n
you?" Well, the ministry was in Mr. Spurgeon as it rarely is in any man;
hence his unparalleled success.

One little anecdote will illustrate this. I have a friend whose father
had a large business in the ancient city of Colchester. Mr. Spurgeon's
father was at one time in his employ. Naturally, he said a good deal of
the preaching talent of his gifted son, and of the intention beginning to
be entertained in the family circle of making a minister of him. The
employer in question was a Churchman, but he himself offered to help Mr.
Spurgeon in securing for his son the benefits of a collegiate education.
The son's reply was characteristic. He declined the offered aid, adding
the remark that "ministers were made not in colleges but in heaven."

In connection with Mr. Spurgeon's scholastic career let me knock a little
fiction on the head. There is a house in Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, famous
now as the birthplace of Mrs. Garrett Anderson and her gifted sisters,
which at one time was a school kept by a Mr. Swindell, and they told me
at Aldeburgh this last summer that Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil there. This
is not so. It is true Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil at Mr. Swindell's, but it
was at Newmarket, to which the latter had moved from Aldeburgh.

One or two Spurgeon anecdotes which have not yet appeared in print may be
acceptable. At Hastings there are, or were, many High Church curates. A
few years ago one of them did a very sensible thing. He had a holiday;
he was in town and he went to the Tabernacle, getting a seat exactly
under Mr. Spurgeon's nose, as it were. It seems that during the week Mr.
Spurgeon had been attending a High Church service, of which he gave in
the pulpit a somewhat ludicrous account, suddenly finishing by giving a
sort of snort, and exclaiming, "Methinks I smell 'em now," much to the
delight of the curate sitting underneath. Referring to Mr. Spurgeon's
nose, I am told he had a great admiration of that of his brother, a much
more aristocratic-looking article that his own. "Jem," he is reported to
have said on one occasion, "I wish I had got your nose." "Do you?" was
the reply; "I wish I had got your cheek." Let me give another story. On
one occasion an artist wanted to make a sketch of Mr. Spurgeon for
publishing. "What are you going to charge?" asked the preacher, as the
artist appeared before him. "You must not make the price more than
twopence; the public will give that for me--not a penn