Chapter 77: An Attack of Smallpox

Chapter 77.
An Attack Of Small-Pox

Illness—Missionaries—Lecture on Bells—The St. James's Magazine on Spurgeon—Illness—"The Treasury of David "—Death of "Father" Olney.

According to a confession he once made to me in the study at Helensburgh House, Mr. Spurgeon considered himself to be a fortunate man in the conventional sense; but at the same time he considered himself to be unfortunate in not having those privileges which are commonplaces in the lives of less eminent persons. What a beautiful garden the study windows looked out upon; but what, a drawback it was hardly ever to have half an hour to spare to walk round it, and enjoy its beauties in detail. The pressure seemed to become more and more overwhelming; and it became more and more evident that the cause of the ailments which now became more frequent and more painful was mental rather than physical. In the middle of September he was laid aside by a sharp attack of neuralgia. He preached on Sunday, the 12th of the month, but was laid aside in the week. He was not able to appear on the following Sunday, and on October 7 he was unable to keep an engagement at Leicester. Change of air and scene was sought at Brighton, and, writing from there, he said that he would be unable to attend the Baptist Union meetings at Leicester. The gout in the head, attended with great pain, was of a dangerous form.

There was this year an animated discussion in regard to the Baptist Foreign Mission and its agents which created some interest. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Society at Exeter Hall, Dr. Landels exposed the defects of the system of sending out only married men, who often involved the committee in great expense, in some instances before they had done any service. He advocated sending out unmarried men in the first instance, and resolved to agitate until some reform was effected. A number of letters were written, and the opinion seems to have been that Dr. Landels was setting up a standard of heroism he would not himself care to exemplify. Mr. Spurgeon wrote thus to the editors of The Freeman:—"Dear Sirs,—Last week I commenced a letter to you upon the missionary question now under debate, but was unable to complete it owing to extreme indisposition. I am barely able to write now but I feel as if I could not stay my pen. The tone of much of the correspondence in your journal concerning the matter in hand is deeply to be regretted. Are we such babes in grace that we cannot consult as to how to do the Lord's work without falling into the use of personalities, insinuations, and bitternesses? Better things are to be believed of us, and henceforth it behoves us to lay aside these marks of spiritual weakness and speak the truth, and hear the truth spoken, without irritation. Our brethren who have conducted the discussion are such gracious men that they have but to will it and another spirit will rule the hour.

"I feel bound in duty to say that Mr. Landels seems to me to be far more worthy of our thanks than of our suspicions. He expressed himself manfully upon a delicate subject, knowing that many would differ from him; this alone secures him honour among Baptists. The brave shall never lack defenders in our ranks while the traditions of our heroic fathers survive among us. Had Mr. Landels been wrong throughout, his daring should have secured him chivalrous treatment from his opponents, and, together with his past character, it should have screened him from the faintest suspicion of the mean-spiritedness which has been insinuated. For one, I must confess I listened to his speech with reverent awe, delighting in the man to whom it was given to speak in such a manner—not envying his gift of eloquent utterance, but marvelling much thereat, and rejoicing to see it enforcing such Apostolic teaching with such sanctified fervour. I am sure the speaker did not mean to hint an unkind thing of a single worker in our foreign field. He always speaks more severely than he precisely means. There are no lurking bitternesses in him. Had he meant sarcasm he could have dealt it out plainly and vigorously, for the man has no lack of power or courage to lash, out if he feels that God's work demands it of him.

"I am prepared to stand by him in this missionary controversy in evil report and good report. The resolutions of the committee have my heartiest sympathy. I trust the attempt to overthrow them will be an utter failure. If they are rescinded, my faith in the society's future will be at the lowest ebb. If changes so slightly affecting the bulk of the society's work, so pressingly requested by brethren to whom the opinion of their necessity amounts to a solemn conviction, are to be dismissed with outcries of denunciation, what wonder if, disheartened with our rigid conservatism, our zealous friends should try their schemes alone and so weaken a society already none too strong. Let none be driven from us because we cannot afford space for their convictions; rather let the society which led the van in the mission enterprise itself count it her glory to adapt herself to the conscientious views of her supporters, that so by the aid of their differing light she may find out the more excellent way.—Yours truly, "C. H. Spurgeon.

"Brighton, September 21."

There were now about one hundred boys in the Stockwell Orphanage, with the prospect of the number being doubled within a very short time. At Michaelmas there was another festival at the institution, the chief attractions being the singing of the children and the playing of a company of accomplished hand-bell ringers. The schoolroom was decorated as for a holiday, a large congregation was attracted, and there was, besides, what at first looked like a most eccentric collection of bells, of various sizes, shapes, and ages, these being designed to illustrate the lecture on Bells which the President had undertaken to give. At the time, and in connection with this occasion, the Baptist Metropolitan, as he was called, was contrasted with the Romish Metropolitan, much to the advantage of the former. "Bell, book, and candle," in connection with Rome, were associated with cursing; but Bells, the Book, and Candles—the latter having reference to Sermons in Candles—in the case of Spurgeon, became a means of blessing. "No mere report would convey an adequate idea of the interest which Mr. Spurgeon contrived to throw around a subject to which probably few among his hearers had given much attention," remarked one who was present. It was added that the President had "a gift, common to few, which enables him continually to relieve the monotony of a subject by startling divergences, which keep alive the listening powers of his hearers without any lowering of his standard as a teacher, or the suggestion of a doubt as to his oneness of character when devout thoughts find expression in words full of solemnity."

It was quite true that the audience were invited into little-frequented paths, while conjectures which they little expected to hear were started. For example, when lying in his cradle, did Cain amuse himself with coral bells? Was the flock of sheep which Jacob tended headed by a bell-wether? Did the sheep and camels of Job carry such tinkling bells as had been heard on the platform? Was it probable that bells had been invented by Noah; and did the phrase "eight bells" at sea originate from there having been eight persons in the Ark? Then, did the patriarch ring a bell during the Mood when the beasts were about to be fed, after the manner of a modern circus?

More trustworthy information about bells in general was that they were first used in a.d. 400 as calls to divine worship, soon after which date they became associated with superstitious practices. "St. Dunstan was distinguished for his ability as a bell-maker," it was also remarked; "and he may be imagined to have been engaged in this employment when with red-hot tongs he is said to have taken the devil by the nose as a lesson to us that we should keep our hearts in a red-hot condition, and be ready to attack the adversary of souls whenever he makes his appearance." It was shown that the music of bells had been associated with the Sabbath; and the Curfew was regarded as a necessary precaution rather than as an example of Norman tyranny. Bells had been rung to clear the air of devils, or to drive away lightning; but when that had recently been done during a thunderstorm in France, the only tower struck was one in which the bells were ringing. In drawing some useful lessons from his subject, Mr. Spurgeon went on to say that bells were floated amid dangerous rocks to give notice by ringing in the storm; and so God in His providence had fixed storm-bells which, if listened to, would warn travellers, by decay of health, fortune, or character, against those hidden rocks upon which many yearly perished in terrible shipwreck. Ministers needed to be like bells: they must be cast in the furnace by the great Master Maker; but they were of no real use until God rang them. Pastors had been known to preach what deacons told them to preach; but they might as well have no tongue at all as be thus muffled. Nor were they to resemble cracked bells—cracked in reputation. They should be like bells warning wayfarers of approaching storms, guiding travellers to a safe refuge, inviting to a marriage feast souls married to Christ, and they should not mind being kept to work. "The motto inscribed on one bell I feel inclined to take as my own," said Mr. Spurgeon, with characteristic emphasis—"'Pull on, brave boys, I am, metal to the backbone. I'll be hanged before I crack!'" Just as some bells had been known to wear out their steeples, ministers should be content to wear out their bodies in their Master's service. The third division of the lecture was a little sermon on the word Bells, the heads being the constituent letters, e.g.:—

"B, Biblical, suggests that the bells associate with the pomegranates which were on the high priest's garments, and teaches that the Christian's life should sound forth a confession of Christ, and be fruitful for His glory; while the bells on the horses should teach that the commonest things of life should be consecrated to God's service. E, Emblematical, teaches negatively that we should not be like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, but positively our life ought to ring out with a clear note God's praise. "We must ring regularly, continuously, harmoniously, and joyously. Some Christians pull such a long face that you can only read on their countenance misery unto the Lord, but I do not understand preparing for everlasting happiness by plunging ourselves into incessant misery. L, Literally, we ought to make all our lives holiness to the Lord; we ought to engage in nothing in which we would not be found employed when the Lord comes. Let holiness to the Lord characterise our time—measuring bells, our wedding bells, our visiting bells (not, as too often now, the silliest and vainest gossip), our shop bells (let them always ring out, 'we give no short weight here!'), our table bells, our joy bells, and our sorrowful bells." At this time a popular shilling monthly magazine gave an article on the Tabernacle and its pastor which at least showed that interest in Spurgeon and his work extended to all classes, while prejudices which formerly existed were gradually being broken down. The following passages may be quoted as still showing how the preacher appeared to outsiders who were not too prejudiced to give him credit for being what he was:—

"The sermon is, however, the great feature of the service at the Tabernacle, and it is his preaching which has made Mr. Spurgeon famous. The vast audience settles down to a breathless silence before he gives out his text, and expectation and interest are visibly written upon the faces of all.... The writer, for his part, must declare that he went to listen to Mr. Spurgeon as strongly prejudiced against him as anyone could well have been; but that after hearing him preach at least half a dozen times, and after reading more than a score of his printed sermons, he finds his old prejudices entirely destroyed. In their place he is free to confess that he entertains a very lively admiration of the popular preacher's simplicity and earnestness.... His sermons are like his prayers, entirely extempore. The preacher stands in front of his platform, pocket Bible in his hand, and pours out in that wonderful voice of his a discourse which is always telling, and which would be really eloquent were a little more pains taken with its composition. To literary merit, however, Mr. Spurgeon does not apparently aspire, nor does he ever seek to indulge in rhetorical fireworks above the heads of his congregation. On the contrary, his first object appears to be to talk in the simplest manner to each person before him.... When you analyse his sermons you marvel at the effect they have produced; but when you listen to them as a whole, rolled forth by that magnificent voice, and evidently coming straight from the heart of a man terribly in earliest, you cease to wonder at their success. This man, the most popular preacher of his generation, is also the most simple preacher to whom we have ever listened.... His extraordinary earnestness and his own unmistakable faith in the truth of all that he teaches commend his preaching to the common mind. And it cannot be denied that it is a style of preaching which is likely to do great good. The harlot, the drunkard, the profligate, are the persons to whom he addresses himself. The wisdom of the world, its pride, its intellect, its refinement, he holds in contempt. It is its sin and misery which seem to have the sole attraction for him; and he calls upon the perishing to flee from the wrath to come with all the fiery earnestness of a Whitefield or a Wesley.... No one who has heard Mr. Spurgeon can deny that a great political leader was lost to the country when he became a Baptist minister.... He has, however, taken another path in life. In all sincerity we believe that he has done well to do so. The Church of England may regret that such a man as this remains persistently without her pale, and that from the faults of his early training he is her consistent foe.... He is, in the course which he has taken, following in the footsteps of Him who came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance—Him of whom it was said, as it may with truth be said of the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, that 'the common people heard him gladly.'" In the course of a sermon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle at the end of October, Mr. Spurgeon particularly referred to the work of the Church in general, especially to that of the Church of England. It was shown that in proportion as the Church realised her mission the less would be her desire to seek mere honour and self-aggrandisement. Could it be imagined that churches existed for ministers or clergymen? If such were the case, the sooner the whole thing was abolished the better. Churches of any class were not made that men of ready speech might stand up on Sunday and talk, and so win daily bread from their admirers. Nay, there was another end and aim apart from this. These places of worship were not built that the various congregations might sit comfortably and hear something that should make them pass away their Sundays with pleasure. A church in London which was not doing good in the slums and dens and kennels of London was a church which had no reason to justify its longer existing. A church which did not exist to reclaim heathenism, to fight with evil, to destroy error, to put down falsehood—a church which did not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice, and to hold up righteousness—was a church which had no right to be. Let her have her bishops and her preachers, and let them be supported, let all things be done decently and in order; but let the end be looked to—the conversion of the wandering, the teaching of the ignorant, the help of the poor, the maintenance of the right, and the putting down of the wrong. All ought to take their share in battling with the evils which afflicted humanity. Though reforms of all kinds should be carried out, the first thing was to get at the hearts and consciences of men. The preacher went on to show that the mission of the Church was not alone to those who would treat them kindly, generously, and affectionately, but its great errand was to the harlot, to the thief, to the swearer, to the drunkard, to the most depraved and debauched. If no one else cared for these, the Church always must; and if there were any who were first in their prayers, it should be those who, alas! were last in their thoughts. The ignorant should be diligently cared for. It was not enough for the preacher to preach so that those instructed from their youth could understand him; he must think of those to whom the commonest phrases of evangelical truth were as meaningless as the jargon of an unknown tongue; he must also preach so as to reach the meanest comprehension; and if the ignorant came not to hear him he must use such means as best he could to induce them—nay, compel them—to hear the good news. The Gospel was meant for those who most persecuted religion; it aimed its arrows of love against the hearts of its foes. The Church needed to be hopeful, for her sphere was more hopeful than it had ever been before. If ignorance were a plea with God, they had only to look at the millions of heathen and at the hundreds of thousands in London to whom the truths of the Gospel were the greatest novelties. Under such conditions the Church should never stay her hand from doing good. If the Lord were coming to-morrow it was no reason why Christian people should subside into mere talkers and readers, meeting together for mutual comfort and forgetting the myriads of perishing souls. If it were true that this world was going to pieces in a fortnight, and that Louis Napoleon was the Apocalyptic Beast, he cared not a fig; it made no difference to his duty, and did not change his service. They must not live to themselves; the mere accumulation of money, the bringing up of their children, the building of houses, the earning of their daily bread—all this they could do; but there must be a greater object—the beginning to live for the benefit of others.

Mr. Spurgeon preached in the Tabernacle on Sunday, November 7, but during that week he became unwell, and was found to be suffering from an attack of small-pox. Friends were reassured by the report that the disease was of a mild type; but unhappily the sufferer was in a more than usually weak condition. Large congregations assembled at the Tabernacle on Sunday, November 14, to hear Mr. Augustus Rees, an ex-clergyman of the Established Church. Towards the end of the month the reports were still favourable; but better than medicine in their reviving effect was one donation of £500 and then another of £1,000 for the Orphanage, which came just at this time. The latter was accompanied by the following letter:—

"London.

"Dear Sir,—I have had a sum of money in my possession for some charitable purpose, but could not quite decide the object. I have lately noticed in the papers the death of a gentleman... leaving various large sums to some of the best of our institutions, but not a drop of the golden shower has fallen upon Stockwell Orphanage. Under these circumstances I have enclosed it to you for that rising charity, with the hope that it may be followed with many others from those who can give. Trusting that the Lord will give you health and strength to carry on your work, and finally take you and me to Himself through the merits of the Redeemer,—I am, yours etc., "J. K." The report gained currency early in December that Mr. Spurgeon had sufficiently recovered to leave London for Paris; but unhappily that was not the fact, as gout, which followed small-pox, had the effect of keeping him a prisoner in his own house. It was hoped that he would preach on the Sunday before Christmas Day; but he was not able to do so until the Sunday after. He had been absent from the Tabernacle for six Sundays; and when he returned the pastor expressed much gratitude for his recovery, and gave a sermon on "Christ the Rise and Fall of Many," to an overflowing congregation.

It was about the time that he was recovering from the attack of small-pox that Mr. Spurgeon gave to the world the first volume of his "Treasury of David." The work is worthy of its author; but we should make a mistake if we supposed that in these comments we had all of the best things that Spurgeon was capable of saying on the Psalms. The truth is that for many years previously the young preacher's comments on these inspired utterances had attracted great notice, and I have no doubt that many expositions given in the course of the ordinary ministry, which were spoken without being taken down, were equal, and in some instances may have even been superior, to the printed passages. So far as I can judge, it was quite consistent with Spurgeon's temperament to say finer things when stimulated by the sight of the expectant faces of the Tabernacle congregation than when he sat down, pen in hand, to write. At the same time, in "The Treasury of David" the reader sees the author at his best. The comments are for devotional reading, while the illustrative passages on each Psalm, gathered from authors of all ages, form an encyclopædia of illustration which is perhaps unique of its kind. In this department assistance was rendered by Mr. J. L. Keys as amanuensis, besides others, and without such aid the work could never have been done by so busy a man. In reviewing Volume I., the denominational organ said:—

"The plan of the volume is very simple and clear. We have first Mr. Spurgeon's own comments on each Psalm, verse by verse, full of raciness and unction. Then follow extracts from various writers—nearly five hundred of them—largely Puritanical, though by no means exclusively so. These extracts form a regular catena of comments; and for Puritan writers the catena is very complete. After these comments come 'Hints to the Village Preacher,' as Mr. Spurgeon calls them; and lastly, appended to each Psalm is a list of works, expository and homiletical.... The extracts will have great value for all readers, especially for those who have few books. It is impossible to look over a single page without finding something, and often much, to suggest or to illustrate truth, and the very variety is stimulating and healthful. Mr. Spurgeon's own comments are worthy of their company, and give a degree of life and of present interest to the whole which add very much to the value of the book. Some will value the extracts chiefly for the sake of the original comment; all who value the extracts for their own sake will value them the more for the comments. For spiritual insight and force the original comments have special interest.

"Mr. Spurgeon is careful to note that he does not endorse all he quotes, either the scholarship or the orthodoxy, and must not be held answerable for all that is written. This warning is fairly given, though for the most part it is not needed. The only suggestion we should make is that the learning and the natural history be carefully watched. The old writers were rather apt to get lessons from false etymologies, and to illustrate spiritual truths from supposed facts of natural history of which the Creator knew nothing. The spiritual lessons are often ingenious and substantially true; but the natural history or the derivation is false; and when the modern preacher comes to repeat them, the younger hearers who know better think the theology no sounder than the science, and get mischief from the teaching. Such instances are rare in this volume, but we have noticed a few."

One day, soon after the volume appeared, I entered the study at Helensburgh House, and was gratified to find how pleased the author was with the reception which an appreciative public had accorded to his work. "Here it is," he said, taking up the volume which was the production of his genius and industry, while he looked at it as fondly as he might have done at a favourite child. He remarked that works of that kind were usually issued in small editions; and he was naturally gratified at his book becoming actually popular. The volume, bearing the author's autograph, is now among my valued possessions.

It was at the close of the year 1869 that the pastor and congregation at the Tabernacle lost by death the services of the senior deacon, Mr. Thomas Olney. In the early days of the great building "Father" Olney, as he was called, was a familiar figure at the back of the preacher, and he frequently accompanied Mr. Spurgeon on his preaching tours. Mr. Olney was a native of Tring, Hertfordshire, and was born in 1790. At an early age he was apprenticed to a London mercer, and from the first he became connected with the congregation under Dr. Rippon at Carter Lane, and remained a consistent and honoured member of the Church for sixty years. He became deacon in 1838 and treasurer in 1855. His faith and humility were quite childlike, and he was a true friend of the poor. He had the happiness of seeing his sons walk in the pathway of religion he had chosen for himself; and his grandsons now reflect honour on the family name.