Chapter 42:`Opening Of The Metropolitan Tabernacle

Chapter 42.
Opening Of The Metropolitan Tabernacle

First Sermon in the New Chapel—A Bazaar—A Memorable Easter-day—Week-day Services—Ireland and the Irish—Work at Southampton—Baptists and their Literature—Spurgeon "Waxing Morbid"—Dr. Guthrie's Testimony—In Wales,

Mr. Spurgeon preached for the first time in the Metropolitan Tabernacle on the afternoon of March 25, 1861, the text being Acts 5:42, "And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ." The opening service had taken the form of a prayer-meeting at seven o'clock a.m. on the Monday preceding, however, and on the next day there was a bazaar. This was visited by some two thousand persons, including many members of the aristocracy, the stalls being well furnished with goods needed in everyday life as well as things of a more fancy kind. It was remarked that "the centre of attraction seemed to be a large stall presided over by Mrs. Spurgeon, who had the most miscellaneous assortment of goods in the bazaar; for she not only sold baby-linen, pictures, and other fancy goods, but also dealt in daggers, one taken at Delhi, and another, if we correctly remember the fair lady's statement, at Sebastopol. Mrs. Spurgeon tried, à la Robins, to dispose of these articles, saying that they would be very useful to those fond of curiosities, but had not found a purchaser for them up to nine o'clock on Tuesday night." On Tuesday evening, March 26, a meeting of the subscribers to the building fund was held, when three thousand persons assembled, and one chronicler reports, "When the building was lighted up, the spectacle was one of the grandest and most imposing we ever witnessed." Sir H. Havelock presided, and while he had to confess that a sum of £3,000 was still required to discharge all liabilities, he hoped their experience on that occasion would correspond with that of the Israelites who brought more than enough for the requirements of the house of the Lord. The pastor still resolved not to preach in the chapel on a Sunday until all the funds needed were subscribed; and yet his desire was to preach in the building on the next Sunday. Mr. Spurgeon said:—

"It was thought at first that it would be a foolhardy thing to attempt to raise £12,000 for the erection of the building; but, as they proceeded, they looked for £15,000, and afterwards for £30,000; and, as their own ideas swelled, the liberality of the Christian public increased, so that his faith did not stagger through the weight of the difficulty, but through the weight of God's mercies. Money had flown in upon them from America, Australia, and every part of the world. His wish was that whatever income was to be derived from the sittings might be devoted to the training, under his direction, of young men for the work of the ministry."

After several other addresses had been given, the announcement was made that the amount of money required was subscribed; on hearing which the people rose, and sang the Doxology, and at the pastor's request repeated the verse. On Wednesday evening, March 27, Dr. Steane presided at a meeting of members of neighbouring churches in the new Taber. nacle, when, after acknowledging himself to be everybody's debtor, Mr. Spurgeon added:—

"My dream and the promise are fulfilled—the promise God would help me to build a place the income of which would be devoted to the training of young men for the ministry, not with any view of interfering with or setting aside the colleges, but to bring out rough earnest men, who would lose their vigour if too highly polished. I hope you will all say something this evening, however short it may be. Some of you who have the gift might say a sovereign, and others, who have not such golden eloquence, half-a-crown, a shilling, or even a sixpence." On Sunday, March 31, Exeter Hall was crowded in the morning, that being the last service prior to the final removal of the congregation to the Tabernacle. On the preceding Friday, being Good Friday, the pastor preached twice in the new building; and then on the evening of Easter Day he had the happiness of conducting the first Sunday service in the chapel, which was free from debt. The discourse was based on passages which had reference to the building of Solomon's Temple. The building was crowded, and the outer gates had to be closed to keep back the throng in the street. Dr. Campbell characterised the spectacle as "stupendous and unparalleled." Never before had he set eyes on such a congregation beneath one roof, and the sight was almost oppressive to the mind. In the graphic description which the veteran journalist gave at the time he seems to have thought the building to be in all respects successful. Perhaps the strangest arrangement of all to one over sixty years of age was the pulpit, or rather, what would appear to him as the absence of any pulpit. "What may be considered as the pulpit" was to him "a handsome gallery with a table and a desk," being furnished with a sofa. "At the back are six separate seats resembling those of first-class railway carriages, where the deacons sit in state like so many judges," he remarks; "while Mr. Spurgeon in front sustains the combined offices of Lord High Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice, and Attorney-General, doing the whole of the speaking with a vigour and a vivacity which enliven all around." The doctor then depicts the preacher as he saw him on that memorable night:—

"There stands the herald of salvation: he reads the word of the Lord, and every utterance falls distinct on the ear of the thousands around him. The multitudes lift up the voice of praise, which is as the sound of many waters. It ceases: the accents of prayer succeed—prayer, true prayer, the utterance of the heart, simple, direct, fervent, vehement, penetrating all and moving very many.... There stands the preacher as a man amongst men: he seems quite at home, but the idea of display, either in matter or manner, appears never to have entered his mind,... It was clear, however, that now the preacher has found at last a burden to try his strength. He might be likened to a powerful man under a ponderous load: he still walked firm and steady, but every muscle was tried to the uttermost, and his tread was heavy on the ground—any material increase would have brought him down." As he sat behind the preacher on that Sabbath evening Dr. Campbell asked himself what would be the effects of the ministrations of such a man in such a building? The shrewd observer looked at the matter as an Independent, and the conclusion he seems to have arrived at was that his co-religionists would never be able to hold their own against such a competitor. Thus, in The British Standard of April 12, he said:—

"The building will inevitably form a powerful magnet, especially to young people, in all quarters of the city, who will hardly endure the old-fashioned churches and chapels of their fathers. The result will be to confer on it a leviathan monopoly. This monopoly will operate in two ways: it will bring multitudes from the world to the Cross—an event in which we shall most sincerely rejoice; it will also draw multitudes from the churches to the Water—an event in which we do not rejoice. This Metropolitan Tabernacle, we believe, will do more to make proselytes than all the other Baptist chapels in London united. It will lift the thing into respectability and even dignity, It will become an object of ambition with sentimental young women and poetic young men to be plunged into a marble basin so beautiful that it might adorn a palace, and so spacious that dolphins might play in it. Then Mr. Spurgeon knows well how to go about this matter: his noble catholicity has not sufficed wholly to eliminate his baptismal bigotry. His manly eloquence will most powerfully minister to the triumph of the polished marble. He showed last Sabbath evening that, while prepared to die for the Gospel, he is not less prepared to fight for the Water!"

After the first Sabbath evening service the Lord's Supper was celebrated; and, while the galleries remained nearly full, the ground floor was filled with communicants, the number of visitors being so large that their names could not be taken according to the usual custom. As an observer belonging to another denomination Dr. Campbell was struck with Mr. Spurgeon's method of administering the ordinance, a manner which may at first have been peculiar to himself, but which was generally followed by those who came forth from the Pastors' College. Thus, after reading the words of Scripture instituting the Supper, the pastor asked his deacons to assist in breaking the bread, which they did in the face of the congregation instead of having the bread cut up and placed on plates beforehand. Then as the Supper as instituted by Christ was taken in a reclining position, all sat while singing the hymn. Though this method was new to him, Dr. Campbell declared it to be "right in principle and happy in effect. The domestic aspect was complete." The opening services of one kind and another kept on week after week. "Never was such an edifice so built," we find it remarked; "never was any edifice so opened." On Tuesday, April 9, there was a sermon by Hugh Stowell Brown, followed by a baptismal service. This was sketched by Dr. Campbell, who thought, however, that nothing sectarian should have marred the programme of such a glorious month:—

"The interest of the thing was overpowering. We doubt if it was a whit inferior to that of Taking the Veil in the Church of Rome. There was the young orator, the idol of the assembly, in the water with a countenance radiant as the light; and there on the pathway was Mrs. Spurgeon, a most prepossessing young lady with courtly dignity and inimitable modesty—the admiration of all who beheld her—kindly leading forward the trembling sisters in succession to her husband, who gently and gracefully took and immersed them, with varied remark and honeyed phrase—all kind—pertinent to the occasion and greatly fitted to strengthen, encourage, and cheer. Emerging from the water, there were two portly deacons in boxes at the side of the steps, with benignant smile, to seize their hands and bring them up, throwing cloaks over them; two other deacons received them at the top of the steps, and another two politely led them backward to the vestry. It was quite an ovation, an era in the history of the neophytes. It had really not been wonderful if all the ladies in the place had been candidates for such distinction. We have ourselves seen several who were there whose heads seemed completely turned."

Among the chief of the meetings which followed was that for the Exposition of the Doctrines of Grace on April 11; and that of the following evening, when Mr. Henry Vincent gave an oration on Nonconformity, the audience being worked up to a high pitch of excitement by the lecturer's rhetoric. The services throughout were regarded as a novelty and as a whole unparalleled. The Freeman thought the time given to the discussion of the doctrines of Calvinism the dullest evening, which from the nature of the subject before such a mixed audience may have been the case.

Throughout the progress of this great enterprise, the conduct of the young pastor had been so entirely removed from any self-seeking that he had been generally commended by the Press and by outsiders, although there still remained a minority of onlookers whom nothing could move into approval, and who could see no self-sacrifice in the man whose whole life had been a resolute turning aside from all temptations to mere personal aggrandisement. Thus, one Scottish journal, which was supposed to be in some sense a Christian paper, reminded "Sympathetic Aberdonians" that no more money-boxes were needed for the Tabernacle, as the place was opened and paid for; and as the building was "Mr. Spurgeon's own property, pew-rents and all," he would be able to ride in a carriage for the rest of his days. That being the case, it was hoped he would "finally dissociate the work of the Gospel from the pursuit of Mammon." Mean writers of this calibre could not understand Spurgeon: the truth about his devotion to the Cause, and extraordinary self-sacrifice, had to be told by others:—

"Mr. Spurgeon is still in the morning of life, yet how vast and varied his achievements! How extended and merited his renown! Only six years ago, a stripling in the nineteenth year of his age, he entered this Metropolis a stranger; but, like another Joseph, 'God was with him'—a fact which explains all that has followed. He has in everything far outstripped the most favoured of his contemporaries. The annals of English Christianity present nothing analogous. His piety, genius, eloquence, and labours have reared for him a monument which will endure to the latest posterity. When all that now live, and their children's children to the hundredth generation, shall have passed away, the Metropolitan Tabernacle will remain the memorial of this wonderful and Heaven-favoured youth, who was the instrument of its erection. As a well of salvation of matchless magnitude, an aggregate of millions may be expected to have drunk at it the water of life before the close of ages. In the salvation of that mighty host, he will have been indirectly instrumental, and in the world of glory, peopled with the spirits of the just, myriads will claim him as a sublunary benefactor."

Now that the Metropolitan Tabernacle was an accomplished fact, the building was found to be a far more convenient place than Exeter Hall for May meetings. The first gathering of this kind that was held in the new chapel appears to have been the annual assembly of the Irish Society on April 22. The speeches were by those who understood Ireland, and who were in hearty sympathy with the work. A passage from Mr. Spurgeon's address on the characteristics of an Irishman may be given:—

"I am sorry that we have not an Irishman with us, as they are always such interesting speakers. I have heard the most wonderful speeches from brethren who, I am sure, must have been Irishmen. When it was said that if I preached so much I should kill myself, one of these brethren said he believed I should never die while I went on preaching as I do. Another brother, on rising to address an audience, said, 'Before I speak to you at all, I should like to say a few words.' I wish to say a few words about the character of the Irishman. I cannot say too much in praise of the tenacity of the Irish character when once it lays hold of what it believes to be true. If the raw material for martyrs were needed again, you must get an Irishman—he is the man to burn for what he believes to be true. I do not think it an ill sign that, with all the harsh treatment and grasping character of his priest, he still adheres to what he believes to be his father's Church. I like the man because he will not give up what he believes. I will not commend bigotry, or stupid, senseless adherence to a dead creed, but still there may be good in—I must not say a holy—but certainly an admirable tenacity which, when modified and trained, might make the Irishman the truth's foremost defender. There is another thing about the Irishman which makes him well worth looking after—his wonderful fire. We want a few Irish preachers—I will not say in our own denomination, but in many. Dissenting bodies; men who do not require stoves in their chapels, but who are stoves themselves. We have had enough of those dry brethren who understand magnetising people till they go to sleep. We need preachers who cannot say anything better than has been said, but can say it in a more lively way. If we had an Irishman or two in our committee, I think it would be a good thing. He is the man to suggest new schemes of raising money. I have heard of an Irishman who proposed to teach the people by Sabbath-schools held two days a week, and of another, who, when the tithing-man came, proposed that it should be diminished from a tenth to a fifth. If we had such a man, he would be going about proposing that instead of 10s. a year subscription, it should be 5s. a quarter. An Irishman on the committee would be worth almost as much as the Secretary himself."

All this time the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle felt great interest in the progress of his brother at Southampton. On May-day Mr. Spurgeon preached in Above Bar Chapel, which was lent for the occasion; and a tea and public meeting in Carlton Rooms followed. A piano, worth seventy guineas, was presented by the people to Mrs. J. A. Spurgeon; and on the following day Mr. Spurgeon, of London, presided at the meeting at which the church was formed, of which his brother James was to be minister—"A Particular Baptist Church, strict in fellowship, but holding open communion." At the end of the spring, or at the beginning of June, a feeling of great weariness again came over the young preacher, so that engagements were cancelled, and Mr. James Spurgeon preached at the Tabernacle for one Sunday, thus allowing his brother to be away in the country for some days. Dr. Campbell received the following note for publication:—"Mr. Spurgeon begs to inform the public that he is knocked up with hard work, and is compelled to go into the country to rest. This will upset all arrangements, and he begs his friends to remit his promises, and the Christian public not to inundate him with invitations." The strain and the excitement of the spring had been great, so that there was nothing surprising in the fact of the pastor being reminded that he possessed only human attributes. At one communion after the chapel was opened, a hundred persons were admitted to church membership, and one hundred and forty at another. Dr. Campbell remarked, "This is pretty well as times go, making, we believe, a total membership of nearly 1,900 members." An article was mentioned which had appeared in The Record, pointing out the kind of powerful popular preaching that was needed for the times, not mere learning or rhetorical eloquence, but faithful messengers of Christ speaking in the spirit of the Baptist:—"Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Such preaching was to be heard at the Metropolitan Tabernacle; and while Calvin himself would have put his seal on the doctrines taught, Whitefield would have certified to its eloquence. It is then said:—

"Charles Haddon Spurgeon is not one of a class, but an individual chosen for the accomplishment of a special work; and mentally, morally, and physically, he is every way admirably adapted to his mission. His seeming defects, in the eye of some, are special excellences. He is not to be judged by the petty rules that poor mortals have derived from the creeping experience of the past. Nothing were easier than to prove that he is often wild and erratic, and transgresses the canons of the schools. He is above the schools. He is a law to himself, and wholly unamenable to the tribunals cf criticism. He simply exerts the powers, peculiar and wonderful, with which God has endowed him. He reads, he expounds, he prays, he preaches, as nobody else ever did, or, probably, will ever do. He is an original and a rebel in everything. But, his insurgency notwithstanding, he is the impersonation of the profoundest loyalty to a higher law. Comets are not less amenable to rule than suns. Through his disobedience he achieves his triumphs and rules the millions." At the same time it was feared that the young pastor was going to extremes in the matter of baptism. As an editor of The Baptist Magazine, Mr. Spurgeon at this time contributed an article on Ministers' Libraries, in course of which he said, "We are not a literary people, and the few scholars among us are hardly denominational enough to add much to Baptist reputation." It was also thought that important advantages were being lost through failing to cultivate a denominational spirit. To this exception was taken—"The great orator is waxing morbid, we might almost say rabid," it was remarked. The Baptists were not thought to show any shortcomings in the direction of zeal in advancing their own distinguishing tenet on the question of baptism: the tendency was believed to be rather in the opposite direction. There was a text which Spurgeon might venture to speak upon—"Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the Gospel"—words of the great Apostle in which the mere ordinance seemed to be thrown into the shade, and which thus seemed to breathe a spirit different from that which moved the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. "With the one the ordinance is secondary; with the other, primary. With Paul the water is merged in the truth; with Spurgeon, although the truth is not merged in the water, it seems almost, if not altogether, placed on a level with it." It was thought that there might be danger in what seemed like excess of zeal for baptism. But the fears of Pædobaptists were never realised so far as Spurgeon was concerned.

Another observer, who was equally warm-hearted, harboured no such fears concerning his friend. In the course of a speech made about this time at Edinburgh, Dr. Thomas Guthrie said:—

"When in London two years ago, I went to hear that great man Mr. Spurgeon. I didn't care about how he affected duchesses and countesses who were among those that thronged to hear him, but what I wanted to know was how he affected the people down in Surrey. With the view of testing that, I fixed my eye upon two persons sitting opposite to me in the gallery. From their appearance I judged them to be a greengrocer and his wife. We heard a noble sermon—noble in its truth, its talent, and its telling effect. Some things among those that were said did, I do confess, grate on my ear; but, after all, they were as mere spots on the sun; and what I was interested in was to watch how the greengrocer and his wife were affected; and this is what I saw. Regularly at each recurring passage that jarred on me I observed that they were stirred and thrilled, for they looked in each other's eyes with a quickened intelligence, and by the light of the glance which they reciprocated I read their feeling. 'Well, isn't that fine!' There was, I believe, a ploughman once in Wales who was gifted of God with a rare faculty of speaking in a manner that at once told upon the rich and affected the poor; but God's ordinary method of endowment is to give different gifts to different men. He is pleased to use a variety of tools, some being rough and some smooth, some sharp while some are heavy. One man he uses to break up the fallow ground, one to plant the seed, and one to water what has been entrusted to the ground. One man is a Boanerges, and another a Barnabas—one a son of Thunder, and another a son of Consolation."

Soon after Midsummer, 1861, Mr. Spurgeon was again suffering from overstrain; and on July 4 his brother had to take one of the great preacher's engagements at Islington Chapel. A short time was passed on the shores of Lake Derwentwater, which helped to bring back the needed health and strength.

It was about this time that a visit was paid to Swansea, which excited the greatest interest in the town and neighbourhood. Although the preacher did not arrive at the railway station until nearly midnight, hundreds of persons were waiting in order to accord him a hearty Welsh welcome and, if possible, to shake hands with him. The scene was of a kind that must have been novel even in such a person's experience. "Good-bye, my friends," said the visitor, as he was driven away to Mr. E. M. Richard's house at Brooklands, "I hope to say a word of great import to you to-morrow." On the morrow the rain came down most depressingly, but all were disposed to look at things on their brightest side, especially as Mr. Spurgeon himself offered to act in the most self-denying manner. The service was to have been in the open air, according to Welsh fashion on a great occasion; but, as that could not be, it was arranged that two services instead of one should be held in the morning. This involved double labour, which was cheerfully borne; and then, as the weather cleared, a great open-air service was held in the evening. Long before the time for commencing the approaches to the field were thronged with people. The service itself was described in a local paper at the time:—

"We could not help feeling that the spot was well chosen, commanding as it does a panoramic view of the town and its matchless bay, with the Mumbles Lighthouse—a beacon and a warning—resting in silent solitude in the distance. The hymns, too, and the beautiful manner in which they were sung, and the sound wafted by the summer breeze from side to side, were grand beyond conception.... Then, when he spoke, the plainness of his features, the bluntness of his manner, the brisk hearty sound, the clear spontaneous volume of his voice struck us as in strange contrast to the ordinary type of clerical first-raters. It was, however, when the tide of sympathetic speech rolled mass on mass, and heap over heap, and began to flow over the souls of the hearers, bathing and suffusing them with its influence, that the orator proved himself worthy of his fame. He took a solemn portion of Holy Writ for his text—'O earth, earth, earth, hear thou the voice of the Lord'—and as he went on, swaying the mighty multitude of his temporary congregation, forcing their thoughts to follow the bent of his mind, and working and winning them to his point of view, it became clearer and clearer that he had a master's power." The Welsh are a people whom the most sanguine adventurer must not expect to captivate all at once. Even as regards such a feat, however, Mr. Spurgeon so far succeeded at an early date in his career that one admiring ancient dame ventured the opinion that the London preacher only needed to be blind of one eye to take rank with Christmas Evans himself.

Cardiff, Newport, and other towns were also visited. The afternoon service at Cardiff was interrupted by a somewhat violent thunderstorm; but that of the evening in the market-place drew together a congregation of ten thousand persons. From this time forward Mr. Spurgeon appears to have found peculiar pleasure in visiting the Principality. He is said to have declared that he never found so much pleasure in ministering to any people as the Welsh.