lled high doctrine is tolerated--not to say
admired. They are the elect of God, preordained before the world was
formed to enjoy an existence of beatific rapture, that shall continue
when the world has passed away. Of one of the most popular preachers in
that locality, the late Jemmy Wells, it is said that when told that one
of his hearers had fallen out of a cart and broken his leg his reply was,
"Oh, what a blessed thing it is he can't fall out of the Covenant." When
one of the chapels in that locality was at low-water mark, there came to
it the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon--then little more than a boy, but
already famous in East Anglia as a boy preacher--and never had a preacher
a more successful career. There was no place in London that was large
enough to contain the audiences that flocked to hear him. I first heard
him at the Surrey Music Hall, and it was wonderful to see what hordes
came there of saints and sinners, lords and ladies, City magnates and
county squires, Anonymas from St. John's Wood, Lady Clara Vere de Veres
from Belgravia. It was the fashion to go there on a Sunday morning, just
as it was the fashion a generation previously to rush to Hatton Garden to
hear Edward Irving. The hall was handsome and light and airy, free from
the somewhat oppressive air of Cave Adullam and Little Bethel, and there
upon the platform which did duty for a pulpit stood a young man short of
stature, broadly built, of a genial though not handsome countenance, with
a big head and a voice it was a treat to listen to and audible in every
part of that enormous building. What was the secret of his success? He
was bold, he was original, he was humorous, and he was in earnest. He
said things to make his hearers laugh, and what he said or did was
magnified by rumour. Old stories of Billy Dawson and Rowland Hill were
placed to Mr. Spurgeon's credit. The caricaturists made him their butt.
There was no picture more commonly displayed at that time than one
entitled "Brimstone and Treacle"--the former representing Mr. Spurgeon,
the latter Mr. Bellew, then a star of the first order in many an
Episcopalian pulpit. Bellew soon ran through his ephemeral
popularity--that of Mr. Spurgeon grew and strengthened day by day. Do
you, like the late Sir James Graham, want to know the reason why? The
answer is soon given. "I am going into the ministry," said a youthful
student to an old divine. "Ah, but, my dear friend, is the ministry i