V.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.
"God forgive me if ever I
Take aught from the Book of that Prophecy,
Lest my part, too, should be taken away
From the Book of Life on the Judgment Day!"
FROM Professor Beesly's Comtism to the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon's Christianity, what a distance to travel! Mr. Beesly once somewhat uncharitably accused Mr. Gladstone of being more concerned about his "contemptible superstitions than about politics." What would he not say of the views of the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle? You might search the whole world and find no one whose mind was more thoroughly under the domination of theological ideas than Spurgeon's. To a positivist the reverend gentleman must appear like a survival, not of the fittest, but of the unfittest,—a painful anachronism to remind good positivists and advanced thinkers generally of the lowly estate from which they have emerged. Not even reached the metaphysical stage; and yet Mr. Spurgeon has thousands and thousands of excellent men and women who hang on his every word, spoken and written, as if it were the very bread of life.
With hardly an attempt at direct political propagandism, Mr. Spurgeon contrives to be the greatest
