Spurgeon's "laying aside" the "graces of oratory" may not be an exaggeration. On June 20, 1884, The Freeman for example, "tabulated the causes "contributing to the simplification of pulpit style" in the previous "fifty years." The causes consisted of the Reform Bill, anti-slavery agitation, the Penny Magazine, cheap postage, the Corn Law League, the telegraph, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon."98 "God deserves the best oratory, the best logic, the best metaphysics, the best of everything" Charles declared. "But if ever rhetoric" or education or a natural gift "stands in the way of the instruction of the people, a curse be on" them!99
God's Familiar Speech
Advertisement
Spurgeon taught his students to preach familiarly because he believed that God preached in this same way. In Isaiah 1:18, for example, the text says: "Come now let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Spurgeon commented on this passage noting that the God whose "voice . . . shakes the earth with tempests" is the same God "who speaks to us" and says, "Come now, let us reason together." Spurgeon points out that God the creator and judge lays aside his thunderous power, draws near to the sinner, and invites the sinner to converse with reason. It is as if God says, "Tell me, what is your difficulty? I will lay aside my glory, and will come down, and talk familiarly with you that we may have this question settled."100
How God approached people in Isaiah 1, Spurgeon saw demonstrated in the incarnation of Jesus. "The Lord stoops down to us," Spurgeon observed.101 In contrast to the philosophers, kings, and nobles of the time, Jesus demonstrated a "condescending tenderness" and spoke familiarly with ordinary sinners. 102 Jesus offers himself to us as a friend of sinners, "for that is what he really is." "He does not stand upon a lofty height, and bid sinners ascend to him," Spurgeon said. He comes down "from the mountain, and mingles with them. He "draws them to himself by the magnetic force of his almighty love."103
Spurgeon sought to imitate this divine approach. One of the ways in which Spurgeon sought to demonstrate this same "stooping" manner when he preached was to express himself with a humble posture of familiar tenderness as he made appeals to his hearers. He spoke to them as he would to a friend. "Oh, friend," Spurgeon could say, "consider what your obligations are!"104 Or, yet again, "Oh! Friend, I wish you would turn while God is smiting you gently." 105 Or, "Oh, friend, if this cry be your cry. . ."106
Similarly, Spurgeon often expressed this condescending tenderness of Scripture's manner by appealing to his hearers as "dear heart": "I am not going to blame you, dear heart; but I do deeply pity you . . . 107 Or, he might say, "Hearest thou this, dear heart? Thou art shrinking from thy God; thou art anxious to run away from him; but that is where the forgiveness is."108 Likewise, speaking directly with tenderness to sinners, he