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	.  POISONOUS SLANDER...  RECURRING DEPRESSION...  DEBILITATING GOUT...  KIDNEY DISEASE...  — Spurgeon Suffered Them ALL! . WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS
	FAITH AS A RESULT?
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THE
ANGUISH and AGONIES
OF
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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by Dr. Darrel W. Amundsen
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Published by CHRISTIAN HISTORY Issue #29 (c) 1991
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— Free upon REQUEST << [a single copy of this Article in Booklet form]--
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"And he said unto me, MY GRACE is sufficient for thee:
for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
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Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake:  for when I am weak, then I AM STRONG."
	— 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

DARREL W. AMUNDSEN, Ph.D. is Professor of Classics, and chair of the Dept. of Modern and Classical Languages at Western Washington University [Bellingham, Washington]; Affiliate Professor of the History of Medicine in the School of Medicine, University of Washington [Seattle Washington]; formerly Adjunct Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Regent College [Vancouver, British Columbia]; and co-editor of the book CARING AND CURING: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions (John Hopkins University Press, 1998). He is a recognized expert in the field of ancient and medieval history and ethics. His latest book is entitled A DIFFERENT DEATH: Euthanasia and the Christian Tradition (IVP, 1998).

C. H. Spurgeon's friends and even casual acquaintances remarked on his hearty laughter. His humor also found expression in his sermons and writings, for which he was sometimes criticized. Spurgeon responded that if his critics only knew how much humor he suppressed, they would keep silent.

At the same time, Spurgeon's life was saturated with suffering. We know about his sufferings intimately owing to his frequent and candid descriptions of them.

What torments did Spurgeon suffer? How did he reconcile his painful experiences with his view of a Gracious God?

SPIRITUAL AGONIES

At the risk of oversimplifying, we can categorize Spurgeon's sufferings as spiritual, emotional, and physical — although recognizing the interplay of categories.

Spurgeon's spiritual suffering began most markedly five years prior to his conversion. Throughout his ministry, he referred to the horrors he had felt for five years while under deep conviction of sin, intellectually aware of the gospel, yet blind to its personal application.

"The justice of God, like a ploughshare, tore my spirit," he recalled. "I was condemned, undone, destroyed — lost, helpless, hopeless — I thought hell was before me... I prayed, but found no answer of peace. It was long with me thus."

To Spurgeon, no suffering he later endured could equal this devastating bitterness of soul. These spiritual sufferings taught him to loathe the foulness of sin and to cherish the holiness of God. And they engendered within him a seraphic joy in his salvation.

SLANDER AND SCORN

During his early years in London, Spurgeon received intense slander and scorn. In 1881 he could look back at those years and say —

"If I am able to say in very truth, 'I was buried with Christ thirty years ago,' I must surely be dead. Certainly the world thought so, for not long after my burial with Jesus I began to preach his name, and by that time the world thought me very far gone, and said, 'He stinketh.' They began to say all manner of evil against the preacher; but the more I stank in their nostrils the better I liked it, for the surer I was that I was really dead to the world."

At the time, however, Spurgeon wavered between rejoicing in such persecution and being utterly crushed by it. In 1857 he wrestled with his feelings —

"Down on my knees have I often fallen, with the hot sweat rising from my brow under some fresh slander poured upon me; in an agony of grief my heart has been well-nigh broken; ...This thing I hope I can say from my heart: If to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be the laughing stock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more will make me more serviceable to my Master, and more useful to his cause, I will prefer it to all this multitude, or to all the applause that man could give."

THE WEIGHT OF PREACHING

From the beginning of his ministry, Spurgeon attracted vast audiences in such establishments as Exeter Hall and the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall. While to all appearances he brimmed with self-assurance, in reality he was filled with trepidation. In 1861 he remarked —

"My deacons know well enough how, when I first preached in Exeter Hall, there was scarcely ever an occasion, in which they left me alone for ten minutes before the service, but they would find me in a most fearful state of sickness, produced by that tremendous thought of my solemn responsibility..."

Spurgeon felt great anxiety, but it stemmed not so much from the multitudes as from the awesome responsibility of being accountable to God for the souls of so many. This remained a heart source of spiritual suffering throughout his career. He remarked in 1883 —

"I have preached the gospel now these thirty years and more, and ...often, in coming down to this pulpit, have I felt my knees knock together, not that I am afraid of any one of my hearers, but I am thinking of that account which I must render to God, whether I speak his Word faithfully or not."

EMOTIONAL TRIAL BY "FIRE!"

On the evening of October 19, 1856, Spurgeon was to commence weekly services at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall, a popular amusement hall that Spurgeon's congregation rented when they had outgrown their building and had not completed a new one. In the morning he preached at New Park Street Chapel on Malachi 3:10: "Prove me now." With chillingly prophetic voice he declared —

"...I may be called to stand where the thunderclouds brew, where the lightnings play, and tempestuous winds are howling on the mountain top. Well, then, I am born to prove the power and majesty of our God; amidst dangers he will inspire me with courage; amidst toils he will make me strong... We shall be gathered together tonight where an unprecedented mass of people will assemble, perhaps from idle curiosity, to hear God's Word; and the voice cries in my ears, 'Prove me now.' ...See what God can do, just when a cloud is falling on the head of him whom God has raised up to preach to you..."

That night, Surrey Hall, capable of holding up to twelve thousand, was overflowing with an additional ten thousand people in the gardens. The service was underway when, during Spurgeon's prayer, several malicious miscreants shouted, "Fire! The galleries are giving way!" Evidently, a mob conspiracy of evil men had been formed to disrupt the services. In the ensuing panic [rushes were made for the exits], seven people were trampled to death and twenty-eight were hospitalized with serious injuries. Spurgeon (only 22 years old), was totally undone and literally carried from the pulpit and taken to a friend's house where he remained for several days in deep depression. He was so distressed he was unable to preach for several weeks and later said the experience was "sufficient to shatter my reason" and might have meant his ministry "was silenced for ever." He remarked —

"Perhaps never a soul went so near the burning furnace of insanity, and yet came away unharmed." (At last he found comfort in the verse) — "Wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name."

Spurgeon was but a soldier; the Lord was the Captain of the host, hence victory was assured. Yet until Spurgeon's death, the spectre of the calamity so brooded over him that a close friend and biographer surmised —

"I cannot but think, from what I saw, that his comparatively early death might be in some measure due the furnace of mental suffering he endured on and after that fearful night."

Spurgeon again preached in the Music Hall several years later [February 27, 1859], and in that sermon commented —

"Standing in this pulpit, this morning, I recall to myself that evening of sorrow when I saw my people scattered, like sheep without a shepherd, trodden upon, injured, and many of them killed. Do you recollect how you cried for your minister, that he might be restored to a reason that was then tottering? Can you recollect how you prayed that, out of evil, God would bring forth good, that all the curses of the wicked might be rolled back upon themselves, and that God would yet fill this place with His glory? And do you remember how long ago that is, and how God has been with us ever since, and how many of those, who were injured that night, are now members of our church, and are praising God that they ever entered this hall? Oh! shall we not love the Lord? There is not a church in London that has had such answers to prayer as we have had; there has not been a church that has had such cause to pray. We have had special work, special trial, special deliverance, and we ought preeminently to be a church, loving God, and spending and being spent in His service."

"I cannot speak, as a grey-headed man, of the storms and troubles which many of you have endured; but I have had more joys and more sorrows, in the last few years, than any man in this place, for my life has been compressed as with a Bramah press — a vast mass of emotion into one year. I have gone to the very bottoms of the mountains, as some of you know, in a night that never can be erased from my memory — a night connected with this place."

DEPRESSION

If Spurgeon was acquainted with depression before, following the Surrey Hall disaster, it became a more frequent and perverse companion. In October 1858 he had his first episode of incapacitating illness since coming to London. Having been absent from his pulpit for three Sundays, when he returned he preached on 1 Peter 1:6: "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations."

(From The Christian's Heaviness and Rejoicing NPSP Vol 4, Year 1858, pg. 459, 1 Peter 1:6) in that sermon, Spurgeon said about his illness —

I was lying upon my couch during this last week, and my spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for — but a very slight thing will move me to tears just now — and a kind friend was telling me of some poor old soul living near, who was suffering very great pain, and yet she was full of joy and rejoicing. I was so distressed by the hearing of that story, and felt so ashamed of myself, that I did not know what to do; wondering why I should be in such a state as this; while this poor woman, who had a terrible cancer, and was in the most frightful agony, could nevertheless "rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory."

While he was struggling with the contrast between his depression and the joy evidenced by this woman who was afflicted with cancer, —

And in a moment this text flashed upon my mind, with its real meaning. I am sure it is its real meaning. Read it over and over again, and you will see I am not wrong. "Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness." It does not say, "Though now for a season ye are suffering pain, though now for a season you are poor; but you are in heaviness;" your spirits are taken away from you; you are made to weep; you cannot bear your pain; you are brought to the very dust of death, and wish that you might die. Your faith itself seems as if it would fail you. That is the thing for which there is a needs be. That is what my text declares, that there is an absolute needs be that sometimes the Christian should not endure his sufferings with a gallant and a joyous heart; there is a needs be that sometimes his spirits should sink within him, and that he should become even as a little child smitten beneath the hand of God. Ah! beloved, we sometimes talk about the rod, but it is one thing to see the rod, and it is another thing to feel it; and many a time have we said within ourselves, "If I did not feel so low spirited as I now do, I should not mind this affliction;" and what is that but saying, "If I did not feel the rod I should not mind it?" It is just how you feel, that is, after all, the pith and marrow of your affliction. It is that breaking down of the spirit, that pulling down of the strong man, that is the very fester of the soreness of God's scourging — "the blueness of the wound, whereby the soul is made metter." I think this one idea has been enough to be food for me many a day; and there may be some child of God here to whom it may bring some slight portion of comfort. We will yet again dwell upon it. "Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations."

Spurgeon was indeed frequently "in heaviness." Sometimes Spurgeon's depression was the direct result of his various illnesses, perhaps simply psychologically, and in the case of his gout, probably physiologically as well. Despite this, Spurgeon thought of his own depression as his "worst feature" and once commented that —

"...despondency is not a virtue; I believe it is a vice. I am heartily ashamed of myself for falling into it, but I am sure there is no remedy for it like a holy faith in God."

Spurgeon comforted himself with the realization that such depression equipped him to minister more effectively —

"I would go into the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary."

LABOURS OF MINISTRY

Spurgeon's recurring bouts of depression were exacerbated by his numerous responsibilities. He once remarked —

"No one living knows the toil and care I have to bear. I ask for no sympathy but ask indulgence if I sometimes forget something. I have to look after the Orphanage, have charge of a church with four thousand members, sometimes there are marriages and burials to be undertaken, the weekly sermon to be moderately revised [for printing — the "Penny Pulpit"], also The Sword and the Trowel to be edited, and besides all that, a weekly average of five hundred letters to be answered."

In 1872 he asserted that —

"...the ministry is a matter which wears the brain and strains the heart, and drains out the life of a man if he attends to it as he should."

Yet he declined to slow down. During his first significant illness (October 1858) Spurgeon wrote to his congregation and readers —

"Do not attribute this illness to my having laboured too hard for my Master. For his dear sake, I would that I may yet be able to labour more." (Later, in a sermon, he stated) — "I look with pity upon people who say 'Do not preach so often; you will kill yourself.' O my God! what would Paul have said to such a thing as that?"

Spurgeon determined that this labor and anguish, though physically damaging, must be undertaken —

"We are all too much occupied with taking care of ourselves; we shun the difficulties of excessive labour. And frequently behind the entrenchments of taking care of our constitution, we do not half as much as we ought. A minister of God is bound to spurn the suggestions of ignoble ease, it is his calling to labour; and if he destroys his constitution, I, for one, only thank God that he permits us the high privilege of so making ourselves living sacrifices."

GOUT AND KIDNEY DISEASE

The disease that most severely afflicted Spurgeon was GOUT, a condition that sometimes produces exquisite pain. Gout is a metabolic disease marked by a painful inflammation of the joints, with deposits of urates in and around the joints, and usually an excessive amount of uric acid in the blood (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1979). What can clearly be identified as gout had seized Spurgeon in 1869 when he was 35 years old. For the remainder of his life he would be laid aside for weeks (sometimes months), nearly every year with various illnesses; even his wife, Susannah Thompson Spurgeon, began experiencing periods of invalidism at age 33 and could seldom attend her husband's services thereafter. Like her husband, she found ways to be amazingly productive despite her illnesses, such as founding and operating a book fund [begun in 1875] that distributed countless theological works to pastors who could not afford to buy them.

Space does not permit a chronicling of his physical sufferings. Some appreciation of them comes from this article in The Sword and the Trowel in 1871 —

"It is a great mercy to be able to change sides when lying in bed... Did you ever lie a week on one side? Did you ever try to turn, and find yourself quite helpless? Did others lift you, and by their kindness reveal to you the miserable fact that they must lift you back again at once into the old position, for bad as it was, it was preferable to any other? ...It is a great mercy to get one hour's sleep at night... What a mercy have I felt to have only one knee tortured at a time. What a blessing to be able to put the foot on the ground again, if only for a minute!"

Months later he described in a sermon one experience during this period of affliction —

"When I was racked some months ago with pain, to an extreme degree, so that I could no longer bear it without crying out, I asked all to go from the room, and leave me alone; and then I had nothing I could say to God but this, 'Thou art my Father, and I am thy child; and thou, as a Father, art tender and full of mercy. I could not bear to see my child suffer as thou makest me suffer, and if I saw him tormented as I am now, I would do what I could to help him, and put my arms under him to sustain him. Wilt thou hide thy face from me, my Father? Wilt thou still lay on a heavy hand, and not give me a smile from thy countenance?' ...so I pleaded, and I ventured to say, when I was quiet, and they came back who watched me: 'I shall never have such pain again from this moment, for God has heard my prayer.' I bless God that ease came and the racking pain never returned."

He regularly referred to this incident, although it is impossible to determine whether his gout was never as excruciating as it was during that episode.

Spurgeon was seldom free from pain from 1871 on. The intervals between times of forced rest became increasingly shorter, and his condition became more complex as symptoms of BRIGHT'S DISEASE began to develop (being chronic inflammation of the kidneys marked by albumin in the urine — named after physician Richard Bright in 1858). Beginning in the 1871, Spurgeon regularly sought recovery and recuperation in Mentone, in southern France.

Spurgeon's last years of physical suffering must be seen through the grid of the Down-Grade Controversy (begun in 1887). Early in this controversy he commented that he had —

"...suffered the loss of friendships and reputation, and the infliction of pecuniary withdrawments and bitter reproach. ...But the pain it has cost me none can measure." (To a friend in May 1891 he said) — "Goodbye; you will never see me again. This fight is killing me."

WHERE IS GOD DURING SUFFERING?

Spurgeon maintained that since God is sovereign, there are no such things as accidents. This, however, is not fatalism: "Fate is blind; providence has eyes." Unwavering belief in God's sovereignty was essential for Spurgeon's well-being —

"It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, not sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity."

Consequently, he tended to look very little at proximate causality. Preaching in 1868, he said —

"If you drink of the river of affliction near its outfall, it is brackish and offensive to the taste, but if you will trace it to its source, where it rises at the foot of the throne of God, you will find its waters to be sweet and health-giving."

(1873) — "As long as I trace my pain to accident, my bereavement to mistake, my loss to another's wrong, my discomfort to an enemy, and so on, I am of the earth, earthy, and shall break my teeth with gravel stones; but when I rise to my God and see his hand at work, I grow calm, I have not a word of repining [discontent]."

Confidence in God's sovereignty and paternal love did not prevent Spurgeon from sometimes asking "Why?", however — especially when he was laid aside during times that he viewed as crucial for his work. In The Sword and the Trowel in 1876 he asked the question in an article entitled "Laid Aside. Why?" Spurgeon answered his own question by concluding that such times are —

"...the surest way to teach us that we are not necessary to God's work, and that when we are most useful he can easily do without us."

Here and elsewhere Spurgeon noted the potential benefits of pain. In a sermon published in 1881 he maintained —

"In itself pain will sanctify no man: it may even tend to wrap him up within himself, and make him morose, peevish, selfish; but when God blesses it, then it will have a most salutary [curative] effect — a suppling, softening influence."

(Less than a year before he died, Spurgeon discussed that process in a sermon entitled God's People Melted and Tried MTP Vol 38, Year 1892, pgs. 452-53, Jeremiah 9:7)

Here Spurgeon asks — All that is of human fashioning is lost in the melting-pot. Were you ever in the melting-pot dear friends? I have been there, and my sermons with me, and my frames and feelings, and all my good works. They seemed to quite fill the pot till the fire burned up, and then I looked to see what there was unconsumed; and if it had not been that I had a simple faith in my Lord Jesus Christ, I am afraid I should not have found anything left. This is what God will do with all his people unless they walk very humbly with him. "He that is down need fear no fall." He that is pure gold will lose nothing in the melting; but he that is somebody in his own opinion, will have to come down a peg or two before long. It is well that it is so; for if it were not, we should soon grow proud, and worldly, and careless, and even licentious; for it is strange, but it is true, that the next thing to a boast of perfect holiness has almost always, throughout history, been intense licentiousness. How it comes to be so, perhaps they who study metaphysics can tell; but so it has constantly been in the history of mankind. When you fancy that you are out of gunshot, there is an enemy close at hand. When you dream that the road is safe, there is a pitfall just before you. When you say, "I am perfectly holy," the very pride that makes you say so is an indication of a deadly cancer of self-righteousness that is eating into your very soul.

Now, beloved, the result of melting is truth and humility. The result of melting is that we arrive at a true valuation of things. The result of melting is that we are poured out into a new and better fashion. And, oh, we may almost wish for the melting-pot if we may but get rid of the dross, if we may but be pure, if we may but be fashioned more completely like unto our Lord!

If any of you who have been converted are undergoing a melting just now, do not be staggered at it. It is no strange thing that has happened unto you, and it is no evil thing. You have, no doubt, needed it. You were growing too gross, too careless, and it was necessary for you that you should be melted. Now God has given you the highest proof of his love in this melting, this scourging, this suffering, this down-breaking, this annihilating of carnal confidence, this hanging up of Mr. Presumption by the neck that he may die, that self may fall, and that Jesus may be all in all. God grant that it may be so!

Here we see a marvelous paradox in Spurgeon's experiential theology. He candidly admits that he dreaded suffering and would do whatever he legitimately could do to avoid it. Yet when not suffering acutely, he longed for it —

"The way to stronger faith usually lies along the rough pathway of sorrow... I am afraid that all the grace that I have got out of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable ...Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister's library."

THE SACRIFICE: CHRIST CRUCIFIED

In conclusion, we cannot hope to understand Spurgeon's sufferings unless we glimpse the experiential intimacy of his relationship with his Saviour. On June 7, 1891, in extreme physical pain from his illnesses, Spurgeon preached what, unknown to him, proved to be his last sermon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle [The Statute of David for the Sharing of the Spoil MTP Vol 37, Year 1891, from pg. 324 below, 1 Samuel 30:21-25].

His concluding words in the pulpit were, as usual, about his Lord & Saviour —

"If you wear the livery of Christ, you will find him so meek and lowly of heart that you will find rest unto your souls. He is the most magnanimous of captains. There never was his like among the choicest of princes. He is always to be found in the thickest part of the battle. When the wind blows cold he always takes the bleak side of the hill. The heaviest end of the CROSS lies ever on his shoulders. If he bids us carry a burden, he carries it also. If there is anything that is gracious, generous, kind, and tender, yea lavish and superabundant in love, you always find it in him.

These forty years and more have I served him, blessed be his name! and I have had nothing but love from him. I would be glad to continue yet another forty years in the same dear service here below if so it pleased him. His service is life, peace, joy. Oh, that you would enter on it at once! God help you to enlist under the banner of Jesus even this day! Amen."

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When the visitor asked how the invalid was, her anxious friends replied, "Oh, she's getting lower and lower." But when he grasped her trembling, transparent hand, and enquired if that were so, she said sweetly, "Oh, no; higher and higher!"

The condition of her poor body may be thus described —

But she, thinking more of her near approach to glory and to Jesus than of the sinking of her body, would not have it so: not lower and lower, but higher and higher.

And this was not mere fancy, nor the expression of a hope; it was a glorious, bright reality —

Ere long she fell on sleep. She had been gradually rising "higher and higher" — she was suddenly lifted into the highest.

A while back, "low-fat" diets were all the rage. Nowadays, everywhere you look it's "low carb." Although a lot of people seem to lose weight on low-carb diets, many health professionals are concerned about the effects of such diets on other health concerns. For example, people who are avoiding carbohydrates in favor of protein-rich foods might want to konw about a study published in March in The New England Journal of Medicine that examined the relationship between protein intake and the risk of gout in men.

Gout is a very painful form of arthritis that occurs when uric acid crystalizes within the joints, especially those of the big toe, feet, and ankles. Crystallization typically happens when the level of uric acid in the blood rises above a certain threshold. For centuries, gout has been associated with diet, and people with gout have advised to go easy on high-protein foods and foods rich in purines, a class of chemical compounds found in many foods. There are high levels of purines in alcoholic beverages, meats (particularly the internal organs, such as liver), legumes, anchovies and sardines, and certain vegetables, such as spinach, cauliflower, and mushrooms.

In this recent study, researchers examined potential dietary risk factors for gout in more than 47,000 men over a 12-year period. They found that total protein intake and intake of vegetables rich in purines were not associated with the development of gout. They did find that the risk of gout increased with higher intakes of meat (red meat, especially) and seafood. Curiously, the risk of gout associated with seafood was significantly higher among men who were not overweight than among men who were overweight. In addition, the risk of gout was greater in people whose diet was low in diary products.

Further data from the study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet in April, also showed a connection between alcohol and the risk of developing gout. Beer, which is also high in purines, raised risk the most, and spirits increased risk to a lesser extent. Moderate wine drinking was not linked to increased risk, but the sample of wine drinkers studied was small.

A connection between drinking and gout has been believed to exist for centuries, and as long ago as the 1600's — when gout was raging among Britain's pampered aristocracy — the philosopher John Locke advised a diet low in meat and high in dairy products as a way to ward off the disease.

Not everyone can ward off gout through diet, though. Some people, thanks to genetics, a drug side effect, a kidney problem, or other factors, produce uric acid more quickly than the kidneys can remove it from the blood. Some people's kidneys can't keep up even if uric acid is produced at a normal rate. If you have or develop gout, your doctor may recommend changes in your diet taking medicines, or both. If your gout is well controlled by medicines [such as Allopurinol — as well as drinking more water], your doctor may give you the green light to enjoy meat, seafood, and alcohol in moderation.

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