Spurgeon’s Church

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes In Church History. Last week, we were talking about Spurgeon’s publisher, who published the sermons that he preached. This week, let’s talk about Spurgeon’s church, where those sermons were preached. But to tell this story, we have to go all the way back to the 16 hundreds and to the minister, Benjamin Keach. He was a Baptist minister. He wrote a catechism that is known as Keach’s Catechism. And for that, under Charles II and the time of the Restoration, he was arrested. Keach’s Catechism has a fascinating first question. The second question is the exact same question from the Westminster Catechism. “What is the chief end of man?” But the first question of Keach’s Catechism is this, “What is the first and best of beings? Answer: God is the first and best of beings.” Well, in 1668, Keach went to London, and he pastored a church in Horsleydown, Southwark.

It was right along the Thames River, directly across from the Tower of London. A milestone in his ministry was the key role that he played in the 1689 London Baptist Confession. Keach’s first wife, Jane, died after 10 years together. His second wife, Susanna, died in the same year that he did, 1704. Then, in 1719, John Gill came to this church, and he pastored there for 50 years. It was during his time that the Great Awakening came to London and Great Britain and then, spread across the Atlantic. Gill was an ally and a supporter and a friend of George Whitefield. After John Gill came John Rippin. He would be minister for 63 years, and he was a hymn writer. The Lutherans have Luther at the headwaters of Lutheran hymnody. The Congregationalists or the Independents have Isaac Watts. The Methodists have the brothers, John and Charles Wesley. And the Baptists have John Rippin.

Under Rippin, the church grew and grew, and finally, in 1833, it moved to its new location and was given a new name. From then on, it was called the New Park Street Chapel. It could hold 1,200 people. Then, in 1854, at 19 years of age, Charles Haddon Spurgeon was called as the Minister of the New Park Street Chapel. The 1,200 capacity was not nearly enough. People were sitting in the windowsills, and they were standing outside to hear him preach. In 1836, they expanded the church, but that wasn’t enough either. And so, in 1861, this congregation moved again. It moved to the Elephant and Castle area, again in the Borough of Southwark, in the city of London. They picked that particular site, because it was known as the site of the Southwark Martyrs, going back to May of 1557, under Bloody Mary. There were three martyrs, Stephen Gratwick, William Morant, and the other we only know of his last name, one named King.

Well, after Stephen Gratwork’s sentence was handed down, he was afforded the opportunity to write his account, and that account is preserved for us in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. It ends with this line, “By me, Stephen Gratwick, condemned for God’s everlasting truth.” And there on that site was built the Metropolitan Tabernacle. It could hold 6,000 people, and it was filled from the time it was built to the time of Spurgeon’s death in 1892. A few years later, in 1898, a fire took the building, but the very impressive six pillared portico entrance stood among the ashes. It was rebuilt, and then, during the bombing of Britain, in May, 1941, an incendiary bomb landed and caused another fire that once again took the building. But once again, the portico stood amidst all of the rubble. So that’s the story of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the place where Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached and that congregation that goes all the way back to the 17th century in London. And I’m Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.