home for hundreds of destitute children. He oversaw a colportage association that distributed Christian literature across England.

He authored over 135 books, including the beloved Morning and Evening devotional, The Treasury of David commentary on the Psalms, and Lectures to My Students, which remains a standard text in seminary education.

Spurgeon passed away on January 31, 1892, in Menton, France, at the age of fifty-seven. An estimated 100,000 people filed past his coffin, and sixty thousand lined the streets of London for his funeral procession. His Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, comprising 63 volumes of sermons, constitutes the largest body of printed sermons in church history.

Today, his works continue to be read, preached, and studied around the world. The Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary houses nearly 6,000 volumes from his personal collection, preserving and making accessible the literary heritage of one of Christianity's most beloved voices.