Charles Spurgeon
19 June 1834—31 January 1892
C.H. Spurgeon, in The Sword and the Trowel (May 1868).
REV. CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON was born at Kelvedon, Essex, June 19th, 1834, and after receiving some education at Colchester, became usher in a school at Newmarket. He declined to study for the ministry as an Independent, and joined the late Dr. Robert Hall’s Baptist congregation (which had formerly been Robert Robinson’s) at Cambridge. This resulted in his making a tour as village preacher and tract-distributer, and his first sermon was delivered at Teversham, near Cambridge. He was known as the “Boy Preacher,” and was presently invited to settle at Waterbeach. At the early age of seventeen he thus had charge of a congregation, and almost immediately became famous. His meetinghouse was crowded, and soon he was urged to accept the chapel formerly in charge of Dr. Rippon, in New Park Street, Southwark, London. In 1853, he made his advent in the metropolis, and within two years his people were enlarging their place of worship. For four months he occupied Exeter Hall during the repairs, and that, too, was crowded. The enlarged chapel also proved insufficient, and Surrey Music Hall was engaged. But as a very sad accident and panic occurred in it in 1856, the great Tabernacle was built in Newington, and opened in 1861. Since that date Mr. Spurgeon has ranked among the foremost preachers of the world, handling his immense audiences with remarkable executive power, and publishing hundreds of sermons and other writings. He has conducted a Preachers’ College, and is the responsible editor of The Sword and Trowel and compiler of The Treasury of David, an exhaustive work on the Psalms. He also prepared a hymn-book in 1866, to which he contributed fourteen psalms and ten hymns.
by Samuel Duffield
English Hymns: Their Authors and History (1886)
Featured Hymns:
Collections of Hymns:
Our Own Hymn-Book
1st ed. (1866): PDF
2nd ed. (1867): WorldCat
3rd ed. (1868): PDF [incomplete copy]
4th ed. (1869): WorldCat
5th ed. (1869): Google Books
— ed. (1870): PDF
6th ed. (1873): WorldCat
3rd ed. (1876): WorldCat
8th ed. (1877): WorldCat
4th ed. (1878): WorldCat
9th ed. (1879): WorldCat
10th ed. (1882): WorldCat
— ed. (1883): HathiTrust
6th ed. (1884): WorldCat
— ed. (1885): WorldCat
— ed. (1886): WorldCat
— ed. (1892): WorldCat
Interpreter Hymn Book (1874): PDF
Tabernacle Tune Book (ca. 1869): WorldCat
Supplement to Our Own Hymn-Book (1898): WorldCat
see also:
Morning by Morning (1865): Archive.org
Evening by Evening (1869): Archive.org
The Interpreter, or Scripture for Family Worship (1874): SBTS
Treasury of David, 7 vols. (1870–1886): HathiTrust
The Sword and the Trowel (1865–1892)
Index of hymns quoted in Morning, Evening, and Interpreter, compiled by Chris Fenner: Google Sheets
Archives & Special Collections:
Spurgeon’s College Library, London:
https://www.spurgeons.ac.uk/the-library/
Samford University Special Collections, Birmingham, AL:
https://library.samford.edu/special/
Spurgeon Center, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO:
https://www.spurgeon.org/
Biographies:
C.H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle: Its History and Work (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1876): PDF
G. Holden Pike, From the Pulpit to the Palm Branch (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1892): PDF
Robert Shindler, From the Usher’s Desk to the Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1892): PDF
G. Holden Pike, The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 6 vols. (London: Cassell & Company): WorldCat
Susannah Spurgeon & Joseph Harrold, The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, 4 vols. (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1898–1900): HathiTrust
W.Y. Fullerton, C.H. Spurgeon: A Biography (London: Williams & Norgate, 1920): Archive.org
Charles Spurgeon, The Letters of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (London: Marshall Brothers, 1923): Archive.org
Arnold A. Dallimore, Spurgeon: A Biography (Banner of Truth, 1985).
Lewis A. Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1992).
V. Erika Smith, Dinna Forget Spurgeon: A Literary Biography, dissertation (Case Western Reserve University, 2006): WorldCat
Iain H. Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth, 2009): Amazon
Peter J. Morden, Communion with Christ and His People: The Spirituality of C.H. Spurgeon (Oxford: Regent's Park College, 2010): Amazon
Peter J. Morden, C.H. Spurgeon: The People’s Preacher (Surrey: CWR, 2010): Amazon
Tom Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2013): Amazon
Ray Rhodes Jr., Susie: The Life and Legacy of Susannah Spurgeon (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2018): Amazon
Thomas Breimaier, Tethered to the Cross: The Life and Preaching of C.H. Spurgeon (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020): Amazon
Geoffrey Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor: Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry (Nashville: B&H Books, 2022): Amazon
Spurgeon & Hymnody:
John Curwen, “Psalmody in London Churches, Part Second,” The Christian Witness, vol. 2 (June 1866), pp. 288–292: Google Books
“Literary Notices: Our Own Hymn-Book,” The Wesleyan Times, 10 Sept. 1866: PDF
“Mr. Spurgeon’s New Hymn Book,” The South London Chronicle, 22 Sept. 1866, p. 6: PDF
“Our London Correspondent,” The Louth and North Linconshire Advertiser, 29 Sept. 1866: PDF
Charles Spurgeon, “Exposition of the doctrines of grace,” delivered 11 April 1861, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 7 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1862), pp. 297–304: HathTrust
J. Spencer Curwen, “Metropolitan Tabernacle,” Studies in Worship Music (London: J. Curwen & Sons, 1880), pp. 208–210: Archive.org
H.J. Garland, “Spurgeon: Hymn Writer,” Hymn Lovers’ Magazine (May-June 1950), pp. 4, 18–19, 36, 38: PDF
Donald C. Brown, “Spurgeon’s Hymnals,” The Hymn, vol. 30, no. 1 (Jan. 1979), pp. 39–48: HathiTrust
Chris Fenner, et al. Spurgeon’s Own Hymn Book (Scotland: Christian Heritage, 2019): Amazon
Matt Boswell, The Singing Lion of London: Hymnody as a Pedagogical And Doxological Tool in the Pastoral Ministry of Charles Spurgeon, dissertation (Louisville: SBTS, 2020): SBTS
