The Book that Spurgeon Hated, yet Loved
Joseph Alleine wrote a book that made housekeepers burn the eggs. George Eliot in his 1866 novel Felix Holt depicts an elderly maid by the name of Lyddy who makes breakfast for the Lyon family. She was known to get distracted to the point of weeping while the eggs burned on the stove. “O Lyddy…The eggs are hard again. I wish you would not read Alleine’s Alarm before breakfast; it makes you cry and you forget the eggs.” With no defense, Lyddy admits that “they are hard, and that's the truth; but there's hearts as are harder, Miss Esther.'"[1]
One hard heart that grew harder every time it heard Alarm to the Unconverted read aloud belonged to Charles Haddon Spurgeon. As a boy, his mother read a portion of the book on Sunday evenings as part of the family devotion. First came a section of Scripture, and she would explain the Bible verse by verse. Then she would read a portion of Alleine’s Alarm or Richard Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. After reading a segment of the texts she would close the book and “then came the time of pleading.”[2] She would make direct and personal appeals to her children to be saved. “How long would be before we would think about our state, how long before we would seek the Lord?”[3] Finally, she would close in prayer. Spurgeon said that there was one prayer that haunted him. His mother, speaking to the Lord, acknowledged that if her children went on in their sins it would not be because they were ignorant and had not been warned. Her own soul would one day approve of the verdict of God against them “at the day of judgment if they lay not hold of Christ."[4] Spurgeon said that this thought pierced his conscience—that a mother would approve of the destruction of her own children if they refused such a clear and urgent appeal to be saved. This was a season in his life when he often cried himself to sleep.[5]
Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted is a book that never faded in strength from the memory of Spurgeon. Between the years 1857 and 1890, Spurgeon mentioned Alleine’s Alarm fourteen times in his sermons;[6] twice in the Autobiography the work is mentioned, and four times in Lectures to my Students Joseph Alleine’s piety is brought up (once in chapter 2 and three times in chapter 3).
In one sermon, Spurgeon said that the reason why his mother read from books such as Alleine’s Alarm or Baxter’s Call was that his mother loved her little ones and wished for their salvation, and she thought that the terror of the Lord would arrest their attention and awaken their minds. “She used to read to her children chapter after chapter of Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted. Oh, that book!”[7] The dreadful words gave the boy nightmares, and he feared that he would burn alive in hell. “How many dreams it gave her boy at night about the devouring flames and the everlasting burnings.”[8] Spurgeon admits that the book gave the opposite effect. “But the boy’s heart grew hardened, as if it were tempered rather than melted by the furnace of fear!”[9] The hammer that was intended to break the rock made the stone adamant.
It is sometimes unclear the exact effect Alleine’s Alarm had upon the boy. At some points, Spurgeon said that the book drove him further away from salvation, and at other points, he expressed immeasurable thankfulness for the book because it prepared him for salvation and drove him to Jesus. Iain Murray, in commenting upon this strange back and forth of Spurgeon’s recollection, says “Spurgeon’s length of time under conviction has been, by some, blamed on defective teaching and books—particularly Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted.” Murray disagrees with these assessments because later in his life Spurgeon is able to look back on the hounding of his Heavenly Pursuer and can be thankful for how the Lord brought him under conviction. “The fact that Spurgeon could, in later years, write: ‘I have to bless God for many good books; I thank him for…Alleine’s Alarm’” shows that it was a book that led Spurgeon to salvation, even though the travail of soul was painful.[10]
What use are old books?
We need to recover the practice of preaching gospel sermons like Spurgeon did. Spurgeon pleaded with sinners to be saved all throughout his sermons, and we must learn from his example. But the pleading of Spurgeon did not originate in a vacuum. Joseph Alleine’s An Alarm to the Unconverted (published in 1671) had a momentous influence on Spurgeon’s conception for direct appeals to the unconverted to be saved. The approach of making a sinner aware of his need through the Law as well as the practice of directly addressing the unregenerate from the pulpit are traditions that made their way down to Spurgeon.
We need to look to men like Spurgeon because we ought to be troubled over the decline of gospel sermons. Over 30 years ago the Reverend Paul E. G. Cook of Hull, England expressed that his conscience was troubled. He said the Reformed community has stopped preaching gospel sermons—and the problem is that they still think they are preaching gospel sermons. It is not as if these preachers have stopped believing in the gospel. These Reformed pastors, Cook said, are theologically conservative. These pulpits have not denied the gospel. The issue is that they no longer plead with sinners to believe in the gospel.
Reformed theology believes that God is sovereign in salvation. The elect shall be saved. They also acknowledge the other side of the battlement: man is still responsible for his actions and will be held accountable for not believing in Christ. If one holds both these truths equally—man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty—then one will be on the good course. The problem with the Reformed community said Reverend Cook, late minister of Kingston Reformed Church, is that they have mentally assented to the existence of man’s responsibility but have not opened the doors of its significance.
Revered Cook said that no aspect of church ministry demands as much attention as does the matter of preaching gospel sermons—that is, preaching evangelistic sermons. He said that “some preachers take the view that whenever they preach from the Bible they are preaching the gospel, as though all the Word of God were gospel.”[11] By this, he challenges the Reformed status-quo that reasons if God saves by his Word, then any chapter ought to do. Truth from Numbers is just as good as truth from Romans. What this approach to teaching fails to appreciate is that people who are given the gift of salvation are first made aware of their need for a savior. That is, men need to be alarmed to the fact that they are unregenerate, and preachers ought to make an effort to alarm them. It is malpractice to offer the benefits of salvation without warning men of the peril that awaits their everlasting souls. Many Bible teachers, Cook argues, have gotten milk in their veins and have fallen short of the kind of preaching Charles Spurgeon displayed: “frequently we fail to call sinners to repentance, or warn them of the judgment to come, or urge them to be saved.”[12] Instead of calling hell for what it is, men now speak of a bland “Christ-less eternity.” It seems that many preachers fail to give any indication that unbelievers may be in the audience, and they speak from the pulpit in such a way as if everyone in the congregation were already saved.
men need to be alarmed to the fact that they are unregenerate, and preachers ought to make an effort to alarm them
Almost 20 years ago Iain Murray expressed a similar concern. He was troubled by modern developments in Reformed circles that implicitly believed that since God is sovereign in salvation, “provided our material is scriptural, it matters little what we are preaching on.” [13] This is part of a larger passivism in pulpits which believes that “nothing particularly important or effective can be said to the unconverted” that will influence their salvation.[14] Echoing Cook, Murray agrees that many Reformed preachers have stopped preaching “what were called ‘gospel sermons,’” and they only “see the work of preaching as simply ‘teaching the Bible’ in a consecutive manner.”[15] If Iain Murray, the great chronicler of Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, has a bone to pick with men who preach the Bible in a consecutive manner, one ought to take notice. What has been missing from Reformed pulpits is blood-earnest pleading from preachers, imploring men to be reconciled to God.
There is help available for unpersuasive preachers from Charles Spurgeon. The Prince of Preachers was a champion of Calvinism, but he knew the value of imploring souls to close with Jesus. No amount of sovereignty negated the instrumentality of preaching. “God works mightily by this instrumentality. But our agony for souls must be real.”[16]
In order to understand the significance that the old book called Alarm had on Spurgeon’s life, we will in a subsequent article look at the historical connection between Spurgeon and Alleine, and how this book led to Spurgeon’s salvation. Next, we will see the way in which Puritan evangelism shaped Spurgeon’s preaching. Finally we will explore the similarity between Alleine and Spurgeon in the art of making direct appeals to the unconverted.
Spurgeon believed fully in the means of beseeching men to flee to Christ. Given the immensity of the danger of unsaved souls, he advised his students to “give the ungodly no rest in their sins; knock again and again at the door of their hearts, and knock as for life and death.”[17] In the next article, we will examine how God knocked on Spurgeon’s heart and used the hands of men to do the knocking.
Read More:
Part 2: Spurgeon’s Conversion, With the Help of the Puritans
Part 3: Spurgeon at the School of Puritan Evangelism
Part 4: Spurgeon: The Art of Wooing Souls
ENDNOTES
[1] Eliot, George. Novels of George Elliot: Volume V: Felix Holt. London: Blackwood, 1866, 227.
[2] Spurgeon, Charles. Autobiography: The Early Years. Edinburgh: Banner, 1962, 86.
[3] Spurgeon, Early Years
[4] Spurgeon, Early Years
[5] Spurgeon, Early Years
[6] Sermon #s128, 252, 410, 446, 531, 1503, 1889, 2277, 2314, 2424, 3070, 3274, 3318, & 3527; two times Alleine’s piety is mentioned: #s 443 & 518.
[7] Spurgeon, No. 446, "The Old, Old Story." Metropolitan Tabernacle, London. 30 Mar. 1862.
[8] Spurgeon, “Old Story”
[9] Spurgeon, “Old Story”
[10] Murray, Iain H. The Old Evangelicalism. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2005, 48. Quoting Early Years, p. 86.
[11] Cook, Paul E. G. "Spurgeon's Gospel Preaching." Fulfilling the Great Commission. 54-68. Westminster Conference. London: Westminster, 1992, 54.
[12] Cook, “Spurgeon’s Gospel Preaching”, 56.
[13] Murray, The Old Evangelicalism, 46.
[14] Murray, The Old Evangelicalism
[15] Murray, The Old Evangelicalism
[16] Spurgeon, Charles H. Lectures to my Students. London: Passmore, 1883, 189.
[17] Spurgeon, Lectures