Reading Biographies: Spurgeon

I’m reading Arnold Dallimore’s Spurgeon along with Tim Challies and others. This week, we read chapters 12-14 of this biography of Charles Spurgeon. Chapter 12 told of the almhouses and orphanages run by Spurgeon and his church. Chapter 13 described the illnesses that both Spurgeon and his wife  Susannah suffered over the years. Chapter 14 focused on Susannah Spurgeon and her ministry work.

Most interesting to me was the description of the orphanage built by Spurgeon:

The orphanage was planned according to certain concepts Spurgeon had developed. It was not to be like the average institution for needy children, with the younsters quartered in a barracklike building, all dressed alike and made to feel they were objects of charity. It was to be several individual homes—the buildings joined together and forming a continuous row—each home to house fourteen boys and to be under the care of a matron who acted as a mother to the lads. There was to be discipline, education, and Christian instruction, with kindness and sport and individuality.

I visited an orphange when I was young, and it was nothing like this. I’m impressed that Spurgeon came up with such an innovative and thoughtful plan for caring for the children. What’s more, Spurgeon was generous with the children in other ways. They had a pool, and everyone learned to swim. Spurgeon knew almost all of them by name. When he visited, he carried pennies and gave each child one of them. It considered it especially important to visit any child who was sick in the infirmary.

What a picture of a man who loved—even needy children—as Christ loved!

Mrs. Spurgeon, too, showed the love of Christ to others. Her ministry was helping poor pastors and their families by sending books, clothing, blankets and money to them.

Now our governments take care of needy children and poor families, and churches (at least any I know) aren’t involved in this kind of service to people right around them to the same extent the Metropolitan Tabernacle was. I’m not sure that’s an unqualified good thing.