All I can do to report on Mike Reeves on Spurgeon is to give you some quotations and some links.
Quotations
John
Bost is great as well as large. ... Here is a man after our own
heart, with a lot of human nature in him, a large-hearted,
tempest-tossed mortal, who has done business on the great waters, and
would long ago have been wrecked had it not been for his simple
reliance upon God. His is a soul like that of Martin Luther, full of
emotion and of mental changes; borne aloft to heaven at one time and
anon sinking in the deeps. Worn down with labour, he needs rest, but
will not take it, perhaps cannot. ... [I have] found him full of zeal
and devotion, and brimming over with godly experience, and at the
same time abounding in mirth, racy remark, and mother wit.
Dear
Mr. Passmore,
When
that good little lad came here on Monday with the sermon, late at
night, it was needful. But please blow somebody up for sending the
poor little creature here, late to-night, in all this snow, with a
parcel much heavier than he ought to carry. He could not get home
till eleven, I fear; Charles Spurgeon and I feel like a cruel brute
in being the innocent cause of having a poor lad out at such an hour
on such a night. There was no need at all for it. Do kick somebody
for me, so that it may not happen again.
Yours
ever heartily,
C.
H. Spurgeon
It
is not every preacher we would care to talk with; but there are some
whom one would give a fortune to converse with for an hour. I love a
minister whose face invites me to make him my friend - a man upon
whose doorstep you read, “Salve,” “Welcome;” and feel that
there is no need of that Pompeian warning, “Cave Canem,” “Beware
of the dog.” Give me the man around whom the children come, like
flies around a honey-pot: they are first-class judges of a good man.
... A man who is to do much with men must love them, and feel at home
with them. An individual who has no geniality about him had better be
an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in
influencing the living. I have met somewhere with the observation
that to be a popular preacher one must have bowels. I fear that the
observation was meant as a mild criticism upon the bulk to which
certain brethren have attained: but there is truth in it. A man must
have a great heart if he would have a great congregation. His heart
should be as capacious as those noble harbours along our coast, which
contain sea-room for a fleet. When a man has a large, loving heart,
men go to him as ships to a haven, and feel at peace when they have
anchored under the lee of his friendship. Such a man is hearty in
private as well as in public; his blood is not cold and fishy, but he
is warm as your own fireside. No pride and selfishness chill you when
you approach him; he has his doors all open to receive you, and you
are at home with him at once. Such men I would persuade you to be,
every one of you.
What
a bubbling fountain of humour Mr. Spurgeon had!’ wrote his friend
William Williams. ‘I have laughed more, I verily believe, when in
his company than during all the rest of my life besides.’ A whole
chapter of Spurgeon’s ‘autobiography’ is entitled ‘Pure Fun,’
and he regularly surprised people who expected the zealous pastor to
be dour and intense. Grandiosity, religiosity, and humbug could all
expect to be pricked on his wit.
When
rebuked for using so
much
humour in the pulpit, Spurgeon
replied, "Well, madam, you may
very well be right; but if
you knew how much
I held
back,
you would give me more credit than you are giving me now!"
Man
was not originally made to mourn; he was made to rejoice. The Garden
of Eden was his place of happy abode; and, as long as he continued
obedient to God, nothing grew in that garden which could cause him
sorrow. For his delight, the flowers breathed out their perfume. For
his delight, the landscapes were full of beauty, and the rivers
rippled over golden sands. God made human beings, as He made His
other creatures, to be happy. They are capable of happiness, they are
in their right element when they are happy; and now that Jesus Christ
has come to restore the ruins of the Fall, He has come to bring back
to us the old joy—only it shall be even sweeter and deeper than it
could have been if we had never lost it. A Christian has never fully
realised what Christ came to make him until he has grasped the joy of
the Lord. Christ wishes His people to be happy. When they are
perfect, as He will make them in due time, they shall also be
perfectly happy. As heaven is the place of pure holiness, so is it
the place of unalloyed happiness; and in proportion as we get ready
for heaven, we shall have some of the joy which belongs to heaven,
and it is our Saviour’s will that even now His joy should remain in
us, and that our joy should be full.
I
love the lightnings, God’s thunder is my delight ... Men are by
nature afraid of the heavens; the superstitious dread the signs in
the sky, and even the bravest spirit is sometimes made to tremble
when the firmament is ablaze with lightning, and the pealing thunder
seems to make the vast concave of heaven to tremble and to
reverberate; but I always feel ashamed to keep indoors when the
thunder shakes the solid earth, and the lightnings flash like arrows
from the sky. Then God is abroad, and I love to walk out in some wide
space, and to look up and mark the opening gates of heaven, as the
lightning reveals far beyond, and enables me to gaze into the unseen.
I like to hear my Heavenly Father’s voice in the thunder.
I
delight in working for my Lord and Master,
because I feel a blessed community of interest with Him
It
is a delight, a joy, a rapture, to talk out my thoughts in words
that flash upon the mind at
the instant they are required; but it is pure
drudgery
to sit still and groan for words without succeeding in obtaining
them. Well may a man's books
be called his 'works,'
Holiness
deals with the thoughts and intents, the purposes, the aims, the
objects, the motives of men. Morality does but skim the surface,
holiness goes into the very caverns of the great deep; holiness
requires that the heart shall be set on God, and that it shall beat
with love to him. The moral man may be complete in his morality
without that.
Methinks
I might draw such a parallel as this. Morality is a sweet, fair
corpse, well washed and robed, and even embalmed with spices; but
holiness is the living man, as fair and as lovely as the other, but
having life. Morality lies there, of the earth, earthy, soon to be
food for corruption and worms; holiness waits and pants with heavenly
aspirations, prepared to mount and dwell in immortality beyond the
stars. These twain are of opposite nature: the one belongs to this
world, the other belongs to that world beyond the skies.
It
is not said in heaven, "Moral, moral, moral art thou, O God!"
but "Holy, holy. holy art thou. O Lord!" You note the
difference between the two words at once. The one, how icy cold; the
other, oh, how animated! Such is mere morality, and such is holiness!
Moralist! — I know I speak to many such — remember that your best
morality will not save you; you must have more than this, for without
holiness — and that not of yourself, it must be given you of the
Spirit of God — without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.
Links
https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-charles-spurgeon/
https://www.crossway.org/books/spurgeon-on-the-christian-life-tpb/
https://www.10ofthose.com/cmsfiles/Samples/9781433543876_sample.pdf
