C.H. Spurgeon

Hard Thoughts

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, God, God's love, God's motives

C. H. Spurgeon:

Let us repent heartily of every hard thought we have ever had of our God and Father. I am forced to look back upon some such sins of thought with much distress of mind. They have come from me in serious pain and depression of spirit; and now I pray the Lord of his great mercy to look at them as though I had never thought them, for I do heartily abhor them, and I loathe myself in his sight that I should ever have questioned his tender love and gracious care. If you have similarly transgressed, dear friends, in your dark nights of trouble, come now, and bow your heads, and pray the Lord to forgive his servants concerning this thing; for he is so good, so gracious, that it is a wanton cruelty to think of him as otherwise than overflowing with love.

Review of Spurgeon’s Works (Logos)

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Logos 4 Bible software

I doubt a living preacher quotes more often from the works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon than my boss. And that means I need to find ways to navigate Spurgeon’s massive works with ease and with speed (and even on the road). Logos Bible software makes my job a bit easier with two of their products:

Charles Spurgeon Collection, 86 volumes ($700) includes:
• The Treasury of David (6 vols)
• Lectures to My Students (4 vols)
• The Sword and the Trowel (the source of the letter I recently posted)
• Autobiography (4 vols)
• An All-Around Ministry
• Plus 70 other volumes

The Complete Spurgeon Sermon Collection, 63 volumes ($100) includes:
• The Park Street Pulpit Sermons (3 vols)
• The New Park Street Pulpit Sermons (3 vols)
• The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (57 vols)

Added up the two Logos collections include 149 volumes (over 500 MB in text!), the total corpus of books and sermons by Spurgeon, and significantly cheaper than the printed volumes.

But best of all, the Logos version of Spurgeon’s works are very easy to navigate and specific references are very easy to find. Today I’ll highlight just a few examples of searches that illustrate the power of Spurgeon’s works in Logos. For this review I’ll narrow my attention to the 63 volumes of sermons that contain an estimated 25 million words! I’ll run a few searches. Let’s call it finding a needle in a 100-acre hay field.

Search 1: Sermon text

To find every sermon Spurgeon delivered on, say, Galatians 6:14, is very simple [string: <bible ~Gal 6:14>]. In seconds I find that Spurgeon preached five sermons on this text and that those sermons can be located in volumes 21, 24, 31, 49, and 61. I can pull these sermons up in a click. This is impressive. But what if I want to get more specific?

Search 2: Biblical reference and keyword

I can also search for phrases within those sermons. So for example, within the sermons on Galatians 6:14 I can locate every reference to “worldliness” [string: <bible ~Gal 6:14> AND worldliness]. Within seconds I find the lone reference from sermon #1447 in volume 24:

You can use the wealth of this world in the service of the Master. To gain is not wrong. It is only wrong when grasping becomes the main object of life, and grudging grows into covetousness which is idolatry. To every Christian that and every other form of worldliness ought to be crucified, so that we can say, “For me to live is not myself, but it is Christ; I live that I may honor and glorify him.”

Search 3: Keyword phrase near keyword

We can get even more specific. Let’s say I want to find every reference where Spurgeon uses the phrase “union with Christ” close to a reference to personal holiness [string: “union with Christ” NEAR holiness]. I find several references including this one from volume 37 of the sermons:

The outcome of our union with Christ must be holiness. “What concord hath Christ with Belial?” What union can he have with men that love sin? How can they that are of the world, who love the world, be said to be members of the Head who is in heaven, in the perfection of his glory? Brothers, we must, in the power of the text, and especially in the power of our union to Christ, seek to make daily advances in good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them; for walking means not only persevering but advancing.

Search 4: Keyword phrase near keyword phrase

Here’s another example. Let’s search Spurgeon’s sermons for every reference to Jonathan Edward’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” When does Spurgeon reference the sermon? Why does he reference the sermon?

A simple search [string: “Jonathan Edwards” WITHIN 30 WORDS “sinners in”] leads us to two references.

In volume 35 Spurgeon used it to encourage corporate prayer for the lost in London:

Might we not expect to see a great change in London, if the districts wherein we dwell were oftener on our hearts in prayer? You have heard of the great revival which followed Jonathan Edwards’ marvellous sermon upon “Sinners in the hand of an angry God.” That sermon was marvellous in its effects. The power of that sermon may be traced to this fact, that a number of Christian people had met together some days before, and prayed, that God would send a blessing with the minister who was to preach on that occasion.

Secondly, Spurgeon warned preachers not to emulate Edwards. This is from volume 55:

There is a temptation which assails all of us who preach to want to do some great thing. We fancy that, if we could preach such a famous sermon as Jonathan Edwards delivered when, he spoke of sinners in the hand of an angry God, when the people felt as though the very seats whereon they sat moved under them, and some of them even stood up, and grasped the pillars of the building in their terror—we fancy that, if we could but preach in such a style as that, then we should have lived to some purpose.

To find these two references within the 25 million words of sermon text—and to find them in under 2 seconds!—is a real testimony to the power and speed of Logos software.

Conclusion

I have owned print versions and PDF versions of Spurgeon’s works in the past but the potential for making use of Spurgeon’s works has accelerated greatly in Logos due to the wide variety of search options. The power to find a needle in a hay field is a true gift to the researcher.

If you can afford it, the Charles Spurgeon Collection (86 volumes) is a nice. If you can’t, stick to the over 3,500 sermons in the Complete Spurgeon Sermon Collection (63 volumes). In either case, enjoy feasting on the cross-centered legacy of the Prince of Preachers.

Humbling Orthodoxy

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Calvinism, Election, Humility, Predestination, Pride, Self-promotion, Sin

The doctrine of God’s divine election of unworthy sinners is a humbling truth. Or to use Spurgeon’s words, “a sense of election causes a low opinion of self.” That is the bullet point under which the following quote from Spurgeon comes to us, as recorded in a sermon delivered on July 1, 1888:

Brother, if any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him; for you are worse than he thinks you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied, for if he knew you better he might change the accusation, and you would be no gainer by the correction. If you have your moral portrait painted, and it is ugly, be satisfied; for it only needs a few blacker touches, and it would be still nearer the truth.

John Ploughman’s Letter on the War

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, War

In early 1870 tensions were sizzling between Napoleon, emperor of the French, and William, King of Prussia. On April 1, 1870 an open letter was published by John Ploughman, aka C. H. Spurgeon. The following excerpt is not intended to be a political statement about war per se as much as a fine example of Spurgeon’s literary gifts, his wit, and his punchy prose (Spurgeon once said “soft words are for soft heads”). Here’s an excerpt from that open letter to Napoleon and William:

If you must have a fight, why don’t you strip and go at it yourselves as our Tom Rowdy and Big Ben did on the green; it’s cowardly of you to send a lot of other fellows to be shot on your account. I don’t like fighting at all, it’s too low-lived for me; but really if it would save the lives of the millions I would not mind taking care of your jackets while you had a set-to with fisticuffs, and I would encourage you both to hit his hardest at the gentleman opposite.

I dare say if you came over to Surrey the police would manage to keep out of your way and let you have a fair chance of having it out; they have done so for other gentlemen, and I feel sure they would do it to oblige you. It might spoil your best shirts to have your noses bleed, and I dare say you would not like to strip at it, but there are plenty of ploughmen who would lend you their smock frocks for an hour or two, especially if you would be on your honour not to go off with them.

Just let me know, and I’ll have some sticking plaster ready, and a bason of water, and a sponge, and perhaps our governors will let Madame Rachel out of jail, to enamel your eyes, if they get a little blackened.

I’ve just thought of a capital idea, and that is, if you will both drop a line to the keepers of the Agricultural Hall, where they have those Cumberland wrestling matches, they would let you have the place for a day, and give you half the takings, and I’ll be bound there would be a crowd, and no mistake. So you see you could get glory and ready-money too, and nobody would be killed. …

Why you, the king of the Germans, want to go into the butchering line I don’t know; but if you are at the bottom of this it shows that you are a very bad disposed man, or you would be ashamed of killing your fellow creatures. When war begins hell opens, and it is a bad office for either of you to be gate-opener to the devil; yet that’s what one of you is, if not both.

Did either of you ever think of what war means? Did you ever see a man’s head smashed, or his bowels ripped open? Why, if you are made of flesh and blood, the sight of one poor wounded man, with the blood oozing out of him, will make you feel sick.

I don’t like to drown a kitten; I can’t bear even to see a rat die, or any animal in pain. But a man! Where’s your hearts if you can think of broken legs, splintered bones, heads smashed in, brains blown out, bowels torn, hearts gushing with gore, ditches full of blood, and heaps of limbs and carcasses of mangled men? Do you say my language is disgusting? How much more disgusting must the things themselves be? And you make them!

How would you like to get a man into your palace-garden, and run a carving-knife into his bowels, or cut his throat? If you did that you would deserve to be hanged; but it would not be half so bad as killing tens of thousands, and you know very well that this is just what you are going to do. Do you fancy that your drums and fifes, and feathers and fineries, and pomp, make your wholesale murder one whit the less abominable in the sight of God?

Fourteen weeks later, on July 19, 1870, the long-expected Franco-Prussian War erupted. Over 230,000 soldiers would die.

God on Display

Tony Reinke Attributes of God, C.H. Spurgeon

From a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon on 2 Corinthians 4:6:

“Never did the love of God reveal itself so clearly as when he laid down his life for his sheep, nor did the justice of God ever flame forth so conspicuously as when he would suffer in himself the curse for sin rather than sin should go unpunished, and the law should be dishonored. Every attribute of God was focused at the cross, and he that hath eyes to look through his tears, and see the wounds of Jesus, shall behold more of God there than a whole eternity of providence or an infinity of creation shall ever be able to reveal to him.”

Bunyan’s Blunder

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Evangelism, John Bunyan

Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon “Christ Crucified” (No. 2673), said the following:

…let me tell you a little story about Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I am a great lover of John Bunyan, but I do not believe him infallible; and the other day I met with a story about him which I think a very good one.

There was a young, man, in Edinburgh, who wished to be a missionary. He was a wise young man; so he thought, “If I am to be a missionary, there is no need for me to transport myself far away from home; I may as well be a missionary in Edinburgh.”

Well, this young man started, and determined to speak to the first person he met. He met one of those old fishwives; those of us who have seen them can never forget them, they are extraordinary women indeed. So, stepping up to her, he said, “Here you are, coming along with your burden on your back; let me ask you if you have got another burden, a spiritual burden.”

“What!” she asked; “do you mean that burden in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress? Because, if you do, young man, I got rid of that many years ago, probably before you were born. But I went a better way to work than the pilgrim did. The evangelist that John Bunyan talks about was one of your parsons that do not preach the gospel; for he said, ‘Keep that light in thine eye, and run to the wicket-gate.’ Why—man alive!—that was not the place for him to run to. He should have said, ‘Do you see that cross? Run there at once!’ But, instead of that, he sent the poor pilgrim to the wicket-gate first; and much good he got by going there! He got tumbling into the slough, and was like to have been killed by it.”

“But did not you,” the young man asked, “go through any Slough of Despond?”

“Yes, I did; but I found it a great deal easier going through with my burden off than with it on my back.”

The old woman was quite right. John Bunyan put the getting rid of the burden too far off from the commencement of the pilgrimage. If he meant to show what usually happens, he was right; but if he meant to show what ought to have happened, he was wrong.

We must not say to the sinner, “Now, sinner, if thou wilt be saved, go to the baptismal pool; go to the wicket-gate; go to the church; do this or that.”

No, the cross should be right in front of the wicket-gate; and we should say to the sinner, “Throw thyself down there, and thou art safe; but thou are not safe till thou canst cast off thy burden, and lie at the foot of the cross, and find peace in Jesus.”