The Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon Preacher

The Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), British Baptist Preacher, was born in Kelvedon, Essex, the eldest of seventeen children. He gave his first sermon in 1851 at Teversham, Cambridge, and began preaching regularly after that. In 1852, he became pastor of the small Baptist church at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, and in 1854, at the young age of twenty, Spurgeon was called to the pastorate of London's New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. He soon became well-known for his talent as a preacher and the extent of his popularity forced his growing congregation to move to the much larger Exeter Hall, and thence to Surrey Music Hall. In these venues, Spurgeon preached to congregations of more than ten thousand people. At the age of twenty-two Spurgeon was the most popular preacher of the day. In 1861, his congregation moved permanently to the purpose-built Metropolitan Tabernacle, Elephant and Castle, made with seating for five thousand people and standing room for another thousand. Spurgeon's sermons were published widely and by the time of his death, over three thousand of them had been published. During a period of ill-health and recuperation in Nice, France, Spurgeon died there in 1892.

Since the old Methodist times, there has been no preacher so capable of influencing masses of people as the Rev. Charles Spurgeon.... he has the advantage of a powerful voice, a clear intellect, and a vivacity of diction.... His utterances are a singular mixture of realism and religious fantasy.... The Church of England owes him a deep debt of gratitude.

Vanity Fair, 'Men of the Day', No. 16, 1870.