Lucy I'm shocked, such ignorance
The Bappos have been with us since the 16th century, you know about the great awakening that took place with the Methos in the 18th century through John Wesley. By the 19th century things had calmed down a little, the church had become very cold and formal and among the Puritans or the Free Grace [Calvinists] crowd nothing was stirring.
Young 15 year old Spurgeon was caught in a snowstorm on his way to chapel and must needs turn aside to a tiny Methodist chapel, the regular preacher was prevented by the same snowstorm so one of the elders, an uneducated man stood forth to preach, now Spurgeon was a college boy, brought up among the Puritans but yet unsaved and a very unhappy youth, he was apalled at the preachers poor diction and vocabulary he could hardly string two sentence together. He took as his message Isaiah "Look unto Me ye ends of the earth and be ye saved"
Suddenly he espied young Spurgeon sitting morosely in his pew and lifted up his hands and cried "young man you look very sad LOOK YE that's all you have to do, Look unto Christ hanging on the cross for YOU if you will only LOOK He will make you very glad this morning"
And Spurgeon did look and was wonderfully saved.
He never went back to among the Methodists but joined the Baptists and was soon holding bible meetings among the rural cottagers and word about the boy preacher got around. His church sent him to be interviewed by the principal of a large bible college but was shown into the wrong room so the interview never took place but as he walked down the country lanes home, dejected and disappointed , suddenly a loud voice boomed from the sky "seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not"
Pretty soon, still only 17 he was called to pastor a church in London with just a few bods in, within weeks it was packed to the rafters and Spurgeon took London by storm. For the next 40 years Spurgeon preached sermons that won souls and savoured mightily of power and good doctrine. Each word was written down, every sermon printed as penny pulpits and MILLIONS of them dispersed throughout the empire and America. These sermons are gathered into volumes ... folks still get saved through them today.
When he went over to Ireland on a preaching toured the Catholics turned out in droves even against the fulminations of their parish priests. Yet Spurgeon was a Calvinist preacher and never tailored his sermons to suit his audience.
Of course he was hated and envied by many, but the people loved him.
When I was newly saved and engaged in an evangelical work among drunks and drug addicts an officer of the Salvation Army pressed a volume of Spurgeon's "All round ministry" into my hands and made me promise to read at least 20 minutes before putting it down.
More than 40 years later I have still not put Spurgeon down.