Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92) was an English fundamentalist Baptist preacher and theologian. A popular orator ever since his youth, he was well-known for his spontaneous wit, passionate earnestness, and appeal to the individual conscience.
Born in Kelvedon, Essex, Spurgeon was the descendant of two generations of Independent (Congregationalist) ministers. At age 16, he became a Baptist and preached his first sermon, and, at 20, became pastor of the New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, London.
Although Spurgeon had scarcely any formal education, he demonstrated extraordinary preaching ability. His sermons drew such crowds that a new 6,000-seat Metropolitan Tabernacle was constructed for him in 1861; he preached there to crowded congregations until his death.
A staunch Calvinist, Spurgeon was firmly opposed to the philological approach of modern biblical criticism. In 1887, he left the Baptist Union since no action was taken against those accused of fundamental theological errors.
Spurgeon edited a monthly publication and founded a pastors’ training college and an orphanage. In addition to 50 volumes of his sermons, he wrote collections of pithy sayings in John Ploughman’s Talk (1869) and works such as The Saint and his Saviour (1857) and Commenting and Commentaries (1876.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Spurgeon
When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Hypocrisy, Religion
The truest lengthening of life is to live while we live, wasting no time but using every hour for the highest ends. So be it this day.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Age
If you tell your troubles to God, you put them into the grave; they will never rise again when you have committed them to him. If you roll your burden anywhere else, it will roll back again, like the stone of Sisyphus.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Trouble
A vile imagination, once indulged, gets the key of our minds, and can get in again very easily, whether we will or no, and can so return as to bring seven other spirits with it more wicked than itself; and what may follow no one knows.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Imagination
We cannot all argue, but we can all pray; we cannot all be leaders, but we can all be pleaders we cannot all be mighty in rhetoric, but we can all be prevalent in prayer.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Prayer
There is wisdom in generosity, as in everything else.—A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody; or else, in his simplicity, he robs his family to help strangers, and so becomes brother to a beggar.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Generosity
It is not well to make great changes in old age.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Change
The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him. If it were not for the laws of the land, we should soon see a massacre of the righteous. Jesus was watched by his enemies, who were thirsting for his blood: his disciples must not look for favour where their Master found hatred and death.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Evil
By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Resolve, Persistence, Endurance, Perseverance
You must be in fashion is the utterance of weak headed mortals.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Fashion
When your will is God’s will, you will have your will.
—Charles Spurgeon
Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Prayer
Our misery is that we thirst so little for these sublime things, and so much for the mocking trifles of time and space.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Faith
Oh, brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth.as it is in Jesus.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Luxury
It has been said that our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Anxiety, Worry, Attitude, Conversation
Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible.—A man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Debt
None have more pride than those who dream that they have none. You may labor against vainglory till you conceive that you are humble, and the fond conceit of your humility will prove to be pride in full bloom.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Pride
We can learn nothing of the gospel except by feeling its truths. There are some sciences that may be learned by the head, but the science of Christ crucified can only be learned by the heart.
—Charles Spurgeon
The wishing gate opens into nothing.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Wishes
A child of God should be a visible beatitude for joy and happiness, and a living doxology for gratitude and adoration.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Christian
Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Bible
Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Humility, Love
Giving is true having.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Charity, Giving
Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Enemies, Identity, Selfishness
The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Soldiers, Trials, Justice
Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: One liners, Idleness
When I look into your face, O Law, my spirit shudders. When I hear your thunders, my heart is melted like wax in the midst of my bowels. How can I endure you? If I am to be tried at last for my life, surely I shall need no judge, for I shall be my own swift accuser, and my conscience shall be a witness to condemn.
—Charles Spurgeon
The goose that lays the golden eggs likes to lay where there are eggs already.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
The devil never tempted a man whom he found judiciously employed.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Employment
Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Temptation
The greatest works are done by the ones.—The hundreds do not often do much—the companies never; it is the units—the single individuals, that are the power and the might.—Individual effort is, after all, the grand thing.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Individuality
Holiness is the architectural plan on which God buildeth up his living temple.
—Charles Spurgeon
The worst thing that can happen to a man who gambles is to win
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Winning, One liners
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Difficulty, Forgiveness, Difficulties, Adversity
Luck generally comes to those who look after it; and my notion is that it taps, once in a lifetime, at everybody’s door, but if industry does not open it luck goes away.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Fortune, Luck
There are no crown-wearers in heaven that were not cross-bearers here below.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Trials
A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Anger
Christ is the great central fact in the world’s history; to him everything looks forward or backward. All the lines of history converge upon him. All the march of providence is guided by him. All the great purposes of God culminate in him. The greatest and most momentous fact which the history of the world records is the fact of his birth.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Christian
With children we must mix gentleness with firmness.—They must not always have their own way, but they must not always be thwarted.—If we never have headaches through rebuking them, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.—Be obeyed at all costs; for if you yield up your authority once, you will hardly get it again.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Children
Economy is half the battle of life. It is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.
—Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Battle, Economy, Money
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
John Wesley British Methodist Religious Leader
John Henry Newman British Theologian, Poet
Albert Benjamin Simpson Canadian Protestant Preacher
Frederick William Faber British Hymn writer
Harry Emerson Fosdick American Baptist Minister
Edwin Hubbell Chapin American Preacher, Poet
Russell Conwell American Baptist Minister
George Boardman the Younger American Baptist Minister
Jesse Jackson American Baptist Civil Rights Activist
Billy Graham American Baptist Religious Leader