Spurgeon: The Art of Wooing Souls
The Holy Spirit is the one who converts men, but God is pleased to use the tears of men to move hard hearts. Spurgeon was in earnest when he preached, and his earnestness gave him power. The naturalness that Spurgeon felt in the pulpit can be attributed to his immense personal gifting. There is, however, another more significant reason for his extemporaneous power: he loved people and felt the value of their souls.
In The Soul Winner, Spurgeon gives an illustration of a man unaccustomed to helping the wounded. He is asked to lift another man on a stretcher. To the man’s surprise, the wounded man on the stretcher was heavier than he thought and having felt the heaviness of the man he chose not to leave the man’s side. Lesson: “When you know how to carry a man in your heart and feel the burden of his case, you will have his name engraved upon your soul.”[1] Spurgeon believed that this was what many needed to experience, and then they would be better preachers.
Joseph Alleine was moved to write his book because he felt special pity for the unconverted, like a father who feels deeper pity for the child that is sick.[2] He wrote with great energy and with weeping because he cared for their souls, pleading with them to find life.
When a man is burdened with the fate of eternal souls he becomes earnest—all flippancy and show-boating over one’s education evaporates. When a man is in earnest, his sermon becomes lit on fire, and he pleads with men. Every illustration has a purpose and no part of the sermon is ornamental. He does not seek to win admiration from the audience. In The Soul Winner, Spurgeon said that Christians are not only witnesses to the truths of Christianity, but they are also pleaders for Jesus.[3] The earnestness of a man matters:
It seems as if the sign and token of Christianity in some preachers was not a tongue of fire but a block of ice…So, when a man has to speak for Christ, if he is not in earnest, let him go to bed.[4]
The reason why a preacher ought to have a tongue of fire is that he cares for the souls of his audience. The problem with people is that they are careless about their own souls. The minister must care for the soul of a man more than the man himself cares for his own soul. The job of a preacher, Spurgeon said, is not just to preach but also to gain the attention of men. Slumbering hearers need to be awakened. For this reason “a great part of our labours lies in seeking out attractive illustrations, parables, and choice sayings, by which we may coax men to attend to their own interests.”[5] Spurgeon did not see illustrations as ways to entertain the common man, as many preachers today seem to toss out stories and garner laughs. He viewed illustrations as means to raise heads if those heads would pay attention to the gospel. Spurgeon sharpened his fish hooks and added glimmers to the bait in order to catch prey.
The minister must care for the soul of a man more than the man himself cares for his own soul.
It is this concern that moved Alleine to continue his passionate appeal without feeling fatigued. At many points in Alarm, seemingly unable to continue the argument, he bursts out in exclamation.
Now mercy is wooing you; now Christ is waiting to be gracious to you, and the Spirit of God is striving with you. Now ministers are calling; now conscience is stirring; now the market is open, and oil may be had, you have opportunity for the buying. Now Christ is to be had for the taking. Oh! strike in with the offers of grace. Oh! now, or never.[6]
Alleine’s Alarm exemplifies Puritan evangelism, which was logic on fire. The Puritans believed that the mind could be persuaded by proofs, but their sermons were not merely cerebral. They believed that the will and the passions of men could be moved by eloquence.[7] That is, the Puritan model was to preach so as to convince the head, to move the heart, and to impel the will. Since it was the aim of the Puritan preacher to achieve an effect in his hearers, he was constrained to preach the gospel in a way that could be understood by any in the audience. They wanted to preach so as to win the hearts of even children. William Perkins [1558-1602] said that the preacher must “observe an admirable plainnesse and an admirable powerfullnesse.”[8]
In a similar fashion, Spurgeon followed the Puritan tradition and spoke so as to be understood by all. A scathing critic, J. Ewing Ritchie, at the end of a tirade of denunciation against Spurgeon, was forced to confess “[Spurgeon] preached to the people in a homely style and they like it, for he is always plain and never dull.”[9] The editor of Spurgeon’s sermons, F W. Robertson said that
Mr. Spurgeon and his vulgar slang is a violent reaction from the cold, unfelt conventionalities with which men have grown so familiar…he recognizes the men and women before him as flesh and blood.[10]
Richard Baxter remembered of Joseph Alleine that his sermons were “so melting, so convincing, so powerful.”[11] The desire to see souls saved caused both Spurgeon and Alleine to speak in such a way as to melt hearts.
Spurgeon said that one’s hearers need to see the preacher in agony over their eternal condition. Spurgeon wished to have the insistency of Baxter, to preach as though he was sure never to preach again, as a dying man to dying men:
I pant for that inward agony of spirit which has made men preach the gospel as though they knew they would be wrapped in their winding-sheets when they descended from the pulpit, and that they should stand at the bar of God as soon as they had finished their sermons. And I feel that, as we want an agonizing spirit in the pulpit, our hearers need it, too.[12]
And What of Us?
Spurgeon said that the way in which a man can be filled with blood-earnestness in the pulpit is to consider the fate of souls that refuse to repent of their sins. If a man can develop a heart of compassion for the lost, to know the value of a soul—if he would “think about the dread, immeasurable eternity, to which men are hastening,” then he would go forth every day ready to preach the gospel.[13] The same should be said about our own personal evangelism to our family, friends, and neighbors. We must consider the weight of another’s soul and to carry them in our hearts.
The impending doom of hell has caused some men to become sweaty caricatures. Wiping their brow with a handkerchief and pacing the stage, these Bible-waving men in black suits, have become derided in popular culture. These are the men screaming into bullhorns on college campuses, calling on people to turn or burn. Not only does the culture hate these intolerant men, but the church wishes to have nothing to do with them either. No one wants to be the Howard Dean of his church, screaming into a microphone and making everyone feel uncomfortable.
So pastors now sit on stools on stage with their coffee cups and un-tucked shirts, and they have a chat instead of a sermon. There is no judgment; there is no hell; there are only ‘three ways to be a better you.’ A century of pragmatism that arose out of Revivalism, Charles Finney, anxious seats, and sawdust trails has left the church in the west on strange ground. Churches would like to present themselves as more mature, but there is an older voice that would like to disagree.
For Spurgeon, the reality of hell was not a means to beat people into submission. The unquenchable wrath of God ought to cause the preacher to well up with tears and to speak more softly, not more harshly. “Some have used the terrors of the Lord to terrify, but Paul used them to persuade. Let us copy him.”[14] It is possible to plead and beseech without harshness, but it will have to be done with tears. These tears do not begin when a man ascends the steps to the pulpit, but they begin when he is struggling over souls in private prayer. The struggle with God will give energy for the struggle with men. Then the preacher will be able to plead with the souls of men and say, “We have come out to tell you that the world is on fire, and you must flee for your lives and escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”[15]
Read More:
Part 1: The Book that Spurgeon Hated, yet Loved
Part 2: Spurgeon’s Conversion, With the Help of the Puritans
Part 3: Spurgeon at the School of Puritan Evangelism
ENDNOTES
[1] Spurgeon, Charles H. The Soul Winner. New York: Fleming, 1895., chapter 8.
[2] Alleine, Joseph. An Alarm to the Unconverted. Edinburgh: Banner, 1978., 15.
[3] Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, chapter 8.
[4] Spurgeon, The Soul Winner
[5] Whyte, D. M. “Charles Haddon Spurgeon – Preacher.” Diversity in Unity. Stoke-on-Trent: Tentmaker Publications, 1963. 36-58. Puritan and Reformed Studies Conference, 47.
[6] Alleine, Alarm, 121.
[7] Watkins, Owen. The Puritan Experience. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 6.
[8] Watkins, The Puritan Experience
[9] Whyte, Diversity in Unity, 46.
[10] Whyte, Diversity in Unity
[11] Beeke, Joel, and Pederson, Randall. Meet the Puritans. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2006, 21.
[12] Spurgeon, Charles. Autobiography: The Full Harvest. Edinburgh: Banner, 1976, 123.
[13] Spurgeon, The Full Harvest, 125.
[14] Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, chapter 8
[15] Spurgeon, The Soul Winner