Digital Logos Edition
This volume contains Spurgeon’s addresses to the annual conference at the Pastor’s College, delivered each year from 1872 to 1890. Spurgeon regarded these conferences as his most important events of the year, and devoted significant time to preparing these addresses. These addresses represent the focal points of Spurgeon’s ministry of preaching and teaching. As such, An All-Round Ministry includes addresses on faith, individuality, strength in weakness, the evils of the current age, and more. The Logos Bible Software edition of An All-Round Ministry was originally published in London by Passmore and Alabaster in 1900.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in Kelvedon, Essex, England on June 19, 1834. He converted to Christianity in 1850 at a small Methodist chapel, to which he detoured during a snowstorm. While there, he heard a sermon on Isaiah 45:22 and was saved—“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.” He began his own ministry of preaching and teaching immediately, and preached more than 500 sermons by the age of twenty.
In 1854, at nineteen years of age, Spurgeon began preaching at the New Park Street Chapel in London. He was appointed to a six month trial position, which he requested be cut to three months should the congregation dislike his preaching. He gained instant fame, however, and the church grew from 232 members to more than five thousand at the end of his pastorate. Many of his sermons were published each week and regularly sold more than 25,000 copies in twenty languages. Throughout his ministry, Spurgeon estimated that he preached to more than 10,000,000 people. Dwight L. Moody was deeply influenced by Spurgeon’s preaching, and founded the Moody Bible Institute after seeing Spurgeon’s work at the Pastor’s College in London.
Spurgeon read six books per week during his adult life, and read Pilgrim’s Progress more than 100 times. In addition to his studying and preaching, Spurgeon also founded the Pastor’s College (now Spurgeon’s College), various orphanages and schools, mission chapels, and numerous other social institutions.
Charles Spurgeon suffered from poor health throughout his life. He died on January 31, 1892, and was buried in London.
“Brethren, we ought not always to profess our ability to prove Scriptural truths to ungodly men, for many of those truths lie outside the region of their understanding. I should not try to prove to a blind man that the grass is green and the sky is blue, because he can have no idea of the proposition which I am proving.” (Page 13)
“Further, true faith gives us courage under all circumstances.” (Page 20)
“We go to our chambers alone, believing that we are transacting high and real business when we pray. We do not bow the knee merely because it is a duty, and a commendable spiritual exercise; but because we believe that, into the ear of the eternal God, we speak our wants, and that His ear is linked with a heart feeling for us, and a hand working on our behalf. To us, true prayer is true power.” (Page 13)
“We must—some of us especially must—conquer our tendency to levity” (Page 46)
“There is a way of ‘doctoring’ the gospel in much the same manner. A little truth is given up, and then a little more, and men fill up the vacuum with opinions, inferences, speculations, and dreams, till their wine is mixed with water, and the water none of the best. Many preachers—and I speak it with sorrow,—have built a tower of theological speculations, upon which they sit, like Nero, fiddling the tune of their own philosophy while the world is burning with sin and misery. They are playing with the toys of speculation while men’s souls are being lost.” (Pages 10–11)