Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, Essex, June 19th, 1834, and after receiving some education at Colchester, became usher in a school at Newmarket. He declined to study for the ministry as an Independent, and joined the late Dr. Robert Hall’s Baptist congregation (which had formerly been Robert Robinson’s) at Cambridge. This resulted in his making a tour as village preacher and tract-distributer, and his first sermon was delivered at Teversham, near Cambridge. He was known as the “Boy Preacher,” and was presently invited to settle at Waterbeach. At the early age of seventeen he thus had charge of a congregation, and almost immediately became famous. His meetinghouse was crowded, and soon he was urged to accept the chapel formerly in charge of Dr. Rippon, in New Park Street, Southwark, London. In 1853, he made his advent in the metropolis, and within two years his people were enlarging their place of worship. For four months he occupied Exeter Hall during the repairs, and that, too, was crowded. The enlarged chapel also proved insufficient, and Surrey Music Hall was engaged. But as a very sad accident and panic occurred in it in 1856, the great "Tabernacle" was built in Newington, and opened in 1861. Since that date Mr. Spurgeon has ranked among the foremost preachers of the world, handling his immense audiences with remarkable executive power, and publishing hundreds of sermons and other writings. He has conducted a Preachers’ College, and is the responsible editor of The Sword and Trowel and compiler of The Treasury of David, an exhaustive work on the Psalms. He also prepared a hymn-book in 1866, to which he contributed fourteen psalms and ten hymns. [Spurgeon died in 1892.]
From English Hymns: Their Authors and History by Samuel Willoughby Duffield. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886.
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