(below) >> PREACHING and C. H. SPURGEON    

   BRIEF HISTORY — "A LITERARY MARVEL"

One of the literary marvels of the 1800's was the weekly publication of C. H. SPURGEON'S SERMONS. It was the standard practice of Mr. Spurgeon to preach three times weekly — twice on Sunday, and on Thursday evening — the Sunday morning sermon usually selected for publication the following Thursday of that week. Price: one penny. These sermons were all taken in shorthand. It is estimated that over 100 MILLION copies were sold by the year 1905. W. Robertson Nicoll wrote: "Spurgeon's sermons are invariably worth buying, and the man who has a set of them possesses a very good theological library."

The complete SET comprises 63 substantial volumes, containing 3,561 separate discourses. "I have read carefully," wrote Dean Lefroy [early 1900s], "the sermon 'God Hath Spoken.' There is not a sentence in the discourse I would omit or revise. The utterance is true; experimental and worthy of all acceptation. Such sermons must do immeasurable good, especially in districts where the Gospel of the Grace is marred by superstition or by skepticism. May God accompany the 50th volume."

In the Standard Life of C. H. Spurgeon (published in the late 1800s by Passmore & Alabaster), mention is made of the numerous Foreign languages and dialects into which his sermons were translated. It is known that they were published in Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Castilian (for the Argentine Republic), Chinese, Congo, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esthonian, French, Gaelic, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kaffir, Karen, Lettish, Maori, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Servian, Spanish, Swedish, Syriac, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Welsh, with a few sermons in Moon's and Braille type for the blind, "making," as the Autobiography says, "with the dear preacher's mother tongue, nearly forty languages in which he continues, from the printed page, to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ."

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   PILGRIM SERMON BOOKLETS #1 — OVER 120 INDIVIDUAL TITLES

For the last three decades of the 1990s, Pilgrim Publications has published a variety of unabridged and unedited Spurgeon SINGLE SERMON titles. Price: 75 cents each (with discounts on quantity orders). In addition to printing the majority of these booklets in their original typeset style (as seen in the 63-volume Sermon Series), a number of titles we distribute are now available in various-sizes of Larger Print — select sermons printed as the Chapel Library Collection (Mount Zion Bible Church, Pensacola FL).

Visit this LINK of the Titles available for purchase, and whether the sermon is published in the Original Pilgrim edition, Large Print edition, or if the sermon is available in both styles. We have these in various cover designs; here is one sample...

	BOOKLETS LISTED by  >>  SERMON TITLE  <<  Click Here
	Read Sermons! - HTML - Click Here >>
	Read Sermons! - PDF - Click Here >>   Hear Sermons! - (CD-R - MP3 - Real Audio formats etc)   Read Sermons! - SPANISH = Read in Espanol @ WWW.SPURGEON.COM.MX

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   PILGRIM SERMON BOOKLETS #2 — 15 MULTI-SERMON TITLES

We also have several MULTI-SERMON (or similar) "CHS JEWEL" Booklets, usually containing 3 to 5 Sermons each. Price: $3 or $4 each  With the exception of "Advice to Seekers" and "Revival," all of these Jewel Booklets feature the sermons in the original typeset style; and each booklet has a different color cover.

         

         

  (Click the Title LINK for List of Sermons, and/or Brief Summary)

 JEWEL Booklets are available in these BIBLE SUBJECTS —

•  $ 3  1-56186-431-5   ADVICE TO SEEKERS   (14 Short Invitations)
•  $ 3  1-56186-404-8   ASSURANCE
•  $ 3  1-56186-403-X    BAPTISM
•  $ 3  1-56186-402-1   BAPTISMAL REGENERATION  (Refuted)
•  $ 4  1-56186-411-0   DEATH
•  $ 4  1-56186-413-7   ELECTION
•  $ 3  1-56186-401-3   EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE
•  $ 3  1-56186-405-6   GRACE
•  $ 3  1-56186-419-6   IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS
•  $ 3  1-56186-430-7   REVIVAL  (Updated Soon)
•  $ 3  1-56186-406-4   SANCTIFICATION  (Updated Soon)
•  $ 4  1-56186-412-9   SATAN  (Updated Soon)
•  $ 4  1-56186-409-9   THE SCRIPTURES  (Updated Soon)
•  $ 3  1-56186-408-0   SECURITY  (Updated Soon)
•  $ 3  1-56186-407-2   WORKS  (Updated Soon)

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Some Additional Sermon Compilations by Pilgrim Publications....
(3 sermons)	(8 sermons)	(8 sermons)	(20 sermons)	(19 sermons)

VIEW	<<< (See the LIST of TITLES)
READ	"BODY OF DIVINITY" Annotated Index Summary
READ	Formative Years and the "Penny Pulpit"
READ	"OUR SUFFERING SUBSTITUTE" 1 Peter 3:18 —  Rare Sermon!
READ	Hear + Read (Reformed) Sermons online — by MAURICE ROBERTS and others

PREACHING and C. H. SPURGEON  —  by A. J. Gordon [from 1883]

To have the ear of the people is a great thing, and much to be coveted by the minister of the gospel, if only it be certain that God has the minister's ear. If it be not so, and the preacher has thousands hanging on his lips, who himself does not hang on God's lips with the daily cry, "Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth," it may be a calamity. In other words, popularity without piety — the magneticism which draws the people, without the communion which draws daily supplies of truth and inspiration from God — is not to be envied.

There are some preachers, who have had an immense following in this generation, the secret of whose success would seem to lie in their skill in compounding emollients [soothing] for itching ears. "Make men think well of themselves if you would have them think well of you," is Lord Chesterfield's receipt for popularity. But it happens that the gospel, if faithfully preached, tends to make men think meanly of themselves; and therefore it is not unlikely to make them dislike the servant of Christ who has told them the truth. If, however, we can find a minister who is pungent [of sharp quality] while he is popular, who pierces the heart with conviction while he nails the ear with persuation, we shall have to confess that God is with him of a truth.

The highest tribute ever paid to Whitefield's power, we fancy, was that of Franklin, who, in a bewildered way, confessed that he could not understand why such crowds should rush after a preacher who was always accusing them of being as bad by nature as the beasts. We hold that no pulpit can be steady and secure in its position which has not repulsions as well as attractions, which does not declare God's wrath against sin while it proclaims His love toward the sinner. What a testimony to the fidelity of apostolic preaching it is, that in the same Scripture in which it is said that "believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women," it is also written, "and of the rest durst no man join himself to them!"

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Among the popular preachers of this generation, Mr. Spurgeon has been singularly distinguished for his plain and pungent declaration of the whole gospel, in its severe as well as its tender and winning aspects. His pulpit has sounded its message to the ends of the earth; but the ends of the earth have not been told that the old gospel of regeneration is effete [worn out], and must now give place to some gospel of evolution, or that the ancient theology has fallen into such a sad plight, that if tolerated at all, it must be as the old faith in a new light.

And in the success which has attended his ministry, a grateful demonstration has been given, that the old faith is perfectly adequate to the wants of the world, needing only to be reproduced in new lives. We should call Mr. Spurgeon the Nineteenth-century Puritan, if not in his austerity of life, certainly in the substance and style of his preaching. This is crisp, direct, smiting [affecting]. It is not so unadorned as to render the truth which it conveys dull or repulsive, nor so rhetorical as to render that truth obscure, as a rich melody is sometimes covered over and suffocated in a musician's variations.

As we listen we become interested, and as we become interested, we are searched and convinced. Here is the high merit of his preaching; it is evidently shaped to attract men to God, rather than to the servant of God; it is manifestly the utterance of one who, like plain John Woolman the Quaker, is "jealous over himself, lest he should say anything to make his testimony look agreeable to that mind in the people which is not in pure obedience to the Cross of Christ."

Some preach the Cross in anything but a crucified style, — inlaying it with such fancies of liberal thought or overlaying it with such charms of a carnal imagination, that its offence is nullified, and it becomes the symbol of divine indifference and toleration, rather than the sign of God's anger against sin, while it is the revelation of His infinite love to the sinner.

Our preacher has constantly declared the doctrines of the Cross, with rare fidelity, sharp distinctness, and exemplary boldness. The Coming and Kingdom of Christ have also had their proper place in his scheme of doctrine. If the old preachers used to insist on the two R's, as containing the sum of pulpit teaching, — Ruin and Redemption, — we need, in this generation, with equal emphasis to demand fidelity to the two C's — the Cross and the Coming of Christ.

We say this because the new theology is doing its best to make away with the latter doctrine. It would reduce the second advent of Christ to some past historical or vaguely present event, obscuring it in the dust and tumult of Titus's siege of Jerusalem, or diffusing it into the glittering generalities of modern progress. We are not prepared to accept a complaisant  [amiable] satisfaction with nineteenth-century progress, as an adequate substitute for "that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;" or to admit a Swedenborgian elimination taking place at every man's death, into the place once held by the doctrine of a literal bodily resurrection occurring at the second advent of Christ. And we are especially grateful to the London preacher for his clear, ringing utterances on these points, for his unequivocal advocacy of Christ's Premillennial Coming and the First Resurrection.

But these are only a few things for which we are beholden to that eminent ministry. Being asked to write an Introduction to the new and enlarged edition of this excellent volume [**], we commend the life which it delineates, and the work which it portrays, to all friends of a sound gospel, and to all lovers of good and true men. How great is the debt which we all owe to the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle of London. In an age that is running greedily after theological novelties, the steady, conservative anchoring power of that pulpit has been felt wherever the English language is spoken, and whereever in any tongue the gospel is preached. This book gives a graphic description of the preacher and his mission. May he long be spared to the pulpit, that the pulpit may long be spared to the truth.

** The Life and Labors of Charles H. Spurgeon: The Faithful Preacher, The Devoted Pastor, The Noble Philanthropist, The Beloved College President, And The Voluminous Writer, Author, Etc., Etc. by GEORGE C. NEEDAM (author of "Street Arabs," "Recollections of Henry Moorhouse," "The True Tabernacle," etc.), Enlarged Edition, Boston: D. L. Guernsey. 1884.

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LAST MODIFIED  August 3 - 2004