Thoughts From Charles Spurgeon

Dear Friends,

Today’s “thought” is about two conversions that took place under the ministry of Charles Spurgeon shortly after he started preaching at 16-17 years old. Yes, you heard that right – 16 to 17 years old! I took this (and shortened it) from The Spurgeon Center . It is entitled, “Spurgeon’s First Two Converts (And The One That Got Away).” It is interesting to say the least! Enjoy.

“Sixteen-year-old Spurgeon began preaching in 1851, only months after his surprising conversion in a Colchester blizzard. Spurgeon was youthful, zealous, and full of energy. Pride lurked in his heart, but the teenager combated his “darling sin” with prayer, fasting, and meditation on Scripture… He joined a group of young men who traveled throughout the country preaching in cottages and small chapels. One of them—Waterbeach Chapel—invited Spurgeon to be their pastor and he accepted the pastorate of this dying little church with only a few dozen members… Within three years, almost 400 people crammed each week inside the thatched cottage to hear the “boy preacher of the fens.” Crime diminished in the village, as did the drunkenness and debauchery that had tainted the town's reputation.

On his fifty-fourth sermon (manuscript), “The Little Fire and Great Combustion” (James 3:5), Spurgeon inscribed the name of his first recorded convert: “Mr. Charles” (Age: 31). According to Spurgeon, Thomas Charles was “the ringleader in all that was bad.” He was “the terror of the neighborhood” who “would be drunk for two or three weeks at a spell” and “raged like a madman.” But Spurgeon never forgot the moment of Charles’s conversion. He recalled:

“That man came to hear me, and I recollect the sensation that went through the little chapel when he entered. He sat there and fell in love with me… but he professed to be converted. He had, apparently, been the subject of genuine repentance, and he became outwardly quite a changed character. He gave up his drinking and swearing, and was in many respects an exemplary individual... I heard him pray; it was rough, rugged language, but there was such impassioned earnestness… If there was rough work to be done, he would do it… If there was a Sunday-school to be maintained, six or seven miles away, he would walk there.”

The problem was, Thomas Charles apostatized and abandoned the faith. After nine months, Spurgeon’s first recorded convert returned to his former sinful lifestyle and left the church. The brokenhearted young pastor lamented:

“Thomas began to think he had been a little too fanatical, a little too earnest. He slunk up to the place of worship instead of coming boldly in; he gradually forsook the week-night service, and then neglected the Sabbath-day; and, though often warned… he returned to his old habits, and any thoughts of God or godliness that he had ever known, seemed to die away… Before I left the district, I was afraid that there was no real work of grace in him” (Matthew 13:20-21)

Three months and twenty-three sermons later, Spurgeon recorded a second convert, “Mrs. Spalding” (Age: 49). Spurgeon preached that Sunday on “Sinners Must Be Punished” from Psalm 9:17: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” At the end of his sermon, he said, “The sinner can bring no excuse. Not ignorance, nor forgetfulness, nor want of heart, nor want of time, nor partial obedience, nor the hardness of the law.” Hannah could bring Spalding no excuse either. She surrendered her life to Jesus Christ and three weeks later a deacon told Spurgeon the good news... “Who is it?” Spurgeon asked. “Oh, it is a poor laboring man’s wife,” the deacon said. “She went home broken-hearted… but she has found peace, and she says she would like to speak to you.”

On Monday morning, Spurgeon took a carriage to meet his “first spiritual child.” He reflected:

“How my heart leaped for joy when I heard tidings of my first convert! … If anybody had said to me, ‘Someone has left you twenty thousand pounds,’ I should not have given a snap of my fingers for it, compared with the joy which I felt when I was told that God had saved a soul through my ministry! ... I felt like the boy who has earned his first 20 shillings, or like a diver who has been down to the depths of the sea and brought up a rare pearl.” “After a year or two of faithful witness-bearing,” Spurgeon said, “she went home, to lead the way for a good number who have followed her.”

At the very end of Spurgeon’s favorite book, The Pilgrim’s Progress, after Christian had reached the gates of the Celestial City, John Bunyan included the plight of a character named ‘Ignorance,’ who forfeited heaven at the end of his pilgrimage. Bunyan’s final sentence is often deleted from modern versions: “Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the Gates of Heaven.

The story of Spurgeon’s two first converts—a genuine conversion and an apostate—stands as a haunting reminder that each of us will give account for how we walk the pilgrim path. As Christians, we can never lose our salvation, but as John Bunyan and Thomas Charles remind us, ‘even at the gates of heaven there is a way to hell.’”

After listing many things, Paul declares in summation that, “[nothing] in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39). Jesus teaches likewise in John 10:28-29, “I give them eternal life, and no one can snatch them out of His hand” (or the Father’s hand). Likewise, Jesus also says, “he who perseveres to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13), and other N.T. passages give warnings about denying Christ, or turning from the faith.

Yet, correctly understood, they are not at odds with each other. Scripture does not contradict itself. God is faithful even to the struggling and faithless (II Corinthians 1:8-10; II Timothy 2:13), yet we are called to be faithful and endure to the end (Revelation 2:10). It only makes sense, since true faith believes the promises of God – many of which are stern warnings.

Faith may weaken during lengthy and painful trials; falter for a time when we take our eyes of Jesus, or succumb to confusion under times of extreme duress, but, “the Lord knows those that are His” (II Timothy 2:19) as well as those who are not (Matthew 7:21-23). We are called to do what we can and rely entirely on God for what we can’t – knowing He will always do what is right, even if it means bringing a stray to repentance just before they breathe their last breath.

In the Grip of His Grace, Pastor Jeff