“To Glorify Christ”: The Goal of Spurgeon’s Preaching

In one important respect C. H. Spurgeon is a great model for today’s preacher in that he consistently sought to make his sermons Christ-centred and Christ-exalting. Throughout his preaching ministry, Spurgeon was faithful to the intentions that he declared when the Metropolitan Tabernacle first opened in 1861. The various meetings and services that accompanied the opening of the Tabernacle went on for a month and Spurgeon knew that they would be widely attended and reported. As Timothy Albert McCoy has rightly noted [“The Evangelistic Ministry of C. H. Spurgeon: Implications for a Contemporary Model for Pastoral Evangelism” (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1989), 132], the words that he spoke in his first sermon in the new home for his congregation’s worship were therefore carefully chosen. “I would propose that the subject of the ministry in this house, as long as this platform shall stand, & as long as this house shall be frequented by worshippers, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist; I do not hesitate to take the name of Baptist; but if I am asked what is my creed, I reply, “It is Jesus Christ.” My venerated predecessor, Dr. Gill, has left a body of divinity, admirable & excellent in its way; but the body of divinity to which I would pin & bind myself for ever, God helping me, is not his system, or any other human treatise; but Jesus Christ, who is the sum & substance of the gospel, who is in himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, & the life.” [C.H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, compiled Susannah Spurgeon and J.W. Harrald (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1899), III, 1].

We find the same emphases in a sermon which he preached on April 24, 1891, to graduates of his College who had gathered for the annual conference which took place under the auspices of the Tabernacle. “Ah, brothers! the Holy Ghost never comes to glorify us, or to glorify a denomination, or, I think, even to glorify a systematic arrangement of doctrines. He comes to glorify Christ. If we want to be in accord with him, we must preach in order to glorify Christ.”[“Honey in the Mouth!”, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 37:381.].

Spurgeon was conscious that devotion to the doctrines of grace and dedication to Baptist principles can well exist without the all-essential heart of Christianity, namely, devotion to the Lord Jesus. He was determined that when he preached it would be the Lord Jesus who was pre-eminently exalted in his sermons. As Nigel Lacey, an English Baptist pastor, has observed, Spurgeon detested any preaching ministry that did not centre upon the Saviour [“Spurgeon—The Preacher”, Grace Magazine (January 1992), 6].

At the same time it should be understood that he never sought to conceal his doctrinal convictions as a Calvinistic Baptist. In a remarkable address which he gave at the Tabernacle on August 19, 1861 in honour of the centenary of the birth of William Carey (1761-1834), he declared to a packed auditorium of 6,000 that Carey’s theology was profoundly influenced by what he called “the noblest type of divinity that ever blessed the world,” that is, the theological convictions of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the great eighteenth-century American theologian.

He then went on to emphasize that “Carey was the living model of Edwards’ theology, or rather of pure Christianity. His was not a theology which left out the backbone and strength of religion—not a theology, on the other hand, all bones and skeleton, a lifeless thing without a soul: his theology was full-orbed Calvinism, high as you please, but practical godliness so low that many called it legal.” Moreover, Spurgeon stated that he admired “Carey all the more for being a Baptist: he had none of that false charity which might prompt some to conceal their belief for fear of offending others; but at the same time he was a man who loved all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ.” [“C.H. Spurgeon’s tribute to William Carey”, Supplement to the Baptist Times, (16 April, 1992), 1].

Carl Trueman’s Inauguration As Professor of Historical Theology & Church History at Wts

Philip Ryken (@ Reformation 21) congratulates Dr. Carl R. Trueman on his inauguration as Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary on Wednesday, November 16, 2005, at 10:30am. I would like to add my congratulations and pray the Triune God’s richest blessings on Carl’s labours at this important school and further afield in the Church.

Reasons for Academic Blogging

Sharon Howard, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wales, who also hosts the Early Modern Resources site, blogs at Early Modern Notes. In a recent post entitled So, why would I champion academic blogging? she discusses why she blogs as an academic, as well as the value of blogging for research. What she writes echoes my thoughts entirely about one of the reasons I am blogging: “Blogging research lets you develop the very first drafts of ideas. Bits and pieces that don’t yet amount to articles (or even conference papers), but they may well do some day. And something else, sometimes: last year I was having trouble thinking up any new ideas at all, but blogging old ideas, often attached to new sources, meant that I kept writing, if only a few hundred words a week, without having to worry about it being original or impressive. And now, because it’s all archived and easy to find, I can look back over some of that work and see potential themes, little seeds of ideas that are worth working on, start to make them grow. …Another thing: writing for a slightly different audience than in the usual academic contexts. This is an amazing opportunity to reach out.”

Alexander Whyte, a “Specialist in the Study of Sin”

Although there are certain problem areas about the theological perspective of the Scottish preacher and author Alexander Whyte (1836-1921), he was right on when it came to his emphasis on the pervasiveness and odious deceitfulness of sin. In a very real sense he sought to be what he called a “specialist in the study of sin.” [“Preface” to Lord, Teach Us to Pray. Sermons on Prayer (New York: George H. Doran Co., [1923]), xi.] As he commented on one occasion: “I know quite well that some of you think me little short of a monomaniac about sin. But I am not the first that has been so thought of and so spoken about. I am in good company and I am content to be in it. Yes, you are quite right in that. For I most profoundly feel that I have been separated first to the personal experience of sin, and then to the experimental preaching of sin, above and beyond all my contemporaries in the pulpit of our day.” [Bunyan Characters, Fourth Series (Edinburgh/London: Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier, [1908]), 195].

Late Victorian British society, with its overly romantic view of the Christian life and its faith in a God who was more a doting Father than the awesome Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, presented real temptations to Whyte to focus on things less morbid. Yet he steadfastly refused to change his ways.

Little wonder his assistant John Kelman stated in his funeral sermon that Whyte was “a Puritan risen from the dead, and prophesying in pagan times to a later generation,” who had “no respect whatever for those who thought lightly of sin” [“Whyte of St. George’s” in Ralph G. Turnbull, ed., The Treasury of Alexander Whyte (Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1953), 25, 26-27.].

On one occasion Whyte was walking with a friend in the Pass of Killiecrankie and the name of Henry Drummond (1851-1897) came up. Drummond was a popular author and essayist, whose thought was an eclectic blend of Darwinism and Christianity. “The trouble with Hen-a-ry,” Whyte told his companion, “is that he doesna ken [know] onything aboot sin.” [Cited Alexander Gammie, Preachers I Have Heard (London: Pickering & Inglis, Ltd., 1945), 12].

Nor was this preoccupation with sin simply a Pharisaic focus on the sins of others. Whyte was very conscious of his own sinfulness, failings, and shortcomings. “Blessed are we…if we know our sin,” he could say honestly (Bunyan Characters, Fourth Series, 124).

As he recalled when fifty years of age: “The first text I ever heard a sermon from was that great text in Zechariah, ‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ ‘It is I, Lord,’ my young heart answered; and my heart is making the same answer here to-day.” [G. F. Barbour, The Life of Alexander Whyte (7th ed.; New York: George H. Doran Co., 1925), 305].

Whyte told an astonished audience on one occasion that he had discovered the name of the wickedest man in Edinburgh. “His name,” he told them in whispered tones, “is Alexander Whyte” (Kelman, “Whyte of St. George’s”, 29). It was, therefore, in all honesty that he could state, “I would rather take my degree in [sin] than in all the other subjects set for a sinner’s examination on earth or in heaven. For to know myself, and especially, as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart, is the true and the only key to all other true knowledge.” [Bunyan Characters, First Series (2nd ed.; Edinburgh/London: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1895), 57-58].

This concern to plumb the depths of the human heart is well captured by a Latin phrase that Whyte loved to quote: generalia non pungunt, “generalities do not pierce deep” (Barbour, Alexander Whyte, 305).

Novelty or Antiquity?

One of the questions frequently raised with regard to Christian preaching by some of its earliest hearers in the Roman Empire is one that is rarely heard today: why has this new way of thinking or mode of living just appeared now if it is really true? It was axiomatic among the ancients—both Greeks and Romans—that what was true was old and that what was new was questionable and probably false. Our culture, it should be noted, has the opposite problem with regard to the Faith. It regards what is old as useless and ready for the garbage heap. That which is the latest is regarded as the best and most desirable. Christianity—with its antiquity—seems far too antiquated for far too many in our world. But to the ancient world, Christianity’s big problem was its novelty. Since Christianity appeared to take its rise from the appearance of Christ, this was a major question that had to be answered. Theophilus of Antioch (fl. c.180 A.D.), an early Christian apologist, noted that pagans responded to his testimony about Christ with the assertion that the Christian “Scriptures are new and modern” and are therefore utter nonsense. He quoted some pagans as saying that the Christian “message has been made public only recently, and that we have nothing to say in proof of our truth and our teaching; they call our message foolishness.” [To Autolycus 3.1, 4, trans. Robert M. Grant, Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 101, 105].

The standard answer among Christian apologists was Christianity was rooted in the Old Testament era. Seen in this light, Christian truth had a much better claim to antiquity than either Greek or Roman thought, neither of which were over a millennium old.

The Letter to Diognetus

One early defence of Christianity against the pagan charge of novelty, though, takes a somewhat different approach to this question. The Letter to Diognetus, an anonymous tract written in defence of Christianity some time in the late second century, argues that although God conceived the design of sending his Son to redeem humanity, at first he told it to nobody but the Son. Then, when men and women had shown by their “unruly instincts and…sensuality and lust” that they were both “unworthy to achieve life” and “unable to enter into the kingdom of God by [their] own power,” God sent forth his Son Letter to Diognetus 8.9-9.2 [trans. Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 147, altered].

The unknown author does not say a word about the Old Testament period of preparation for the coming of Christ. One possible reason may be that while Christianity is indeed the Ancient Faith, it does partake of a quality of newness that the author does wish to emphasize, as we shall see.

“O sweet exchange!” Something new

The author has argued that God revealed his plan of salvation to none but his “beloved Son” until men realized their utter and complete inability to gain heaven by their own strength. But then, when men were conscious of their sin and God’s impending judgment, God,

“instead of hating us and rejecting us and remembering our wickednesses against us, he showed how long-suffering he is. He bore with us, and in pity he took our sins upon himself and gave his own Son as a ransom for us—the Holy for the wicked, the Sinless for sinners, the Just for the unjust, the Incourruptible for the corruptible, the Immortal for the mortal. For was there, indeed, anything except his righteousness that could have availed to cover our sins? In whom could we, in our lawlessness and ungodliness, have been made holy, but in the Son of God alone? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable working! O benefits unhoped for!—that the wickedness of multitudes should thus be hidden in the One righteous, and the righteousness of One should justify the countless wicked!” [Letter to Diognetus 9.2-5 (trans. Staniforth, Early Christian Writings, 147-148, altered)].

This is a truly marvellous text, as the author, overwhelmed by what took place at the cross, is lost in rapture, awe, and praise. Here, as so often happens in the writings of Paul, theological reflection leads to praise and worship and doxology.

Yet, the doxological nature of this passage should not lead us to overlook the way that it also contributed to the author’s defence of the Christian worldview. Why should the truth claims of Christianity be weighed seriously? Because, unlike other religions, it deals decisively with the ever-perennial problem of human sin. A renowned historian of this era, Henry Chadwick, puts this point well when he states that one of the major reasons for the growth of the church was the fact that the gospel it preached “spoke of divine grace in Christ, the remission of sins and the conquest of evil powers for the sick soul, tired of living and scared of dying, seeking for an assurance of immortality” [The Early Church (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967), 55].

And this was something truly new for the pagan world and something that that world truly needed to hear.

“At once so ancient and so new”

But that message—“at once so ancient and so new” (Augustine, Confessions 10.27)—is equally needed in our world that seems capable of only being fired up by what is modern and up to date. The ancient message of the new birth and the new covenant is still good news to modern—or should I say post-modern?—men and women and children grappling with the ever-present problems of sin and death and meaning and hope.

Piper on Athanasius

In a blog entitled Four reasons there was no regular blogpost today Phil Johnson directs his readers to a three-part series of talks that John Piper is doing on the great fourth-century Church Father, Athanasius (c.297-373). Well did Louis Berkhof regard Athanasius as “by far the greatest man of the age, an acute scholar, a strong character, and a man who had the courage of his convictions and was ready to suffer for the truth” [The History of Christian Doctrines (7th ed.; Edinburgh, Scotland: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 87]. Listen to Dr Piper’s series here: Oneplace.com.

Some Words of John Gill at the Opening of the Carter Lane Meeting-House

The words of C. H. Spurgeon at the opening of the Metropolitan tabernacle in 1861 are well-known. Below are some of the words spoken by his distinguished predecessor John Gill (1697-1771) when the Carter Lane meeting-house opened in Southwark, London, on October 9, 1757. Gill was preaching from Exodus 20:24, in the course of which he stated: “As we have now opened a new place of worship, we enter upon it recording the Name of the Lord by preaching the doctrines of the grace of God, and free and full salvation alone by Jesus Christ; and by the administration of gospel ordinances, as they have been delivered to us. What doctrines may be taught in the place after I am gone is not for me to know; but as for my own part, I am at a point; I am determined, and have been long ago, what to make the subject of my ministry. It is upwards of forty years since I entered into the arduous work; and [the] first sermon I ever preached was from these words of the apostle, “For I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified”: and through the grace of God I have been enabled, in some good measure, to abide by the same resolution hitherto, as many of you here are my witness; and, I hope, through divine assistance, I ever shall, as long as I am in this tabernacle, and engaged in such a work.”

Over the course of the past 250 years there have been especially four distinguished ministries in this congregation—those of John Rippon, C.H. Spurgeon, Tydeman Chilvers, and currently that of Peter Masters. Like that of Gill, they have faithfully upheld “the doctrines of the grace of God, and free and full salvation alone by Jesus Christ” and we trust that Gill, if he could have seen the future, would have rejoiced in this remarkable succession of biblical preaching.

Andrew Fuller Works on Cd

The one-volume 1845 Bohn edition of Andrew Fuller’s works, The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, has just been released on CD. K. David Oldfield, who is the pastor of Calvary Independent Baptist Church in Post Falls, Idaho, and who has done the scanning of this work via OCR, rightly notes in the “Preface to this Electronic Edition” that “modern Baptists may have heard about this man and his theology, but very few have ever directly read any of his material. In many cases, based upon hearsay, people have formed negative conclusions about him and in the process dismissed the wealth of wisdom and instruction that he has left us.” Oldfield also believes that a hard copy of Fuller’s works that is available may be too prohibitive cost-wise for wide circulation. Is he referring to the three-volume edition that Sprinkle Publications issued a number of years ago: The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (1845 ed.; repr. Harrisonburg, Virginia: 1988)? If so, it should be mentioned that this three-volume work has certain other inadequacies, including its incompleteness, the small font size of the text, and the lack of both critical annotation and adequate indices.

This electronic edition by Oldfield also suffers from not being complete, for there are two volumes of additional writings of Fuller that it does not contain. These are not included in any of the standard hard-copy editions of his works and neither of them is readily available today: J. W. Morris, collected, Miscellaneous Pieces on Various Religious Subjects, being the last remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller and Joseph Belcher, ed., The Last Remains of the Re. Andrew Fuller (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, [1856]). Nevertheless, having Fuller’s works in electronic form is fabulous, both in terms of research possibilities and usability.

Oldfield rightly notes that although “most of us would quarrel with Fuller in some areas of theology, in the main, most sovereign grace Baptists would not only agree with him, but would be blessed by reading his expositions and closely thought-out arguments against the heretics of his day.” And as he further notes, modern-day Baptists are deeply indebted to Fuller, for “along with a few others,” Fuller “was instrumental in bringing Baptists back to their “evangelical” and New Testament roots, helping to send William Carey as a missionary to India and imploring the lost of Great Britain to come to Christ.”

The CD can be ordered from kdoidaho@earthlink.net at a very reasonable price. The Works on the CD come in WordPerfect, MS Word and Adobe PDF.

A Calvin Quote

John Calvin’s love for the Church made him reluctant at first to embrace the Reformation for fear of involving himself in an unholy schism. But he soon realized, as he put it: “The communion of the Church was not instituted to be a chain to bind us in idolatry, impiety, ignorance of God, and other kinds of evil, but rather to retain us in the fear of God and obedience of the truth.”

The Clash of Civilizations and the Comfort of Irresistible Grace

It is interesting that the full details about the current rioting in Paris and its suburbs are not being given in most of the media. Here is the opening line of a report from today on AOL: “Bands of youths torched more than 750 cars and burned warehouses and a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France.” You have to read most of the article to find out that the rioting is taking place in areas that are “home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.” The riots are being done by Muslims. Similar riots have also been taking place in Denmark, which are clearly religiously motivated. See this post at Southern Appeal. What will it take for the western media to realize that Islam is not a religion of peace, as so many blithely claim, but one that clearly espouses violence and that in its holy book? “Holy” violence is at the heart of Islam from its earliest history and is central to its current reality. Of course, this is not to deny that the poverty and despair of the housing estates play a significant factor in the cause of the riots. But the western media, and especially that in France, have been reluctant to admit that what is going on here is really a clash of civilizations, to use a well-worn phrase made popular by Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard political scientist.  

Huntington used this phrase in his Summer 1993 Foreign Affairs essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” and he later expanded the idea into a book. In essence, he argued that Islam has bloody borders and wherever it is currently advancing in the world there is violence. Huntington’s hypothesis has not been without significant critique (see the items listed @ Clash of Civilizations?), but it does seem to have substantial evidence to back it up. The rioting in France seems to offer further support for Huntington’s hypothesis.

How then do we, who are believers, need to live in such a day as this? We need to pray passionately for the invincible advance of the gospel (see the model for this in 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2). And we need to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers amidst the harvest fields of Islam, ever confident that God will save his people. Is the salvation of a spiritually dead western secularist easier than that of a fervent, yet also spiritually dead, Muslim? Of course not! The power needed to bring about salvation of both is alike to the Spirit. Oh the comfort of irresistible grace!

Carey & a Summary of the Serampore Form of Agreement

It was a good number of years ago in the mid-1980s that the band of brothers associated with William Carey gripped my attention and it has not wavered since. So anything linked to Carey and his friends is of interest. I just came across this entry @ Oren Martin: William Carey (posted by cindy) . It contains an excellent summation of the Serampore Form of Agreement (1804) drawn up by the Serampore Trio: Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward.

For an essay on Carey that discusses the Serampore Form of Agreement, see this blogger’s “A Wretched, Poor, And Helpless Worm”: The Life And Legacy Of William Carey (1761-1834).

Loving the Church

What a precious text is Ephesians 5:25b: “Christ … loved the church and gave himself for her.” Before time began or space was formed, the One we know as the Lord Jesus Christ had set his heart on dying for those human sinners who would one day make up the church, the Bride of the Lord Jesus. Not out of necessity or from need, not by constraint or grudgingly, but from a heart of love, out of mercy and kindness, freely and willingly, Christ came into this world to die for the church. It is unfortunate that our word “church” is commonly used as a description of the building in which God’s people meet to worship. We thus talk about “going to church.” Early Christians, of course, were spared such confusion, for until the late third century believers did not have distinct buildings set apart for worship. Instead they would meet in Christian homes and for them the church easily had the quality of a family. And it was in the intimacy of this setting that they learned to truly love one another. So the Apostle refers to fellow-believers in the church at Rome as “my beloved Epaenetus” (Rom 16:5), Amplias, “my beloved in the Lord” (Rom 16:8), and “Stachys, my beloved” (Rom 16:9).

And earlier in the chapter, Paul shows us true love in action. Aquila and Priscilla, husband and wife, loved Paul so much that they were willing to risk their very lives for the Apostle. Literally, they put their necks on the line for Paul (Rom 16:4). When this happened we do not know. But that it happened spoke volumes for Paul about what it means to be in Christ. He never forgot what could have been a very costly display of love. He treasured the memory of the incident and the love that lay behind it. The love of Aquila and Priscilla powerfully illustrated genuine Christlikeness.

If we love Christ we cannot but love what he loves and be filled with the sweet love he has for his church.