You will generously allow my first expression from this platform to be quite personal. The invitation extended me to be present on this world-famed occasion, and to give my humble testimony in connection with it, has touched my heart more deeply than has any other invitation that has ever been extended me. The all too generous words spoken by the prime minister, concerning my presence here, add much to the intensity of my emotions. But I must go on and in frankness say that I am responding now to the invitation, with the most poignant sense of my unfitness to speak in a manner befitting this epochal, world occasion.

If the sense of immeasurable indebtedness to Mr. Spurgeon be any qualification for me to speak, then I have that one qualification for my appearance on this platform. From my earliest recollections, my sense of gratitude to Charles Haddon Spurgeon has been a living thing in my life. His printed sermons found their was across the great ocean, and on and on they traveled, until they came to a little mountain home in the remote country.

And still more — his sermons are being eagerly and widely read to this very hour. Stories that are simply epic continue to fly abroad, telling of the vast influence of his printed sermons. For example, one of America's outstanding preachers told me, just as I was leaving on this hurried journey to England, that the influence that saved him during his university course, from being enmeshed by infidelity, was the reading of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons, as least once a week. One of our noblest university presidents gave a similar testimony. An erstwhile society girl, both worldly and wealthy, was won to Christ by the reading of one of these sermons to her invalid aunt, in which the girl became the nobly useful helpmeet of one of our most widely useful preachers. Such incidents could be multiplied indefinitely, throughout America, from ocean to ocean and from the Lakes to the Gulf. The same story reaches us from all sections of the globe. In homes far removed from the great centers of population; in the camps of cowboys and miners and lumbermen, and widely diversified groups of men, these sermons may yet be found, still wielding, under God's gracious blessing, their converting and lifting power. Just here is a fact that should vitally challenge the practical attention of God's people everywhere. If the vendors of foul literature can find money to print it, and agents to scatter it, surely the friends of Christ, everywhere, should be wisely and unceasingly active in the circulation of life-giving, God-honoring literature.

Let me voice the profoundly sympathetic greetings of the several million Baptists of the United States, both North and South, as expressed by the honored presidents of the two great conventions, for this memorable occasion. These assembled thousands now gathered in this hall are of one mind, I doubt not, that this occasion is one of the most significant and challenging of our generation.

Mr. Spurgeon's going was a world-wide bereavement. In the United States, our requiem was joined with you, in countless memorial services held throughout all sections of our wide-reaching land. In such services, the people said what the people of Constantinople said about John Crysostom, that it was better for the sun to cease his shining than for John John Crysostom to cease his preaching. Throughout all the land, the people said what Elisha said as he looked after the ascending Elijah: "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" It is no exaggeration to say that the going of Mr. Spurgeon marked the going of the outstanding preacher of his century. He was God's greatest human gift of the nineteenth century for the furtherance of His kingdom throughout all the earth. And when this Greatheart of the pulpit passed over, one does not doubt that "all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."

This centenary occasion, to be duplicated in the weeks just ahead, throughout the world, will happily call the attention of millions again, to this markedly providential man. Such centenary reminder ought to bring a world-wide blessing.

This centenary commemoration will provide a renewed and wide-reaching quest for the hidings of Mr. Spurgeon's power. Various answers will be given in explanation of his manifold personality. The ultimate answer will be this: "There was a man sent from God, whose name was Charles Haddon Spurgeon." The only satisfactory explanation of Mr. Spurgeon must be in the one word: GOD. Yet, from the human viewpoint, there are various factors to arrest our most eager attention. The story of his godly ancestry and upbringing is to the last degree revealing. Both his father and grandfather were preachers, and his mother was a true "Hannah" with her little Charles, the oldest child, and with the sixteen other children of her home.

In any correct appraisement of Mr. Spurgeon, faithful account must be taken of his poignant spiritual struggles, issuing in his glorious assurance of Christ as his personal Saviour, while attending a little Methodist chapel in Colchester. His sense of God's saving grace was so consciously real, that, like Bunyan, he wanted to tell even the crows that flew over the fields. Immediately, he began to preach the glorious gospel of God's saving grace to his classmates, in humble farm houses, in kitchens, in barns, in the open fields, wherever the people might be gathered together. At the age of 16, he assumed the pastorate of a village church, meanwhile pursuing his studies in school, and preaching several times each week. We are told that he preached between six and seven hundred times, before he came to London in his nineteenth year.

His coming to London reads like the very romance of divine providence, as indeed it was. He could say of it, and the people with him, what Wellington said in one of his memorable dispatches from the field at Waterloo: "The finger of providence is upon me." Although he came to London during an era of eminent statesmen, scholars, and preachers, yet he soon towered like a mountain peak and was farfamed above them all.

The question persists — What are the secrets of Mr. Spurgeon's marvelous and abiding influence? Let us begin with the man. Dr. Robertson Nicoll was right: "Mr. Spurgeon was every inch a man." Manhood in the ministry is of transcendent moment. We are correctly told that knowledge is power, but character is far more so. True manhood is to character what right foundation is to a building. What a man is in himself is of far greater consequence than anything he says or does. Carlyle well says that the first requirement of a great man is that he must be a true man. Here was a man of incarnate integrity. He abhorred all forms of hypocrisy and falseness. His mind traveled in a straight line like the light. He was a true man without sham or veneer. If Diogenes (who went with his lantern searching for an honest man) had met Mr. Spurgeon, he would have shouted: "I have found him." He possessed a moral courage comparable to that of Elijah and John the Baptist and Luther and Knox and Cromwell. His moral manhood towered in majesty like some glorious mountain. He was one answer to Lyman Beecher's prayer: "God grant that our principal men may be men of principle."

He was one of the most prodigious toilers of his own or of any age.  From his boyhood till his homegoing, his life was apostolic in zeal and labors for Christ's cause.

He wrought enough in one short lifetime for a dozen strong men. He fully met Emerson's challenge: "Go put your creed into your deed." Think of the vast number of his printed sermons — over 3500! Reading one a day would take ten years! And he was the author of many other books besides his sermons. From this one incessantly busy preacher some 200 volumes have gone forth to the world, extra of all his other Herculean labors. It is an astounding story of vast and far-reaching achievements. Any one of the several institutions vitally linked with his life would be enough to crown his life with an enviable immortality. Look at his pastors' college, with its hundreds upon hundreds of men witnessing for Christ around the encircling globe. Look at his orphanage, his almshouses, his colportage association. Preceding any and all of these institutions, look at his vast ministry through the great church with the lines of its testimony going out of the ends of the earth.

He was a man of universal sympathies. Especially did his sympathies wholeheartedly go out to the poor, the needy, the ignorant, the unfortunate. The coming to his tabernacle of Mr. Ruskin the scholar, or of Mr. Gladstone the Prime Minister, or of Lord Shaftesbury, or of some far-famed archbishop, gave him no more pleasure than the coming of the humble carpenter, the cabman, the seamstress, the washer-woman. In such fact, we have one of the most revealing explanations of his far-reaching influence and power. It could be said of him as of his Master: "The common people heard him gladly."

Before all else, Mr. Spurgeon was a preacher of the glorious gospel of the grace of God. When a friend asked Charles Lamb if he had ever heard Coleridge preach, Lamb replied that he had never heard Coleridge do anything else. So might it be said of Mr. Spurgeon that he could not help preaching, and that with a passion that was often irresistible. One can feel him even to this day, in his printed sermons. The pulpit was his throne, and he occupied it like a king. The word ever upon his lips was the word "grace." It is the very essence of Christ's gospel. It is the one adequate hope of a sinning world. It is the sole comfort of mankind as they face eternity. We are saved by grace; we are taught by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we are enabled to grow because of grace; we are given comfort and triumph in all the tribulations of life because of grace. Our salvation, in its totality, from first to last, is because of GRACE. This was Mr. Spurgeon's message, always and everywhere.

Mr. Spurgeon's theology all centered in Christ. It was his never-ceasing note about Christ that gave the great preacher's message universal and abiding power. His sermons are remarkably void of anything peculiar to time, place, circumstance, or condition. His preaching, like the preaching of Jesus, was for all ages, times, and conditions. It is this fact which makes his sermons as profitable in America, or in Europe, or in Africa, or in the Orient as in England. Take any one of his thousands of printed sermons, read it carefully, and I dare to affirm that the truth of such sermon, mind you — the truth of it — would have been just as pertinent and appropriate 100 years hence, as it is this hour. His preaching is founded on the fundamental facts of man's nature, and it is ever addressed to man's spiritual condition. Just as the whole message of Jesus bears upon the supreme purpose for which he came into the world — that is, to save his people from their sins — even so, the never-ceasing spiritual appeal in Mr. Spurgeon's preaching gives it universality of appeal. It is no wonder that a little boy asked his mother why Mr. Spurgeon kept preaching to him. Mr. Spurgeon believed with his whole being in the divine authority, the divine sufficiency, and the divine finality of Christ's gospel.

The going of C. H. Spurgeon made the largest gap in the ranks of Christ's workers that they have known for generations. Wordsworth's sonnet to Milton, in a troubled day of old England, may well be our sonnet today: "Spurgeon! thou shouldest be living at this hour! England hath need of thee! America hath need of thee!" The Spurgeon spirit of faithfulness, of hopefulness, of intensity, or compassionate sympathy for needy humanity is the spirit for today, and for all the days. A mighty heritage comes to us from one of God's mightiest servants. We are faithfully to carry on with such heritage. This is God's way for His people. The generations stand together in an unbroken solidarity. Joshua must carry forward the work begun by Moses — Solomon must build the Temple for which David, his father, gathered the materials. "One soweth and another reapeth." And if faithful, "Both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together."

The supreme thing for which Mr. Spurgeon spoke and wrote and wrought was to point men and women and young people to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. In such life-course, he sets a most challenging example to his fellow-preachers, everywhere. The vast significance of this CENTENARY occasion will be lost if we overlook this crowning note in Mr. Spurgeon's life. The first and supreme business of every preacher and of every church is to win sinners to the salvation and service of Christ. The supreme indictment against a preacher's ministry is the absence of the note or rescue (the seeking note). This likewise is the supreme indictment against a church. What better is a church than an ethical club if the seeking note for the list be absent from such church? Just here, Mr. Spurgeon calls to his fellow-preachers and to his fellow-Christians all, both by noblest precept and example, to be true shepherds of souls — of all souls, of all conditions, of all places, and always.

Fathers and brethren, let us make this centenary occasion an hour of unreserved dedication to the highest mission of Christ's people that of winning souls to him and for him. This is Christ's way for His people, and there can be no substitutes for his way. The divine marching orders of our risen Savior and Lord, the appalling needs of our bludgeoned world, and the vitality and safety of our churches, all beseechingly constrain us thus to walk in Mr. Spurgeon's steps, even as he walked in the steps of Christ.

To such incomparable blessed mission let us rededicate all our powers, yea, our very lives, and let us do so with Mr. Spurgeon's spirit of unhesitating, unfearing, conquering Christian confidence. We are not in any losing battle, as we follow the Prince of Life, who goes forth conquering and to conquer.

W. Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923) was editor of The British Weekly and of other notable theological works,
	including The Expositor's Greek Testament and The Expositor's Bible. In the following excerpt, he says he read through all of Spurgeon's sermons,
	and later referred to them as a... "BODY OF DIVINITY" A TRIBUTE TO C. H. SPURGEON  (written February 4, 1892)

With the great congregations at the Metropolitan Tabernacle assembled on Sunday, their minister was lying unconscious at the doors of dawn. Ere the Sabbath ended he had passed through. The day for so long of his honourable toil was the day of his sacred rest — the day when he was gathered to the great host of his spiritual children who had gone before.

He has fallen like a tower, and his removal means for many a change in the whole landscape of life. A London Tory newspaper spoke of his death as attracting much less attention than that of Cardinal Manning. What did the children at the schools, the servants in the kitchen, the cottars in the Highlands, the old women in wretched garrets, know of Manning? But all these — all the nation, for the nation is Christian still — knew Spurgeon. In Scotland he was even more regarded than in England, and in America perhaps his fame stood higher than anywhere else. It is nearly thirty years since he said, not boastfully, but with perfect truth, "Our word girds the world, and our testimony belts the globe." His years were not many when he died, but he had lived long, and had maintained to the very last the splendour of his fame. Had Mr. Gladstone died at Mr. Spurgeon's age, he would by this time have been completely forgotten. Even as it was, Mr. Spurgeon was to many of his countryment a still more conspicuous figure than Mr. Gladstone; it is not too much to say he was venerated beyond all other men.

The popular judgment is often mistaken; but it may be trusted to detect a charlatan in time. For the public ear, though easy to gain, is exceedingly hard to keep. It says much both for the power and the essential integrity of Mr. Spurgeon that he caught it when a mere boy, and never lost it for a moment. This was due first of all to his oratorical power. Two orators of the first rank have appeared in our time: Mr. Bright and Mr. Spurgeon. Spurgeon's marvellous voice, clear as a silver bell's and winning as a woman's, rose up against the surging multitude, and without effort entered every ear. The homely, sturdy Englishman, with his air of composed mastery, his unfailing command of lucid Saxon, his power to rise on occasion to the heights of eloquence, his compassionate understanding of the life of his people, and above all, his yearning for their salvation, will not easily pass from the nation's memory and heart. Mr. Spurgeon's almost super-natural keenness of observation was a great element of his influence. A well-known neighbour of his has never been able to recognise his members, because he cannot recall faces. It is not a fault; but it is a misfortune. Mr. Spurgeon at one time, as he sat on his platform, could name every one of his five thousand members. He also remembered even visitors with whom he had a very slight acquaintance; and when they came to the Tabernacle instantly detected them. He was pretty sure to contrive some way of making signs to them before the service ended — in manners sometimes quaint enough.

He was, however, much more than a great orator. The present writer, thrown on one occasion for six months where books were scarce, commenced to read complete set of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, and went through all the volumes. We can hardly imagine anyone doing this without receiving a profound and permanent impression. More, the astonishing ability of the preacher is as marked as his eloquence and his sincerity. In this respect he has hardly received justice. Many talk still of his "crab-apple fertility," and compare him compassionately with such men as Liddon. In truth, there was no comparison; each excelled in his proper sphere. As an unprejudiced and competent critic, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, said many years ago, "It is perfectly extraordinary how able and powerful the great Baptist can be within his very narrow doctrinal limits." We do not think that he succeeded to any great extent outside of the sermons, although his John Ploughman publications contain much racy matter. In the sermons there are many passages which a really catholic anthology of English prose would not omit, and an informing spirit which hardly breathes among us now.

It may seem a hard saying, but it cannot be doubted that his theology was a main element in his lasting attraction. Why has CALVINISM flourished so exceedingly in the damp, low-lying, thickly peopled, struggling regions of South London — where James Wells, an utterly uneducated man, and a Calvinist so high that he thought Mr. Spurgeon a dangerous heretic, divided the honours with his young neighbor, and had such a funeral as South London had never seen before? To begin with, all religions for the masses are essentially the same. A Roman Catholic theologian, Father Dalgairns, says: "Go and preach your uncertain Hell and your obscure Atonement in the streets of our large towns, how many proselytes will you gain among the masses, the stench of whose corruptions goes up to heaven more foully every day? You tempt them by the dubious boon of a universal salvation, but in so doing you deprive them of the consolation of a Saviour." But Mr. Spurgeon always made salvation a wonderful, a supernatural thing — won through battle and agony and garments rolled in blood. That the blood of God should be one of the ordinary forces of the universe was to him a thing incredible.

This great and hard-won salvation was sure; that is, "it did not stand in the creature"; it rested absolutely with God. It was not of man, nor of the will of the flesh. Mr. Spurgeon's hearers had many of them missed all the prizes of life; but God did not choose them for the reasons that move man's preference, else their case was hopeless. Their election was of grace. And as He chose them, He would keep them. The perseverance of the saints is a doctrine without meaning to the majority of Christians. But many a poor girl with the love of Christ and goodness in her heart, working her fingers to the bone for a pittance that just keeps her alive, with the temptations of the streets around her, and the river beside her, listened with all her soul when she heard that Christ's sheep could never perish. Many a struggling tradesman tempted to dishonesty; many a widow with penury and loneliness before her, were lifted above all, taught to look through and over the years coming thick with sorrow and conflict, and anticipate a place in the Church Triumphant.

There is a very prevalent notion that the doctrine of a universal Fatherhood as often preached, springs from a truer charity and is more comforting than the old way of teaching that God is the Father of His children through faith. A man says, "God is the Father of the East-end of London," and thinks he has uttered a consoling truth. What Mr. Spurgeon felt was that the Fatherhood of God must mean a great deal more than that. In a sense God is the Father of the most degraded, but what does that come to? Before we know the Fatherly nature the Son must reveal it, and if we dare to say it, there is something beyond that. The going out of the Divine Heart to poor, lost, guilty creatures is an expression of the lower deep of love in God's own being, and means something — means everything for as many as receive it. It is not the cold comfort, the unsheltering shadow of an empty phrase.

The very poor — it must be remembered that South London is the poorest part of the metropolis — are beginning to hope that councils and parliaments will do much for them. They may find it so, but Mr. Spurgeon made little of such things. He taught them — the staple of his sermons is — that now, in the living communion of the soul with Christ, they might have all the joy they needed. A man too wise, too experienced, not to know how slowly the battles of the poor are won, and how little their victories often yield — he insisted on the joy and peace in believing, which the world could neither give nor take away. Life might pursue its hard, monotonous way of obscure toil, scanty wages, and a great weight of care, but over it all there might rest a soft and sacred light. The common people heard this gladly, and well they might, for it is so. Perhaps when they have had a little more experience of the politician they will hear it more gladly than ever.

Personally Mr. Spurgeon was keenly alive to the humorous side of things — witty, brilliant, and sometimes exuberant. But as is so often the case with such natures, his thought turned habitually to the wistful, pathetic, melancholy side of life. George Herbert's lines fitted him well —

In manner he was scrupulously and even anxiously courteous. For long he mixed little in society; he was busy with his tremendous labour, and incessantly occupied in reading. He had a great collection of commentaries arranged in order round the walls of his sanctum, and never preached without consulting each on his text. Though his habits of preparation were peculiar, they were thorough and exact. Never did he trifle with the chief duty of his sacred office.

But we must leave many things unsaid. Never has a man with such an experience appeared in the Christian Church — never one who has addressed so many of his fellow creatures on the things of God — never one the obvious results of whose ministry have been so great. "I shall never hear you calling," we say as we think of that unforgotten voice. But its echoes will linger when the strife of tongues is passing. Multitudes will think with affectionate and respectful sympathy of the bereaved wife and sons, and of the great church over which he presided. We have all lost much, but he has gained more. His was a nature little fitted for many things that befell him in the last lacerating years — less fitted still for the long inaction which was the best his physicians dared to hope for. Better for him, better, perhaps, for us, that he has gone up the shining road.

 "Mr. Spurgeon was never a man to rouse interest on his own account merely. No one has ever preached the GOSPEL of the Apostles more powerfully, or with a more simple heart. It was thought at first by many that he pandered to the dangerous and undermining love of sensation, but it was soon found that this was not so, that he had that moral and spiritual passion in which are to be found the true uplifting and deliverance of life, and that this passion was no mere momentary flame, but a steady and waxing light. The influence of Spurgeon was not of those that have passed or that can pass away like a dream. Even yet, people will explain his popularity by his voice, by his humour, by his oratory, and the like. But the continued life and power of his printed sermons show that his oratory, noble as it was, was not the first thing. Our firm belief is that these sermons will continue to be studied with growing interest and wonder; that they will ultimately be accepted as incomparably the greatest contribution to the literature of experimental Christianity that has been made in this century (19th), and that their message will go on transforming and quickening lives after all other sermons of the period are forgotten."

And Ian Maclaren, also stated in the British Weekly —

"What is to take their place, when the last of those well-known sermons disappears from village shops and cottage shelves? Is there any other gospel which will ever be so understanded of the people, or so move human hearts as that which SPURGEON preached in the best words of our own tongue?"

— Both Quotes Above Were First Printed in MTP Vol 44, Year 1898, pg. 264

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