The first time I saw my future husband, he occupied the pulpit of New Park Street Chapel on the memorable Sunday when he preached his first sermons there.” So wrote Mrs. Charles H. Spurgeon of that “memorable Sunday,” December 18, 1853.
It was not easy to be the fiancée of London’s most popular preacher. So engrossed was Charles Spurgeon in his ministry that he often shook hands with Susannah at church meetings without recognizing her! When they were alone, he would correct proofs of his sermons while his beloved sat by quietly. “It was good discipline for the pastor’s intended wife,” she wrote in later years. Spurgeon baptized Susannah on February 1, 1855, and she became a member of New Park Street. A year later, on January 8, they were married. After a ten-day honeymoon in Paris, they returned to London and to what would be one of the greatest ministries in the history of the church.
Susannah presented her husband with twin sons on September 20, 1856. The firstborn was named Charles, the other Thomas. The boys attended local schools and also had a private tutor. It was discovered early that Thomas had a gift for drawing. Both boys became Christians early and often distributed copies of their father’s sermons. On September 20, 1874, their father preached from the text “I and the children” (Gen. 33:5); the following evening he baptized his sons.
Their famous father sometimes hinted that he would rejoice if one of his sons succeeded him at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. In a sermon titled “Now: A Sermon for Young Men and Women,” Spurgeon said:
It may not be my honor to be succeeded in this pulpit by one of my sons, greatly as I would rejoice if it might be so; but at least I hope they will be here in this church to serve their father’s God, and to be regarded with affection by you for the sake of him who spent his life in your midst.
At first it did not appear that either son would enter the ministry. The boys preached when opportunity arose, and they helped found the Northcote Road Baptist Church. But Charles entered a mercantile career, and Thomas was apprenticed to a wood-engraver named William Holledge. Both young men served the Lord zealously, but neither devoted their full time to the Christian ministry.
Tom’s health was poor, so he went on a sea voyage to Australia. Tom Holledge, William’s son, went along. Their three-masted schooner left on June 15, 1877, and arrived in Melbourne on August 28. During the voyage Spurgeon preached often to the passengers and crew. His father had given Thomas a letter of introduction in which he said, “He can preach a bit.” Thomas had intended to set up an engraving business in Melbourne, but the name Spurgeon opened doors of ministry that he could not ignore. “Young Spurgeon does not possess the fire and dash of his father,” one newspaper reported, “but he has much originality, humor, and force.” Wherever he preached, he drew great crowds. Some came to criticize and compare, but many went away convicted. Young Thomas was not C.H.S., but he was still God’s servant and a capable preacher.
About this time Thomas was falsely accused of conduct unbecoming to a minister. “Whether it was the tongue of slander in the old land, or some misinformation or mistake, I do not know,” he once said. “But there came to my dear father’s ears a story which did not reflect credit upon his absent son. It came in such a form that he was almost bound to believe it.” (We wonder if C.H.S. remembered the slander that had been spread about him in early years.) “I left the matter with God,” said Thomas, “and He espoused my cause.” In a few days his father cabled: “Disregard my letter; was misinformed.”
In September 1878, Thomas received word that his mother was ill. Immediately he sailed for home. When he arrived, he found her much improved, but his father was suffering. On Sunday, November 10, Thomas Spurgeon had to preach for C.H.S. at the great tabernacle. His brother Charles also came to his aid during his father’s illness.
Thomas enrolled in the Pastors’ College, but his poor health forced him to miss so many classes that he decided to return to Australia. This decision deeply hurt his father, who had long hoped his son would share his ministry and eventually take his place. Spurgeon’s dear friend and associate, W. Y. Fullerton, wrote: “Only twice in his life C. H. Spurgeon spent a whole night in prayer. . . . One of these nights of intense supplication was for a personal need. . . . The other was when the hopes he had built on his son Tom being by his side were shattered.”1 Tom settled in New Zealand, and for the first year he supplied the pulpit of the Hanover Street Church in Dunedin. Family history repeated itself, for in that church he met Lila Rutherford, who on February 10, 1888, became Mrs. Thomas Spurgeon. In January 1882 Thomas became pastor of the Baptist church in Aukland. The work prospered; they built a new auditorium (a tabernacle, of course!) and many found Christ. The pastor returned to Great Britain for five months in 1884 to raise funds for his work. On December 14, 1884, he sailed for New Zealand, bidding goodbye to his father, who told him he could not bear the pain of another parting.
There were to be no further partings. On June 7, 1891, C.H.S. preached his last sermon at the tabernacle; and on January 31, 1892, he was “called home.” The death of “the governor” (as his officers called him) ushered in the “tabernacle tempest” that was watched with great interest by Christians all over the English-speaking world. The question was: Who will keep the tabernacle going? Spurgeon’s brother James, who had assisted in the tabernacle ministry, was asked to serve as acting pastor. A. T. Pierson had been preaching at the tabernacle during Spurgeon’s last illness, but since he was a Presbyterian, he could not be a candidate for the pulpit. Pierson stayed with the work for a year, but then he had to return to the States. The officers asked Thomas Spurgeon to come to preach for three months; and on June 10, 1892, he arrived in London with his wife and son. He closed his ministry on October 9, and then Dwight L. Moody arrived for a series of meetings at the tabernacle.
Pierson returned following Moody’s ministry and discovered a deep division in the congregation. The “tabernacle tempest” was dividing families and breaking lifelong friendships. On March 28, 1893, some two thousand members met and asked the officers to call Thomas Spurgeon home for a year’s ministry, after which the church would decide what to do next. Thomas accepted the call. He also remembered something Moody had said to him during his previous ministry at the tabernacle: “You are yet to come back to this place, and I am going to pray God here and now that it may be so!” He began his ministry in London on July 30, 1893. Before the year was over, the church knew that Thomas Spurgeon was the man for the pulpit. On March 21, 1894, the church called him as pastor, and he remained until 1908.
One of the most tragic events in the ministry of Thomas’s father had occurred when young Charles was preaching to a huge crowd at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall. Troublemakers in the audience began to cry “Fire! Fire!” and the result was catastrophe. Seven people were killed, twenty-eight hospitalized. It seemed that Spurgeon’s ministry was doomed. God overruled, however, and vindicated his servant. A trying time in Thomas’s ministry also involved fire.
On April 20, 1899, the great Metropolitan Tabernacle burned to the ground, leaving Spurgeon with a congregation and no place to house it. The fire was caused by an overheated flue in the adjacent Pastors’ College. At the Pastors’ Conference the day before, the Scripture reading, Hebrews 12, had ended with “Our God is a consuming fire.” Thomas Spurgeon preached on the theme “No Strange Fire.” The slogan for the annual conference was “Does the fire burn brightly on the alter?” And oddly enough, Old Moore’s Almanack had predicted, “About the middle of the month [April] the destruction of a famous building by fire may be expected.” Spurgeon had built a tabernacle in New Zealand; now he would rebuild one in London. When he was standing by the ruins shortly after the fire, a stranger approached him and slipped some money into his hand. “This is to build it up again, sir!” he said. God would multiply those five shillings into thousands of dollars; and on September 19, 1900, the new tabernacle was opened. Ira Sankey sang at the dedication services, and F. B. Meyer and John Henry Jowett assisted Spurgeon in the preaching.
Thomas Spurgeon resigned as pastor of the tabernacle on February 8, 1908, and the church reluctantly accepted his resignation. They held a great farewell service for him on June 22. For the next nine years he preached often, assisted in raising funds for the orphan homes his father had founded, and worked hard to maintain his health. He celebrated his diamond jubilee on September 20, 1916, and received well-deserved honors from an appreciative Christian public. He died on October 20, 1917, and was buried near his father’s tomb in Norwood Cemetery. A. C. Dixon, the new pastor of the tabernacle, read the Scripture; Dinsdale Young prayed; the children from the orphanage sang; and F. J. Feltham preached. At C.H.S.’s burial service, a dove had flown from the direction of the tabernacle towards the tomb, glided over the sorrowing crowd, seemed almost to hover, and then flown away. For Thomas Spurgeon there was no dove, but there certainly was peace.
Early in his ministry, Thomas wrote to his father: “If I can have but a portion of my father’s mantle, I might be well content.” Did his illustrious heritage cripple him? I think not. He knew and accepted himself. He did not try to be his father, although he certainly learned from his father. No doubt many people came to hear him because he was a Spurgeon; but after they heard, they came back. They detected an authentic note. Thomas Spurgeon was a voice for God, not an echo of his father. The gifts God had given him would have made him a successful minister of the gospel even without the name Spurgeon.
Certainly Thomas Spurgeon is to be honored and remembered for daring to be himself. He never permitted his father to determine God’s will for his ministry. When Thomas returned to London for a year’s ministry at the tabernacle, he wisely left his wife and son in New Zealand, lest their presence be interpreted as overconfidence on his part. He had great gifts as an evangelist. His itinerant ministry in Australia and New Zealand was greatly blessed by God. Like his father, he had a keen sense of humor and often had to struggle to control it. To say that Thomas Spurgeon was not as gifted or as marvelously used by God as his father is to say nothing. How many preachers even begin to measure up to the stature of Charles Haddon Spurgeon? In uniting a great congregation, maintaining a wide and varied ministry, and rebuilding a great and historic structure, Thomas Spurgeon performed, under God, one of the greatest ministries of modern times. He will always be overshadowed by his father, but nevertheless will receive his own “Well done!” when all Christians stand before the Lord.