Charles Spurgeon: The Prince of Preachers by Dan Harmon

Author:Dan Harmon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Religious
ISBN: 9781624160547
Publisher: Barbour Books
Published: 2013-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

9

THE PASTORS’ COLLEGE

Spurgeon’s college was intended for young men who had been called by God to the Baptist ministry and who had already preached acceptably for at least two years. The story of the college is an allegory of faith. Spurgeon’s ministry had given Baptists a larger place in the national life. His influence had broadened the theology of the time, deepened piety, and accelerated progress. His college changed religious teaching in England.

The Pastors’ College was so named either because it was for the training of pastors or—more likely—because it was the pastor’s most cherished creation. Speaking of the college, Spurgeon once said, “By that I multiply myself,” calling it his “firstborn and best-beloved.”

The college began in stirring times. Traditional beliefs already were feeling the shock of the new views associated with Charles Darwin. The new economics, popularized by Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin, was filtering through the minds of the middle class and the more worldly working class. The Anglo-Catholic movement associated with John Henry Newman alarmed ultra-Protestants.

Spurgeon did not set out to counteract the tendency of the times but to experiment. He found among his converts several young men who were beginning to preach but whose educations were limited. The most promising included T. W. Medhurst, a true Cockney born in Bermondsey four months after Spurgeon. Medhurst had served an apprenticeship to John Porter, rope maker and deacon of East Street Baptist Chapel in Walworth. After his baptism Medhurst went once a week to study theology with Spurgeon, who then was lodging on Dover Road. After six months Medhurst began to preach and was greatly blessed in his ministry at Kingston-on-Thames, Coleraine in Ireland, Glasgow, and Portsmouth. He baptized nearly one thousand people. Clearly he was called to the ministry. Spurgeon recognized his gifts and, after Medhurst had been conducting services two years, decided to pay for his education.

The problem arose: Where could the young man be trained? It was useless to send him to existing colleges, as their entrance examinations were much too severe.

IN THE LITTLE SITTING ROOM SPURGEON, GEORGE, ROGERS, AND MEDHURST KNELT IN PRAYER.

Spurgeon talked the matter over with the Reverend Jonathan George of Walworth, who suggested a meeting with the Reverend George Rogers, Congregational minister of Albany Road Chapel in Camberwell. None could have anticipated the results of that meeting. Spurgeon was greatly impressed by the obvious sincerity and solid learning of the one he afterward said was preordained of God to be the first principal of the college. In the little sitting room Spurgeon, George, Rogers, and Medhurst knelt in prayer. There, in brilliant naïveté, the Pastors’ College was born.

Spurgeon wrote:

I had not even a remote idea of whereunto it would grow. There were springing up around me, as my own spiritual children, many earnest young men who felt an irresistible impulse to preach the gospel, and yet with half an eye it could be seen that their lack of education would be a sad hindrance to them. It was not in my

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