The Secret Place of Charles Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born on June 19, 1834 in Kelvedon, Essex, the first child of John and Eliza Spurgeon. His grandfather James was a pastor, and his father was a faithful Congregational minister. The boy grew up surrounded by Puritan books, prayer meetings, and an atmosphere of reverence for Scripture. He had a bright mind and a tender conscience, but as a teenager he came under heavy conviction of sin. He later described those years as a season when he could find no rest for his soul. On January 6, 1850, during a snowstorm, he wandered into a small Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester. The preacher that morning was a simple layman who pointed him to Isaiah 45 verse 22, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Spurgeon wrote later, "I looked and looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun."

From that day, he became a man aflame with God. By age sixteen he was preaching in villages. At nineteen he accepted a call to the New Park Street Chapel in London, which soon had to expand into the vast Metropolitan Tabernacle to hold the crowds. His preaching voice rang out like a trumpet, full of Scripture, Christ-centered, and aimed at the conscience. People said that when Spurgeon spoke, eternity seemed to draw near. He refused to dilute the gospel to suit Victorian sensibilities. Instead, he preached sin, grace, the cross, and the new birth with a freshness that made ancient truths blaze like fire.

His ministry bore fruit beyond numbers. The sermons he preached were published weekly and spread across the world, translated into dozens of languages. His Morning and Evening devotional, The Treasury of David commentary on the Psalms, and his editorial work in The Sword and the Trowel magazine shaped generations. He established an orphanage, a pastors' college, and countless missionary and mercy projects. Yet all of this flowed from a hidden source: the secret place of prayer.

Spurgeon was often physically weak, afflicted with gout, rheumatism, and depression. These trials became his tutors in prayer. He confessed that the pressures of ministry would have crushed him but for the sustaining presence of Christ sought in the closet. Visitors to the Tabernacle were sometimes shown a lower room where hundreds of intercessors prayed during services. Spurgeon called it the "boiler room" of the church. He said, "Whenever I feel that I have lost the power of prayer, I know I shall lose the power of preaching. It is prayer that brings the blessing from on high."

On January 31, 1892, at Menton in the south of France, Spurgeon passed into the presence of the Lord. His body was brought back to London, where a quarter of a million people lined the streets to honor the preacher of the gospel.