Results of Overwork
Come, let us live while we live! Let us serve God to the utmost stretch of our manhood! Let us ask the Lord to brace our nerves, to string our sinews, and make us true crusaders, knights of the blood-red cross, consecrated men and women who, for the love we bear Christ’s name, will count labor to be ease, and suffering to be joy, and reproach to be honor, and loss to be gain! — C. H. Spurgeon.
THE special religious services held in February, at the Tabernacle, were seasons of much blessing. More than one hundred members were added to the church in one month. The people went to the ser’ices expecting to receive good, and they were not disappointed.
Soon after the annual College supper, which was held in March, 1 87 1, at which the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars was given, Mr. Spurgeon was laid aside by a more than usually severe attack of gout, which confined him indoors for three long, weary months; yet in the midst of all his pain and suffering he wrote in July of the great mercies he had received from the hand of God, and by the bounty of his friends to the Orphanage and the College. It was at the close of this protracted attack of bodily pain that he was privileged to preach the sermon which forms No. 1,000 of his published discourses. Its second title is “Bread Enough and to Spare,” and it is based on Luke xv. 17. It was the delight of the pastor to receive from a friend five thousand dollars on behalf of the College, in honor of the event just named. Who would not pray that God’s blessing may rest forever on that friend?
Taking the advice of his friends, Mr. Spurgeon proceeded to the Continent for a short tour and for rest. His observant eye was constantly discovering some passing beauty which his ever-ready pencil recorded in his note-book, a book which contains a store of incidents which serve to enrich his conversation and fill up his magazine. Accordingly, taking Jersey and Guernsey on his way, we find before the end of the year an interesting article from his pen, on St. Brelade’s Bay.
As the cold raw winter weather set in, the beloved pastor was urged by all his friends to seek a warmer climate. Illness in a severe form again overtook him, on the second day of which he received a telegram from Boston, in America, offering most liberal terms to him if he would go to that country and deliver a series of lectures. So large a sum would have been a strong temptation to most men, but not so to this minister of Jesus Christ, whose prompt reply was, “he had neither time nor strength to go to America.” Instead of journeying westward for personal gain, he started on a pilgrimage to sunny Italy and the South of France, taking what he desigaated a Scriptural holiday, a forty days’ rest. Accordingly, leaving gloomy December in England, he spent that month in visiting Pompeii, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, and France, — a fitting holiday after having completed nineteen years’ labor in London.
In taking a survey of the work of the year, for the preface to his magazine, Mr. Spurgeon sums up the record by saying it had been a year of spiritual drought in the churches generally, but at the Tabernacle they had witnessed much prosperity, and the trained pastors who had gone out from them had been also blessed in like manner. Eleven students were appointed to pastoral duty during 1872. During this year, also, Archibald G. Brown opened his large Tabernacle in the East of London. It is a building for extent and variety of Christian work second only to Mr. Spurgeon’s. Mr. Brown is one of the most successful students trained in the Pastors’ College.
In the hope that the genial sunshine of Southern Europe, in which he had passed out of the old into the new year, would have established his health for renewed efforts, the pastor appeared once more at the Tabernacle, and at the church meeting in January, 1873, he had the gratification of finding one hundred and thirty-five new members to be received into fellowship, thus demonstrating that there was life in the church, though its chief pastor had been away. The cold, raw, damp weather continuing with the new year, he was again prevented from leaving his own home, and for many weeks he was unable to preach on the Sabbath. How great a trial that silence was to the preacher, none so well knew as himself. Sorrowing greatly at the privation both to himself and his church, he yet submitted without murmur to the will of God.
Shut in from the outer world, he had an opportunity of sureying the progress of the work which was being done at the Tabernacle. The College reports exhibited the outposts which had already been reached by the students, one of whom was laboring to set forth Jesus as the only Saviour of sinners, in China; one in Sydney, one in Tasmania, one in Adelaide, two in Madrid, one in Ontario, one in Ohio, one in Philadelphia, one in South Africa, and one in Toronto. What a vast prospect of work to be done in the intermediate spaces between each one of those missionary agents and the Tabernacle!
At the Annual Church Meeting held in February, 1873, the total membership was reported at 4,417. The losses during the previous year had been 263, the additions were 571, leaving a net increase for the year of 308 living members. Well may both pastor and deacons rejoice at the presence of the Lord God in their midst. At this date came a renewed application from the United States to come over and lecture. Note the preacher’s reply: “An American firm offer Mr. Spurgeon twenty-five thousand dollars to deliver twenty-five lectures in that country, at one thousand dollars each, and further arrangements can be made for one hundred lectures. Although the remuneration offered is very far beyond anything our beloved people are likely to give us, we prefer to have the gospel according to our Lord’s words preached freely, rather than to use the Lord’s time for earning money for our own purse.” Well done. Pastor Spurgeon!!!
Always sympathizing with the oppressed, it did not surprise any one to learn that the Fisk Jubilee Singers received an early invitation from the pastor and deacons to give one of their concerts in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. It would be difficult to determine which party experienced the most delight, the colored singers to go and see and hear Mr. Spurgeon speak in his own church, or his congregation to welcome, with all the heartiness they could manifest, those liberated slaves, whose vocal powers had by anticipation preceded their visit, to insure them a hearty greeting. It was indeed a pleasant hour, that which introduced the singers to the vast mass of people which crowded every inch of space in the building to hear them. Indeed, hundreds had to go away, unable to crowd in anywhere within sight or hearing. And the collection which followed it was right royal in amount. They cleared about eleven hundred dollars for their University by singing at the Tabernacle alone. The effect on the mind of the pastor himself, he thus describes in his own magazine: “The melodies were rendered by our emancipated friends in a manner altogether unique: we have never heard anything like it; pure nature untrammelled by rule, pouring forth its notes as freely as the wild birds in the spring. The people were charmed: our intercourse with the choir was very pleasant.” As soon as the singers arrived in London on their second tour, they received an earnest invitation to repeat their visit to the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
As the practical pastor was again charged with being too personal in preaching, in one of his articles on “Personal preaching,” Mr. Spurgeon remarks: “We aim at speaking personally and pointedly to all our hearers; and they are the best judges whether we accomplish it, and also as to whether we use language at which any man ought to be offended. Very seldom does a week occur without our receiving letters from persons unknown to us, thanking us for advising or comforting them in our sermons, the parties evidently being under the impression that some friend had communicated their cases to us, though, indeed, we knew nothing whatever of them. Frequently we have had apologetic notes acknowledging the justice of the rebuke, and correcting us in some minor details of a description supposed to refer to a special sinner; whereas we were unaware of the writer’s existence. We have ceased to regard these incidents as curious, for we remember that the Word of God is * a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’” Strange and interesting facts have often reached him. At the commencement of Mr. Spurgeon’s ministry he related having received a letter from a poor shoemaker during the week,
•
who said that he was the man who had kept his shop open on the Sunday, who had sold only one pair of old boots for one-andeightpence, and that, having broken the Sabbath for so small a sum and been so publicly exposed, none but God could have told the facts to the preacher, he had resolved to break the Sabbath no longer. He became converted, and joined the church; but the preacher had no knowledge of the man till he wrote about himself
During the spring weather of ’73 iIr. Spurgeon did not recover his accustomed health, neither did he give up his accustomed work, excepting when really unable to leave home. At the end of April he preached one of the annual sermons before the VVesleyan Missionary Society, in Great Queen-street Chapel, to the largest congregation ever assembled on a similar occasion, at the close of which the collection reached an amount greater than had ever before been made for that object.
In June he took part in the services connected with laying memorial stones for a new 13aptist chapel near his own residence at Clapham. He stated that it had long been in his heart to build a chapel in that localit)’, and he had laid aside one thousand dollars to commence the work, but all his efforts had failed. He was glad that (jthers were, doing what he had not been able to do. He had himself been delighted that year to preach for the VVesleyans, and to speak for the Independents; but he urged all Baptists residing in that district to give to the church which intended to assemble in that new erection. In the early part of the year Mr. Spurgeon had made a collection at the Tabernacle on behalf of the new Surrey Chapel for Mr. Newman Hall, which reached five hundred dollars.
In taking a survey of the literary work of “The Sword and the Trowel” for the year, the editor in his preface for 1873 remarks: “I have been hunting up topics of interest with no small degree of anxiety, sending forth the magazine with earnest desires to win a hearing and to produce good results of all kinds. I edit the periodical most conscientiously, giving it my personal attention, and I spare no pains to make it as good as I can.”
The applications made to the College for pastors during 1873 were more numerous than had before been made. Thirty of these were suppHed. Out of that number two were sent to Spain, one to India, one to China, one to Prince Edward Island, one to Ireland, and one to Scotland. On the 14th of October the foundation-stone of the new College buildings was laid by the President. It was a day which will long be remembered with delight. The people on the occasion gave five thousand dollars, and the students gave fifteen hundred more; but the chief joy of the day was the whole-day prayer-meeting which the students held, that the divine blessing might rest on the work, and upon all connected with the College.