The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-14 00:00:00

THE REV. C. H. SPURQEON.

(Front, the Morning Advertiser of Monday.)
Yesterday morning the Lord Mayor and Lady
Mayoress, several members of the late and present Par-
liament, Dir. Under-Sheriff Anderton, and various other
persons filling prominent positions, were among the vast
crowd who congregated together at the Surrey Gardens
Hall to hear Mr. Spurgeon. Lord Palmerston was also
to have been one of the rev. gentleman's hearers, having
sent for tickets of admission for the purpose, but was
detained by gout at Broadlands. The magnificent hall
was densely filled in every part, and many hundreds
only obtained standing room. The number of persons
nresent could not have been less than from 7,000 to
8,000. The sight was imposing : there was something
even sublime in it.

The singing of a hymn was succeeded by a ♦ery elo-
quent, luminous, and impressive exposition of the nine-
tieth Psalm. Mr. Spurgeon next offered up an earnest
and beautiful prayer, after which he gave out a few
lines of a hymn, and then announced his text. His ser-
mon was characterised throughout by intense fervour,
clear enunciations of divine truth, and impassioned ap-
peals to both the classes into which his colossal congre-
gation were divided—those who were believers, and
those who still remained in their unconverted state. The
vast audience hung with breathless attention, from be-
ginning to end, on the utterances which manifestly
gushed forth from the deepest recesses of the youthful
preacher's heart. Scarcely even a cough was heard,
while it was evident he carried the immense throng
with irresistible force along with him. As Milton
says, he wielded " them at will," so far as the mere
assent of their understandings and the concurrence
of their feelings were concerned. To carry the heart
captive in spiritual things is an achievement which,
as has been often said, is not to be accomplished by the
highest order of eloquence which ever electrified
the buman ear. No ; nor would the eloquence of the
loftiest angel accomplish the great work, if unaccom-
panied by Divine power. But it is gratifying to know
that such preaching as Mr. Spurgeon's—so faithful, so
scriptural, so earnest, so able—never can fail of success,
because to all such preaching, the promise of a blessing
from above is unconditionally annexed. Hence we are
not surprised to learn that great numbers of conversions
are brought under his notice every week ; while it is
probable that far greater numbers of those who have been
saved by his instrumentality will remain unknown to him
until that day when the light of another world shall dis-
pel the darkness of this. Perhaps no one fact could
furnish a more conclusive, or more striking proof of the
remarkable results which accompany the ministrations of
this extraordinary young man than the circumstance .
chit from 1,500 to 2,000 pers ins meet, every Monday
evening, in New Park-street Chapel, for the purpose of
making special prayer ou his behalf,—a circumstance
which we believe to have no parallel in the history of
prayer meetings.
The singing on each occasion produced a profound
effect on the mind, but that of the Doxology at the close
of the service--

" Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host ;
Praise Father, Sun, and Holy Ghost,"
had something so unlike anything ever before heard,
owing to the union of so many thousands of voices, that
those who were present wilt never forget the effect it
produced upon their feelings. It is no flight of fancy to
suppose that the swelling volumes of melody which re-
sounded through the immense building, ascended far
higher than its roof—rose upwards and upwards until
they broke on the delighted ears of "all that dwell
above the skies."

Mr. Spurgeon has now, we are gratified to say, entirely
got rid of those minor defects of matter and manner
which, two yoars ago or more, we pointed out, in the
spirit of sincere friendship, in the columns of the Morn-
ing Advertiser. The most fastidious taste, the most
.cultivated intellect, could not yesterday morning have
detected a single thing which it could have wished to be
other wise.

But we have now another word of counsel, of a differ-
ent kind, to address to this wonderful preacher. We are
afraid that he is over-exerting himself. He is going
through an amount of labour to which, we fear, he will
soon find his physical strength unequal. Only imagine a
young man—he is only in his 22d year—of a not over-
robust frame, preaching to 7,000 or 8,000 persons, and
exerting himself so as to make his voice heard by them
all, tvery Sabbath morning ; then preaching again in
the evening to as many thousands as can be wedged
into his own chapel ; and, after having done this on the
Sunday, preaching every day in the week besidi.s,—two
of those days, Tnesday and Thursday, being devoted to
pulpit or open-air ministrations in the country, some-
times from 100 to 200 miles from London,—let any one,
we repeat, only try to imagine what must be the wear
and tear of such labours as these—made all the more
exhausting from the terrible earnestness which he throws
into them—and then say whether, humanly speaking,
it be probable that his physical strength can long with-
stand the pressure to which it is subjected.
We know that the proclamation of the Gospel message
is, to Mr. Spurgeon, a delightful duty—a labour of love
of the biLhest order; but still there are limits, con-
stituted as man's nature is, to the amount of effort of
which it is capable. We wish we could impress upon
him that be can be made the means of a much greater
measure of spiritual usefulness by a prolonged life, with
a somewhat diminished amount of labour, than if he
were to go on as he is doing, and be, in consequence,
speedily laid aside from his pulpit ministrations. Such
a life as his is invaluable. He has manifestly been
rai,ed up to do a great work ; he is doing a great work
—one which has had no parallel in this country for a
hundred years. We have had no such preacher since
the days of George Whitfield, who died about a century
ago ; and therefore we trust that those of Mr. Spur-
geon's friends whose advice he is most disposed to listen
to, will repeat and enforce the counsels which we have
thus, out of the sincerest regard, addressed to him.