The Prince Of Preachers

The Prince of Preachers

At twenty-one years of age, he was his nation’s biggest celebrity. His Sunday sermons were printed on the front page of newspapers and then reproduced and sold on London streets. The demand for these printed sermons was so great that more than a hundred million copies were sold worldwide. Explorer David Livingston even carried them in his pockets as he hacked his way through African jungles.

So many people wanted to hear him preach that police had to be called in for crowd control. The biggest auditoriums in London weren’t big enough. So he announced that he would preach in the music hall at the Royal Surrey Gardens. Polite society was scandalized. Vaudeville shows and circuses performed before raucous, beer-swilling crowds at the Surrey Music Hall.

British clergymen railed against him and newspaper articles condemned him as a publicity-seeking sensationalist. Yet on a Sunday evening in October of 1858, traffic jams stretched back seven miles as massive crowds shoved their way into the Surrey Gardens. As the young pastor stood up before the packed music hall, several people began to yell, “Fire!” Panicked people stampeded to the exits. Seven people were crushed to death and twenty-eight critically injured. The preacher boy was led out past twisted corpses laid out on the lawn. When he got home, he collapsed into his young wife’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. He was carried to his bed, where he lay in a fetal position for two weeks. In the days to follow, both preachers and newspaper editorials across Great Britain said that the tragedy was God’s judgment on holding a church service on the devil’s playground.

We can be glad that young Charles Spurgeon finally got up. He overcame suicidal despair to start a college, open a string of orphanages, and produce sixty-four volumes of the greatest sermons ever preached. At age twenty-three he ignored his critics and held services at the Crystal Palace, the largest auditorium in England. He spoke to the biggest crowds ever to hear a preacher. Four years later he opened the mammoth Metropolitan Tabernacle, the first megachurch in history.

Though he has been called the Prince of Preachers and countless millions have been transformed by his ministry, Spurgeon suffered severe depression for the rest of his life. Though his sermons were full of humor, he wrote, “Melancholy is my closest neighbor.” There were times when flashbacks of that night in the Surrey Music Hall would come in the middle of a sermon, and he would have to be carried home in a stupor. He would experience seasons of enthusiasm, only to spend other months in bed. Before he died at age fifty-eight, he was revered as the greatest preacher of his age. But he was also morbidly obese and suffering from gout and rheumatism, all complicated by his bouts with depression.

Does it surprise you that such a great hero of the Christian faith should suffer chronic despair? It shouldn’t. From the prophet Elijah to Mother Teresa, many of history’s greatest saints have struggled with depression. But they have discovered that God’s grace is often painted on the canvas of despair. In times of suffering, this truth deserves meditation:

The unwounded life bears no resemblance to Jesus.

I bear on my body the scars that show I belong to Jesus.

Galatians 6:17