Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1879-02-16
Surgeons First Sermon in London.
London News

London News.
Twenty-Five years ago there en-
tered London from the Eastern
Counties high-road a young, IN
known and comparatively friendless
man. He has himself recorded that
in view of the Importance of his
mission to the great metropolis he
had carefully dressed himself in "a
huge black satin Stock and that
he was further endowed with ga
blue handkerchief with white spots"
We get further hints that Mr..
Spurgeon was at this epoch a youth
of rustic manners and timid address.
He was just nineteen years old, and
was already pastor of a little Bap
fist chapel at Waterbeach, five
miles from Cambridge. Thither
had come a letter one Sunday
morning inviting him to preach a
sermon at New Park street, South>
wark, pulpit just vacated by DR..
Rippon, shining light in Baptist
circles a quarter Of a century ago.
Mr.. Spurgeon thought there must
be mistake somewhere, and replied
by letter to that effect, explaining
that be was "only just turned nine
teen" and was in no manner quail
fed to fill the pulpit of a great
chapel in London. lie was assured
that there was no mistake, and the
invitation being renewed he set out
for London, with his huge black
satin stock, his blue handkerchief
with white spots, and an unde-
veloped capacity for preaching,
which even the tar-seeing and san
guine deacons of Park Street Chapel
little dreampt of. MIR. Spargeon
tells how he spent the well-remem-
bered night at clearinghouse in
Queens Square, Bloomsbury how
his fellow guests were greatly
tickled that the country lad should
be a preacher how they over
whelmed him with narratives of the
attainments of London divines,
what study they devoted to the COM
position or their sermons, their her.
culean tolls in keeping together a
congregation as critical as it was
and 1.-The matchless ora
tory they exhibited on all occasions"
Mr.. Sturgeon went to bed in a
cupboard over the front door, and |
tossed on the narrow couch in soil
tary misery. "Pitiless was the
grind of the cabs in the street, pitt
less the recollection of the young
City clerks whose grim propriety |
had gazed upon our rusticity with
such amusement, pitiless the spare
room which scarce afforded space to
kneel, pitiless even the gas-lamps
which seemed to wink at US as they
hickered amid the December dark
ness. We had no friend in all that
city full of human beings, but we
felt among strangers and foreigners
hoped to be helped through the
SCTdp6 1utO hHlCu VIC udu UCCA
brought, and to escape safely to the
serene abodes of Cambridge and
Waterbeach."
Mr.. Surgeons success was i'm
mediate and unmistakable, and from
his first sermon in the Park Street
Chapel he has gone on increasing in
power and fame and personal int1u-
ence. Everybody has heard of him
as a preacher, millions have heard
him preach. The Tabernacle on
Sunday, when Mr.. Sturgeon is in
the pulpit, is enc of the sights of
London. 1t is the one church in
perhaps in the world,
whose regular congregation num-
bers 5000, and which has never an
empty bench. The weekly sermons
have even a wider congregation than
the Tabernacle will hold. They are
printed from week to week, and
circulate wherever the English
tongue prevails. They have been
translated into almost every lam