C. H. Spurgeon's sermons were biblical and evangelical, large in imaginative exposition, and enormous in variety. D.L. Moody read everything he ever wrote and said he found source there for all his ministry, as did most other leading clergy of that day. But it was among the common people that Tom's father's blessings came the most.

The Australian Connection

In the British colonies his sermons often appeared as paid advertisements in local newspapers. One donor, who placed them thus for an initial period in The Australian then approached its editor for a rate reduction. When this was denied he invited readers to write in supporting their maintenance. 400 favorable letters streamed in from far-off dwellers in the outback areas affirming their total dependence on those weekly sermons for their lonely Sunday worship hours. Many declared they only subscribed to that sporting paper for the encouragements to faith which these "advertisements" provided. An itinerant hobo, who had only entered church three times in sixteen years, wrote of the day he found a sermon in a discarded newspaper outside a Victorian hotel. He told of his conversion, changed life, zeal for Bible study, and new employment, all of which resulted from this chance discovery.

Yet the Spurgeon influence in Australia was far greater than mere sermons. In the first 90 years of the London Pastors' College, 87 graduates located for permanent ministry in South Africa and 78 in the U.S. But 106 came to the small and newly settled nations of Australia and New Zealand during that same period.

An Unplanned Ministry

Thomas (the younger of twin sons baptized in London by their father at eighteen years of age in 1874) unexpectedly discovered his pulpit skills to be in great demand while in Australia. The story of this ministry, largely forgotten by Church History, thrust him to intensive itineration all over Australia as an evangelist for sixteen years until he settled into a permanent and very successful New Zealand pastorate. After his father's death he finally succeeded him in the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit in 1894 and then pastored that famous congregation for 14 years, leading them successfully through a fire and other bitter trials. Thomas' unusual life and ministry was one in which he wrestled against severe ill-nesses which exiled him from his English home, but who also Was able to plant and foster many evangelical churches. He erected his own Tabernacle in Auckland, New Zealand, (a miniature copy of the London building) and there gathered the largest congregation of any denomination in the South Pacific, pastoring there for seven fruitful years.3

In 1887 Tom, a lay preacher in cottage services around London, had been ordered to travel to a sunny climate for his health. His hope was to enter his father's London Pastors' College but he now decided to follow his profession of commercial artist and engraver for several years in Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria. He carried a letter of introduction seeking help in settlement to one of the Pastors' college graduates, Rev. Mr. Bunning, the Baptist pastor in Geelong, to which his father had added the sentence "He can preach a bit." To Tom's surprise a casual agreement to preach one service for Mr. Bunning catapulted this twenty-year old youth into a totally unexpected full-time ministry thrusting him into evangelism all across the nation and ultimately leading him to succeed his father in London in the world's prime evangelical pulpit.