Chapter Twelve3

Chapter 12.
Memorial Meeting for
Members of the Church On Wednesday morning, February 10th, 1892, commencing at 11 o'clock, the service arranged specially for members of the church and its organizations was held, the Tabernacle being filled. The chair was taken by the Rev. J. A. Spurgeon, pastor in charge.

Deacon S. R. Pearce, Superintendent of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Sunday-school, opened the meeting with a sympathetic prayer, which gave a fitting keynote to the meeting which was to follow; after which Rev. William Stott, formerly assistant pastor, announced the hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus' name," which was sung with solemn feeling.

Rev. Joseph Angus, D.D., Principal of Regent's Park College, who was introduced by the Chairman as "a former pastor of this church, my venerated tutor and lifelong friend," then said: "Of all meetings connected with these services, I deem it the greatest privilege to be allowed to take part in this. You are assembled today as a Christian Church, and you have reckoned me as still, in some sense, one of your members. I believe, that on your church-roll, my name will be found at the close of the year 1837. I was then only a lad; had just finished my course in Edinburgh; and was invited to become your pastor. For two years the pastoral relationship was sustained, amid the kind love and prayers and counsel of a devoted people. At the close of those years my happy pastorate closed with deep regret on my part, and with very hearty sympathy on the part of the people. In those two years one hundred and twenty members were added to the church.

"There were then, I remember, in connection with the church, the families of Warmington, Richards, Gale, Pewtress, Olney, and Burgess—names still fragrant in this place; their children and their children's children have been for years connected either with this church or with sister churches. Nothing done in. those days can be compared with your recent history; but in the faith, the love, and the devoted work of that day, there was everything to cheer the heart of the pastor. When I was called to become secretary of our Mission it was one of the severest wrenches I have ever known. For fifty years now I have been severed from the church, working elsewhere, but I have been in constant touch with some of its members and with its pastor. I have shared your sorrows, and your success; and I feel that it is a fitting thing that I should be here today, in this deepest sorrow of all, to commend the church and all its agencies to the guidance and blessing of our divine Lord. As I stand here I see before me the faces of the dead almost as distinctly as the faces of the living; it is a blessed memory and a blessed spectacle!

"I have been struck by the appropriateness of the Scripture text which you have inscribed over your beloved friend: 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.' As soldier, as runner, and as steward, he has no reason to be ashamed. We thank God for all his faithfulness, and we gather from his life fresh incentive to completer consecration. May I venture to suggest a motto appropriate to your condition as a church, which, I trust, may commend itself to your hearts: 'Remember them who are your leaders, who have spoken to you the word of God, whose faith copy, considering the end of their conversation.' One thought besides. We are here this morning to show our affection and respect for all that was mortal of our beloved friend. We mean to follow his bier tomorrow to the grave, but please remember, now, that your pastor is not here at all. All that was mortal of him is here; but he himself has become immortal. Sometimes men speak of following Christians to their tomb; sometimes they adopt language still more heathenish, and speak as if our loved ones were resting peaceably in their graves; but I affirm that the Christian man is never put into his grave at all. 'Absent from the body,' he is forthwith 'present with the Lord.' We cannot but feel the deepest affection for all that was mortal of our dear friend, and pay our homage to his name; but he is no more here: he is 'for ever with the Lord.' I believe that he misses his family; I believe that he misses his orphans so dear to his heart; I believe that he misses his students who are so greatly indebted to him. He misses his church, which was, in a large degree, the source of his strength; he misses the enquirers and the converts who were the joy of his heart, as they are the joy of the heart of every true minister. I cannot but believe that he misses them all, and it may be that in that land he knows as little about them as we know about him. But whatever be the disadvantages of the loss of the earthly relationship, to be with Christ is far better. His sins are behind him; his weakness is behind him; his cares and distractions are behind him; and he is for ever with the Lord. 'Wherefore comfort one another with these words.'"

Rev. A. T. Pierson, D.D., announced by the chairman as "My dearly loved colleague in the service of this great people, a man whom to know is to trust up to the hilt," said:—This is a unique gathering. It is the one meeting that I would rather be at, of all the gatherings of this week, for now the family meet round the bier to weep and pray and talk together about the spiritual father and brother who a few days since was in the land of the dying, but is now in the land of the living. I thank you that you have included me in the family gathering, if not as "one born out of due time," yet as one that you have so gently and generously adopted into your family circle, and who shares deeply in your profound grief. But, before I say what God has put in my heart, I must unburden myself of the last message at hand from dear Mrs. Spurgeon, who cannot be here today, and from whom, perhaps without design on her part, I have only this morning received a beautiful, tender, and sisterly letter, a portion of which certainly belongs to you. I will omit all the personal references in it, and read only what she says about her beloved and herself. The letter was written last Lord's-day, and is as follows:—

Mrs. C. H. Spurgeon's Letter to Dr. Pierson

"I want to tell you how perfectly happy my beloved was during the three delightful months of his residence here. The joy of bringing me to the place he loved so well, and showing me eagerly all the beautiful scenery in which he so delighted, was greatly enhanced by the assurance that you were standing in his place at home. How little we thought what God meant to do with his dear servant when he called you from beyond the seas! but our faith shall not fail. 'He hath done all things well'; and though the future, both to you and to me, may seem clouded and uncertain, we will trust and not be afraid. With me it is an absolute necessity that I keep looking up. 'He is not here; he is risen,' is as true of my beloved as of my beloved's Lord. To-day he has been a week in heaven. Oh, the bliss, the rapture, of seeing his Saviour's face! Oh, the welcome home which awaited him as he left this sad earth! Not for a moment do I wish him back, though he was dearer to me than tongue can tell. I shall pray much for you all during the week of grief. I feel myself like a shipwrecked mariner who has with difficulty reached the shore, and now looks with streaming eyes and fainting heart on others still struggling through those awful waves of sorrow. With Christian love and intensest sympathy, Your grateful friend, Susie Spurgeon."

We have shut the doors this morning against the world and the churches at large, that this great family may have a little familiar and close intercourse about the dead. This beloved man of God was to us in this family circle a preacher of the gospel. What a preacher! I am persuaded that the century has known no man that was his equal in the simple and persuasive utterance of the gospel message. It was a heroic resolve on his part 'not to know anything amongst you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.' But it was a rarer success on his part that, knowing nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified, he gathered and held the largest congregation within the bounds of the Christian world, for over forty years.

There are some, in these days, that would depreciate him, as a man that had no broad horizon—as a man whose range and scope were narrow. But such a verdict reacts upon those who depreciate him, for it shows how little they appreciate the genius of his ministry. The Campsie fiddler, when he heard Paganini, went home and broke and burned his own fiddle, not simply because that master violinist had brought out of his wooden box the most marvellous melodies and harmonies that he had ever heard, but because on one string he had executed melodies and harmonies that no other living performer had been able to bring out of all four strings. And the glory of Charles Haddon Spurgeon in his preaching of the gospel was that, from one string, 'Christ, and him crucified,' he evoked the melodies and harmonies to which a whole orchestra of intellectual instruments is not equal. The vibrations of that chord ran from the depths of the most profound mysteries to the heights of the most celestial glories. The combinations and the variations that he executed upon that one string have held the church of God entranced, and the world in awe. I pray you to notice that the limitation of his ministry was the glory of his ministry. He had the bravery not to know a thousand things that he might have known. He had the bravery to make the Bible the one book that he studied, and the Christ of God the one theme on which he discoursed. And you who for forty years have listened to his ministry will have found that out of that one string he brought every strain of instruction, every voice of consolation, every message, tender, pathetic, sublime, and beautiful, that is needful for the mind, the heart, the conscience, or the spirit, of a child of God. And I would have you notice also, in uttering these simple tributes to his memory, that he was not only a great preacher and evangelist, he was also a great Pastor. There are many evangelists that have the advantage that they only preach, and that they preach to audiences so different that they can use the same material over and over again, repeating, and completing as they repeat. Whitefield preached the same sermon over, fifty or one hundred times, improving it at every delivery; but Charles Haddon Spurgeon could not in this manner repeat himself. For thirty-seven years he has given his sermons to the public, and when they have been pronounced in this place they have been, in a sense, lost to him for future use, for they have been given in the wider pulpit of the press to a more magnificent audience than it was possible for him to reach even here. Notwithstanding the fact that the conditions of his ministry thus forbade the ordinary repetition of sermons, he has gone on speaking with perpetual freshness on this one perpetual theme; and yet the ministries of the last year among you were more precious than the ministries of any previous part of his life. Was not the secret of his ministry in two little utterances that he emphasized in his words, and especially in his life? When Dr. McAll went to Paris to begin his great work for the evangelization of the French people, he could speak only two sentences in French, and those not with Parisian accent either. One was 'God loves you' and the other was 'I love,' you.' Upon those two sentences Charles Haddon Spurgeon built his ministry. His whole gospel preaching was a proclamation, 'God loves you;' and his whole pastoral and personal life was the affirmation, 'I love you.' The people learned of the love of God through his lips, and were drawn to him by the personal love that he had to souls, as exhibited in all that he did and in all that he said.

I would remind you also that he was a great organizer and leader. Fifty mission halls or benevolent organizations, in some way or other connected with this church, yet survive, which owe their existence, under God, to his suggestion and organizing power. I need not remind this family of God, of his dear brother, James A. Spurgeon, who has been so marvellously fitted to complement and supplement all his labours, and has been so closely associated with him, as John Wesley and Charles Wesley were associated, a little more than a century ago. Nor need I remind you how these two beloved men of God, like right hand and left hand in the service of the Master, have founded the Pastors' College, which has had eight hundred students in its halls, and is represented on every continent of the globe. I need not tell you how these two brothers have likewise originated and maintained, through God, the Stockwell Orphanage, which at present has over four hundred boys and girls within its walls, doubly orphaned now that another father has been taken from them. Nor need I remind you of the Almshouses and the multitude of other noble and philanthropic works which owe, if not their existence, their subsistence, to this manly and Christian heart which now has stopped beating.

We have nothing to say today about the work accomplished by our departed brother beyond the bounds of this church. That will come in review on some subsequent occasion. I limit myself now to what he was to this church, with its organizations and its institutions.

There was nothing in which C. H. Spurgeon shone more than in his character as a true Christian believer. First and last, what he was as a preacher, what he was as a pastor, what he was as a worker, he owed to what he was as a believer in Christ Jesus. I do not wonder that the children in the Orphanage and in the Sunday-school were all drawn to him. I do not wonder that they understood him, for I never knew a Christian believer who was more, in the very best sense, himself a little child. Yes, it was a child that died on the 31st of January, nearly fifty-eight years old. He never lost his child-likeness, though he had lost his childishness; he carried all that is most sublime from childhood into the period of his manhood and into his maturer years. Do you ask me what was the secret of his power as a Christian believer? I think that the answer to that question is exceedingly simple. We shall not lose it even in analysis, for, at the bottom of all, it was that he had an overwhelming sense of the powers of the world to come. The invisible things were visible to his faith. The future and eternal were like present and temporal to him. He went into his closet and handled God, he saw that it was he himself, and he came out with the vivid impressions of communion with the invisible and the eternal. If you will take that single secret you will find that it underlies every other secret of his personal life and personal ministry. We need not look very far to find out why he was what he was. He took the Bible, and the whole Bible, as the inspired book of God; he took Christ, and the whole Christ, as the justifier, sanctifier and redeemer; he believed with all his heart; and every utterance was a speech born of deep conviction. To the ingenuity of intellectual genius, he added the ingenuousness of moral genius, and produced first and foremost, upon all who heard him, the impression that what he said he believed, and what he believed he believed with all his heart. Hence, as a great ocean steamer draws smaller craft in its wake, even unbelievers and sceptics were in a measure brought to fall into the line of his teaching, because of the positiveness of it, which was born of a defined and confirmed faith.

Suffer me to say one word more. I may the more fitly speak of his sick and dying bed, because I belong to another nationality and to another branch of the Christian church in a distant land. Round about that sick and dying bed, from May last to the end of January of this year, for more than eight months, the whole Christian church was bowed in solicitude, as round about his bier today, from all quarters of the earth, Christian believers bow in tears. I think that not since Christ ascended has there been a more pathetic illustration of the power of one believing child of God to attract to him millions upon millions of believers, upon whose faces he has never looked. Ten thousand messages and letters of sympathy, sets of resolutions and telegrams of enquiry came to his home here and in Menton during the time I have specified. There was not a branch of the Christian church that did not furnish representatives in this pathetic instance of condolence, either by personal calls or by communications through telegraph or post. From the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, down to the humblest vicar and curate, tributes have been paid to him; from all the branches of the Baptist, Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian churches, and from every other denomination of Christians, expressions of sympathy have been received. Yea, even the Jewish rabbi begged him to understand that the Jews were lifting prayer to the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob for his restoration. There has never, I repeat, been a scene, of which I have any knowledge, so pathetically sublime in the course of the eighteen hundred years of Christian history. Verily 'prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.' O my beloved friends, you do not know all you have had in him, and you do not yet know what you have lost. But, blessed be the name of God, what is your loss is his great gain.

What, in this great crisis, are we to do? We must go and stand by the Jordan, where he stood; take the mantle of the ascended man of God; smite the waters with that mantle, and say, 'Where is the Lord God of Spurgeon! He still survives, and is ready to interpose for us. Be sure that you take these Orphans to your heart, and see that in their comparatively fatherless condition they find the whole church here like a nursing mother. See that you take the Pastors' College to your heart, and ensure a generation of noble and faithful ministers of Christ to carry out the line of teaching, and to defend the gospel, that has made this pulpit illustrious. See that no work under which the shoulders and heart of Charles Haddon Spurgeon stood as a support shall fall today because that support has been withdrawn. I venture to prophesy that, if such is the spirit of your faith and your consecration, God will, in some mysterious manner, bless to you the departure of his servant, even as he has blessed his long presence among you.

Mr. J. W. Harrald, Private Secretary to Mr. Spurgeon, to whom the chairman paid a just tribute, calling upon him as "A dear friend, one of my brother's dearest helpers, who put wisdom and strength, gentleness and tenderness unrivalled, at my brother's disposal by night and by day, in life and in death," announced the hymn,—

"Servant of God, well done!

Rest from thy loved employ; The battle fought, the victory won, Enter thy Master's joy.

"The voice at midnight came;

He started up to hear: A mortal arrow pierced his frame;

He fell, but felt no fear.

"His spirit with a bound Left its encumbering clay; His tent, at sunrise, on the ground Without a tenant lay.

"The pains of death are past;

Labour and sorrow cease; And life's long warfare closed at last, His soul is found in peace.

"Soldier of Christ, well done!

Praise be thy new employ;

And, while eternal ages run, Rest in thy Saviour's joy."

Being peculiarly appropriate to the circumstances of the beloved Pastor's entrance into rest, this hymn was sung most heartily by the whole congregation.

Mr. Harrald, to whose words a special interest attached, as he had been by the side of the beloved sufferer to the end, then said: "I feel that I am here today as the representative of our dearly-loved and deeply-lamented senior Pastor, and of his beloved and bereaved wife. We meet today, as we have been reminded, in the capacity of a family. Therefore, speaking to you as members of the family, I wish to bear testimony, for dear Mrs. Spurgeon's sake and on her behalf, to the sustaining grace of God which has been granted to her, and to all of us who have sorrowed with her, away in the sunny land. The hymn which we have just sung speaks of 'the call at midnight', and close on midnight the call came to him whom we mourn. Many of you perhaps know that our beloved Pastor said to everyone who asked him when he thought of being back, 'I shall be home in February,' and nearly an hour before the time that he had himself fixed, he was at home, not at 'Westwood', but at his heavenly home, 'for ever with the Lord.' As the five of us knelt by his bedside, in the little room at Menton, after he had entered into rest, I felt that I ought to lead the little company in prayer for all who had been bereaved; but we were touched beyond expression, as we still continued on our knees, to hear the voice of the loved one so sorely bereaved, thanking God for the many years that she had had the unspeakable joy of having such a precious husband lent to her. You have heard from her beautiful letter something of what the past three months have been to her. We could go farther back, and speak of the past seven months; for seven months ago she gave her husband up to his Lord, but the Lord lent him to her a little longer. His dear wife always reckoned that those seven months were all extra, and so she was ready when the Master wanted the loan back again for ever. If there could have been any wish of his heart that otherwise would have remained unsatisfied, it was, as she tells you in the letter, that together they might sit under the palm-trees of his lovely Menton; that they might walk beneath the olives that flourish there; and that they might sojourn a little while by the tideless sea, beneath the cloudless sky, and amid those scenes he so dearly loved, mainly because they reminded him of 'Thy land, O Immanuel!' Those last three months seemed to make their earthly bliss complete; husband and wife often said that it was their honeymoon over again. They celebrated together at Menton their thirty-sixth wedding-day, also Mrs. Spurgeon's birthday, and from the family standpoint—and that is where we meet to-day—it was all that one could have desired. And oh, though it was sad for us to lose him there, we felt that, at least, one regret would be spared to us; had he stayed at home we should all have said, 'If he had but gone to Menton, he might have recovered!' But that was not to be.

"You cannot tell all that those three months at Menton mean. Little by little it will come out, and you will be thankful as you see how true is the text which has been placed on one end of the coffin. The question has been put to me already, 'When did the Pastor say to you, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith"?' Let it be known, as distinctly as possible, the Pastor did not say it at all. I have taken every opportunity I could get to say that the last message he was able to deliver to the congregation, or to anyone, was that remarkable message telegraphed to you on the very day that you were bringing in thankofferings for his partial recovery. Read that message again, in the light of what I am certain he knew at the time, and then see how characteristic it was.

"He and Mrs. Spurgeon were talking together, and they called me into the bedroom. They said, 'There is a little matter of business for you to attend to,' and then our dear Pastor dictated to me a telegram to be sent to the Tabernacle. He began, 'Self and wife, £100, thankoffering'; but altering the wording, he said, 'No; put it, "£100, hearty thankoffering towards Tabernacle General Expenses. Love to all friends.'

"I waited for more, but he had fallen asleep. That terrible unconsciousness, that soon seized him in its dreaded grasp, was already beginning to affect him. I waited, perhaps half an hour, and when he awoke, I said—'You did not finish the telegram.'" "Hasn't it gone yet?" he asked.

"'No,' I replied; 'there is plenty of time. They do not meet at the Tabernacle till four this afternoon; and I could not send it off without telling them how you are, for all will be anxious to know about you.' In his own characteristic way, he said, 'Let them find out; that is all I am going to say." Was it not just like him? Of course, I put a few words at the end of his telegram, that the friends at home might know how ill he was; but his last message was in harmony with his whole life—all for others, and not a word about himself. Was not his action characteristic even to the end?

"In most solemn conversation with me, several days before that, he had said, 'My work is done'; and he began talking of certain matters which no man would speak of, least of all such a man as he, unless he was certain that his work was ended. Yet, knowing that he was upon his dying bed, and perhaps, for aught one can tell, knowing that this was the last message he would ever send, he only said, 'Hearty thankoffering.' Notice that he did not say 'for recovery' every word was carefully weighed. 'Love to all friends.' This was his last message to you, and it is no use asking for any other. There is no other. We watched day and night with him. Oh, what would we not have given if we could have had another word? We hoped against hope that there would have been some other final message, but no other was given. There you have it: 'Hearty thankoffering. Love to all friends.' Do you ask, how did that text, 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith,' come where it is? It was my sad and mournful duty to submit to dear Mrs. Spurgeon certain matters which needed attention, and amongst other things, I took to her the inscription I had prepared for the coffin. It ended with this text. As soon as I read it, she said, in her own inimitable way—'How is it that you always think of just what I have been thinking? There is no other text for him.'" So the text was placed where it is; but our dear Pastor would never have thought of applying those words to himself."

"'I have fought a good fight? You know how true that is.

"'I have finished my course? It is no broken column that we have to rear to his memory. His work is finished.

"'I have kept the faith? And everyone here and throughout the whole world knows how bravely he did it.

"You may know something more also. Many voices will say this—but none ought to say it more distinctly than I do—that within that olive-casket there lies all that is mortal of a martyr for the truth's sake. If you will look in your Sword and Trowel for February, you will see a note on 'The Bible and Modern Criticism', and at the end you will read what the Pastor wrote with his own hand but a few days before he told me that his work was finished. Concerning that great controversy, which has now cost him his life, he says there that he does not regret his action, 'even though an almost fatal illness might be reckoned as part of the price.' We must now take out the word 'almost', for 'part of the price' paid by our beloved Pastor, in his contention for the faith, was his own life. For the truth's sake he counted not his life dear unto him; and again and again he has said, in the presence of those who can bear unflinching testimony to the fact, that, if necessary, he would gladly have laid down his life a thousand times for the sake of the gospel, for the defence of which he was 'set' as much as the apostle Paul ever was.

"You may imagine how much there is that one would wish to say to you personally; but I must say to the officers and members of this church and congregation, and to other friends throughout the world, on dear Mrs. Spurgeon's behalf, how deeply thankful she is for all the tokens of love she has received during the last eight or nine months; first the loving messages of sympathy, then of congratulation, and now of condolence. They have been simply overwhelming; and she can but ask that through every public channel her thanks may be conveyed throughout the whole world, for all the love and all the sympathy which have been showered upon her so royally.

"But has not our dear Pastor a last word for us? Ay, that he has; and here again I must link his name with that of his beloved wife. You know what, by a most remarkable overruling of the providence of God, last week's sermon was—('God's Will about the Future,' No. 2,242). Even more remarkable, the Pastor's message for this very week is what Mrs. Spurgeon has herself entitled, 'His own Funeral Sermon' (No. 2,243). The text is, 'For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep.' That sermon is his special message for today.

"But among peculiarly tender memorials of our glorified Pastor, there are some words, written by his own hand, as clearly as ever he wrote, in this little book, which I hold in my hand It is now a very precious treasure, for it tells us something of what he wanted to say before he was taken. I do not say that these words are all his own composition—some evidently are not—but they are gathered together, and some of them doubtless composed by him. They were put just where I should be the first to find them, in order, doubtless, that they might come as his message to you. Put these couplets together, and listen to the Holy Spirit's message to you, for by these words, 'he, being dead, yet speaketh.'

"'No cross, no crown; no loss, no gain;

They first must suffer, who would reign.'

"'He best can part with life without a sigh, Whose daily living is to daily die.'

"'Youth builds for age; age builds for rest: Who builds for heaven, will build the best.'

"'Poor they may live, but rich they die, Whose treasure is laid up on high.'

"'Oh, the sweet joy that sentence gives—

"I know that my Redeemer lives!'"

"'We cannot, Lord, thy purpose see, But all is well that's done by thee.'

"The last word is—

"'Prepared be To follow me.'

"Oh, may every one of us follow him, as he followed his Lord!" To which the congregation responded with a hearty "Amen." The Rev. V. J. Charlesworth, called upon to read the Scriptures, as a long-tried helper and friend, the Head-Master of the Orphanage, said: "There are lingering echoes which will now find a voice in the words of the inspired apostle, and which all must feel so truly applicable to the beloved Pastor who has gone.

"'I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.' 'His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain.' 'But as God is true, our word toward you was not "Yea" and "Nay." For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you... was not "Yea" and "Nay," but in him was "Yea.'"

"'I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.'" 'The gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.'" 'By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.'" 'Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.'" 'Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.'" 'O, come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.'" 'The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.'" 'He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?'" 'For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.'" 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.'" 'He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever. His glory is great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him. Thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance.'" 'Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.'" 'Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.'"

Rev. T. W. Medhurst, who was the senior student of the College, entering in the year 1855, and who has been ever since an honoured minister of the Word, being called upon, led in a heartfelt and heart-moving prayer.

Deacon T. H. Olney, the treasurer of the church, one of the eldest of the officers whom Mr. James Spurgeon, in introducing Mr. Olney, spoke of as "a band of men whom God has touched; the excellent of the earth in whom we all delight," said:—"In the presence of the great sorrow and the crushing calamity which have come home to the hearts of each one present, there is no need today to set aside seats for special mourners. We are all special mourners. I desire your sympathy and your prayers at this time, for I am not a practised speaker, but I have been selected on the present occasion because for so many years I have had the privilege and the honour of being associated with our dear Pastor in his work. My brethren in office have asked me to be a witness on their behalf of the loving esteem and reverence in which we have always held our beloved leader. We never had a difference of opinion with him. What happiness that is to look back to! There was never a strife, and never an unkind word.

"I do not wish in any way to be thought a critic of our dear pastor. I loved him too well for that. George Herbert says, 'The minister should be the judge, not the hearer,' and I agree with his sentiment. But I would add my honest testimony to the worth of our beloved friend. My opening remark about him is that he was first of all a man of faith, a man of humble trust. He retained much of the child in his nature. God was his Father, and his trust was as simple and childlike at the end of his career as it was at the beginning. I had the honour of hearing his first sermon in London, and he then struck the keynote of his ministry. The sermon was from the Epistle of James, the first chapter, and the seventeenth verse: 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' It was a marvellous sight, that morning at New Park Street Chapel, when he came into the pulpit. He had the dew of his youth upon him then. Few of you can remember him as the wonderful youthful preacher; but he spoke with the same confidence in the first sermon, and with the same eloquence, as in later years. He spoke afterwards, perhaps, with riper judgment, but never with greater power than when he spoke to those eighty or one hundred people in 1853.

"My next remark about him is, that he was a man of prayer. He did not depend merely upon his own prayers, but he always invited the prayers of his people. When the prayer-meeting was well attended, he expected a blessing. I will try to prove that to you in his own words. When the congregations of the church began to increase at New Park Street, did he say, 'I am a popular preacher. I am a successful man?' No; this is what he wrote to me: 'The house was filled with hearers; many souls were converted; and I always give glory to God first, and then to praying people.'" My third testimony about him is, that he was a grateful man. He was grateful not only for the prayers of his people, but for their offerings. When he was away from home, I used to send him a telegram every Monday morning with an account of the proceedings of the previous Sabbath, and he wrote to me that he valued those telegrams very much. This postcard was sent to me from Menton in answer to such a telegram: 'The news of the offering rings the bells in my heart. What a good people I have.'" The fourth testimony I have to bear is, that the greatest joy that our dear Pastor ever experienced, was in the salvation of souls, in the increase of the church, and in the glory of Christ's kingdom. I will read you an extract from a private letter sent to me: 'Your telegram was one of the grandest ever transmitted on the wires. It made my heart sing, "Hallelujah!" Blessed be the Lord for the care of his church! Dr. Pierson has sent me the outlines of his sermons, which prove that he deals in the finest of the wheat.' My telegram had told him that forty-nine had joined the church; I think it was in December; and his reply shows the joy with which it filled his heart. He adds, 'May the forty-nine new friends be a real accession of strength.' To which we all add, 'Amen.'" I bear record of him, in the fifth place, that he had a very kindly esteem of the church officers by whom he was surrounded. An extract from another letter will make this clear:—'May the Lord richly bless you. Never man had a kinder company of friends, or felt more bound to them. Let us pray for a blessing exceeding all that we have hitherto known. It may be had. It will be had.'" I must also bear testimony that he inspired very great confidence in us all. Whatever he recommended we accepted at once. I can remember the building of this great Tabernacle, the opening of the Stockwell Orphanage, and other things which we have not time to refer to. Many of the great undertakings might, at first, have seemed imprudent; but his plans were always well matured. They were always thought over beforehand, and prayed upon, before they were introduced to us. We, as Deacons, had very little to do but to back him up.

"In the next place, he drew out very devoted service. I do not think that he had many drones about him, they would not have been happy in his company. He always set us to work, and started us in such a happy way that we have kept on at it. You know for how many years I have been the treasurer of the church, and you know with regard to the other officers associated with him, how continuous their labours have been. My dear brother, Mr. Joseph Passmore, has been with him from the beginning. The Pastor won our affection and kept it.

"The last point is very tender ground, but we can bear a true witness. He was a most charming companion. You in the church knew many of his excellences, but those of us who were intimate with him and were able to enjoy his private friendship, know what a rich treasury of conversation he possessed. His humour was always humour without baseness. For instance, note one of his remarks to his Deacons. He said, 'You are the best Deacons that any minister was ever blessed with, but do not be proud. You are no better than you ought to be.' This will give you a sample of the terms on which we were. Whenever we met together we were a happy, united band, with confidence in our leader, that he was trusting in the Lord and would lead us to fresh victory. Some of those who have been here with him have gone on before, and I have thought with what pleasure they would welcome him on the eternal shore. Earth is poorer, heaven is richer, for his loss. May it tend to draw our hearts and affections heavenward. If so, the death of our Pastor will be blessed to us, indeed.

Elder J. T. Dunn, on behalf of his fellow officers, said:—"There are two brethren my seniors. One is laid aside on the bed of sickness, and the other is too feeble to make his voice heard in so large a congregation; therefore I have been asked to speak today. My personal reminiscences of our beloved Pastor have only helped to endear him more and more as the years have rolled on. For some thirty-four years I have been identified as his helper in the work of the church. My recollections of him, so far as regards his tender sympathy and his kindness, which is beyond expression, are very vivid today. He was thoughtful in the highest degree, and hearty in all his expressions of brotherly feeling and Christian love. His letters, his words, and his actions speak of a man whose heart was large. Following his dear and blessed Master, he always sought to do unobtrusive acts of kindness, many of which never can be known or spoken of here, but all of which will be known in 'that day.'" When persons came to enquire concerning salvation, or to confess their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, how his eyes would brighten; and how heartily he would welcome them. It mattered not to him what the character of the clothing, or what the age of the candidate. He could always meet their condition, and tenderly sympathize with them. Many a one have I seen go into that vestry with a tearful eye, who has returned with joy on the countenance. The Lord has struck the fetters from many a sin-bound soul while upon his knees in that hallowed room.

"His tenderness towards the poor and the afflicted was very noticeable. If, in the morning of the day, he had a communication that some member of the church, or even someone who was not a member of the church, was laid aside, he would turn out of his way, in order that he might call upon the sick one, to help and comfort them.

"Let me say one word concerning my brethren, the Elders whom I represent. We are of one heart and of one mind. Our hearts were knit to the beloved Pastor, and we have pledged ourselves to hold together in the name of the Lord, whom we serve; whatever may be the future history of the church, you will find the Eldership standing as one man for the faith of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." The Chairman here interposed, and touchingly said: "I am sure that you will spare me the minute required to read a telegram, which has just arrived from my dear sister at Menton.

"Telegram from Mrs. C. H. Spurgeon

"My heart bleeds with yours, but our beloved's joy is full. We shall see him again, and our hearts shall rejoice. Death shall be swallowed up in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces.

Spurgeon, Menton."

Rev. W. Corden Jones, "a trusted servant and helper in connection with the Colportage Association," gave out the hymn commencing, "Oh, God of Bethel," which was heartily sung, after which it was announced that Principal Gracey, who was to have represented the College, was, to the regret of all, too ill to be present, and that only one other name, reminding us worthily of the text, "Instead of the fathers shall be the children," remained upon the programme.

Deacon William Olney said: "I have been asked to speak this morning on behalf of the many missionary workers. Our dear Pastor, whom God has taken to himself, had a remarkable power of infusing his own love for souls into the hearts of others. In response to his 'Trumpet Calls to Christian Energy," from this platform, men went out of this congregation in hundreds, to fling themselves into the slums of the South of London, and bring in members to this church out of some of the lowest parts of the neighbourhood. As a consequence of this, there are, to day, twenty-three mission stations, and twenty-six branch schools, and at these places there are every Sunday evening about one thousand of the members of this church working for the Lord Jesus Christ amongst the poor. Just before Mr. Spurgeon was taken ill last summer, with that illness which has ended fatally, he used to recount, sometimes in his addresses at the prayer-meeting, sometimes in private conversation, a little incident in mission work which was very touching. A dear brother who, I expect, is present here this morning, wrote to his Sunday-school class in a mission school, and in consequence of those letters, some half-dozen of his boys were brought to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our dear pastor used to tell that story with tears, and to ask all his Christian hearers to be as earnest in telling the story of the love of Jesus by tongue and by pen.

"How was it that our dear Pastor had such a love for mission work, and had such a great influence in spreading it? I think, perhaps, most of all, because he valued the souls of poor men. He looked upon the soul of a poor man as equal in value to the soul of a rich man; he knew that for all eternity the soul of a scavenger, cleansed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God, would shine as brightly in the crown of the Lord Jesus Christ as a soul of any peer of the realm, who might be brought to the knowledge of the Lord.

"Another reason for his great interest in mission work was his wonderful kindliness of heart. How full of love he was—real chanty—not the name of the thing, but the very spirit of it! I remember a dear friend, a poor widow, going up from Bermondsey to join the church. She came back and said, 'Oh, Mr. Spurgeon was so kind to me. He not only spoke in words and received me into the church, but he gave me half-a-crown.' I confess that I was very much alarmed to hear it at the time, for I feared that all the poor widows in Bermondsey would want to come and join the church. But it was an illustration of his kindliness of heart towards the poor.

"The South of London in this mission work is poor, inexpressibly poor, today, because of the loss that we have suffered. I beseech you, brethren, men of position and influence and riches, connected with this church, to do for the home mission work, as far as you can, what the Pastor did for it. And let my fellow soldiers of the cross working in South London missions, go forward as led by his spirit, still believing that the gospel which was powerful in his lips shall be powerful in ours also." The service closed with the Benediction.