Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon 1834-92, English Baptist preacher. He joined the Baptist communion in 1850. In 1852, at age 18, he took charge of a small congregation at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, and, at 20, went to London as pastor of the New Park St. Chapel. His immediate popularity made necessary larger buildings for his audiences, until the huge Metropolitan Tabernacle, erected for his use, was opened in 1861. Around this developed a pastors' college, an orphanage, and missions. Spurgeon's sermons, published weekly from 1854, were collected in 50 volumes. A strict Calvinist, he opposed the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which caused his withdrawal in 1864 from the Evangelical Alliance. He separated (1887) from the Baptist Union because he believed that modern biblical criticism was threatening orthodoxy. Among his numerous publications are John Ploughman's Talks (1869) and The Treasury of David (7 vol., 1870-85). His autobiography (4 vol., 1897-1900), compiled by his wife from his diary and letters, was edited and condensed (1946) by D. O. Fuller.

Bibliography: See biography by E. W. Bacon (1968).

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon (1834–92), Baptist preacher. In 1854 he went to Southwark; his sermons drew such crowds that a new church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Newington Causeway, was built. He estranged some members of his community by his rigid opposition to liberal methods of biblical exegesis, and in 1887 he withdrew from the Baptist Union.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon (1834–92). Christian Baptist minister. In 1851, he became a Baptist. He began preaching, and was appointed to a chapel at Waterbeach, near Cambridge. In 1854 he moved to New Park Street Chapel in London, where the crowds who came to hear him were so great that the Metropolitan Tabernacle was built for him in Newington Causeway, completed in 1861: he ministered there to the end of his life. The printed sermons (in the end amounting to 63 vols.) enabled him to reach an even wider audience. He was firmly Calvinistic in doctrine, and he withdrew from both the Evangelical Alliance and from the Baptist Union.