The Express.
London, England, 1861-09-09 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 9, 1861.

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

THE REV. MR. SPURGEON ON THE RAILWAY
ACCIDENTS.

Yesterday morning, at the Metropolitan Taber-
nacle, the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon addressed hie congregation
at great length upon the subject of the late railway acci-
dent. He observed that the columns of the newspapers
during the past fortnight had been filled, nut merely with
accouuta of these accidents, but also with those of an uuusu.
ally large number of minor occurrences of • fatal nature
which had taken place in various parts of the country. The
year Mil would be reckoned as about the must calamitous
which had occurred within the memory of the present gene-
ration, and it was particularly at that season of it when
the sickle had dune its work, and our burns were filled
with plenty, that death had been reaping his harvest. it
was worthy, he thought, of remark, that io every age of
the world accidents of one kind or another had taken place,
quite as numerous and se calamitous as those which were
now being deplored ; and his own opinion was that those
which were recorded in the newspapers as happening
in the days of the old sMge-coaches were just as many
and ea fatal as those which had followed since the invention
of the steam-engine. He repudiated the notion that
the collision in the Clayton tunnel was a judgment
from Heaven because of Sunday travelling, and said
it waa as likely to have occurred upon any other day of the
week as upon the Sabbath. In fact the catastrophe on the
Hampstead Junction had occurred upon • Monday, and
when the excursionists were going upon an errand of meroy.
He contended that it was both fireball and unscriptural to
attempt to unravel the mystenee of Providence. As well
uniiht a man who entered a theatre in the middle of the
thud act, and only stopped a few minutes to look at
one of the performers, pretend that he could under.
Ming the aisle plea el Yr shams loss assilsaing 4,
end, as for moose who, for a period of thirty or
forty years, looked at the great drams, which for 6,000
yews had been in course of representation in this world,
and which would continue to go on until the con-
summation of all sublunary things—to fancy that he
could iximprehend the inscrutable workings of God's Pro-
vidence throughout the whole of that lengthened period.
It had been stated in some quarters that the people
killed in Clayton tunnel, and on the Hampstead Junction,
must have been greater SWIMS then those who escaped.
He denied this assumption in very strong terms, asking
whether the unconscious babe who was crushed to death
in the tunnel could be supposed for • moment to be
• greater sinner than some of them who were occupying
the dens of London, and who were yet alive. He did nut
believe there was one among the whole congregation who
would have the brutality to go and tell the female who had
Leto rendered a weeping widow by these calauutiw that
her husband had been killed because he was • greater sin-
ner than other people. The rev. gentlemen having en.
larged upon the dreadful scene in the tunnel at the moment
at the collision—of the crushing weight of the engine, of
the one traiu upon the hinder carriages of the other—of the
breaking timbers, the shrieks of the women, and the groans
of the wounded, proceeded to remark upou the variety of
modes—in the street, in the domestic circle, and iu the
pulpit- in which death might overtake us in a moment,
referring particularly to the death of the celebrated Dr.
Beaumont, who died whilst in the act of delivering a ser-
mon ; and also to that of an American divine, who finished
his earthly course after he had given out from the
pulpit the first verse of a hying. The latter part of Mr.
Spurgeon 's discourse was of • practical character, arising
out of the melancholy catastrophes of the last fortnight.
He was listened to throughout with wetted attention.