ENTERED According to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by SHELDON. BLAKEMAN & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York, W. H. TINSON, Stereotyper. PUDNEY & RUSSELL, Printers. PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. THE popularity of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons in this country has been equalled only by the popularity of the preacher himself in his own land. Over a hundred and twenty thousand volumes of his writings have been already circulated here, and the demand for them is constant, showing that they have taken a strong and abiding hold upon the public mind. Their usefulness, we have reason to believe, has been, in a great measure, commensurate with their popularity. The call has been repeatedly made for a volume giving the characteristics of Mr. Spurgeon's style, revealing the secret of his mighty power as a preacher of truth, with the peculiarities of manner which arrest the attention, rouse the sympathies, excite the admiration, and impress the feelings. of his vast audiences. This cannot be done by giving simply detached sentences from his sermons. Spurgeon is not remarkable for terseness, nor does he deal in laconic phrases. He is rhetorical, descriptive, flowing and glowing. He blazes and burns along the pathway of his subject, rising 5866 (RECAP) 238865 Mr. in flights of imagination and carrying his hearers along with bim in earnest, overwhelming appeals. He is pungent in his applications, strong in his doctrinal opinions, and powerful in his exhibition of the divine Word. Such a preacher's forte is not to be presented in single sentences. We have therefore gathered from scores of his sermons many of the most striking passages, and set them in these pages, without regard to the order of subject, or their relations to each other a series of earnest thoughts and graphic pictures, all of them revealing the true greatness of the preacher's conceptions, his individuality and strength. No one can read the first page of this volume without feeling that the speaker is no common man. The publishers present this selection from the pages of Mr. Spurgeon, as a specimen of his happiest thoughts, gems from his discourses, which will glow in the mind of the reader, and quicken in him a desire to read and hear more of this remarkable youthful preacher of the unsearchable riches of Christ. |