Spurgeon’s Conversion
This is the story of the way a man, C.H. Spurgeon who was saved, many years ago:
I thought the sun was blotted out of my sky – that I had so sinned against God that there was no hope for me. I prayed – the Lord knows how I prayed; but I never had a glimpse of an answer that I knew of. I search the Word of God (The Bible), the promises were more alarming than the threatenings. I read the privileges of the people of God, but with the fullest persuasion that they were not for me. The secret of my distress was this: I did not know the gospel. I was in a Christian land, I had Christian parents, but I did not fully understand the freeness and simplicity of the gospel.
I attended all the places of worship in the town where I lives, but I honestly believe that I did not hear the gospel fully preached. I do not blame the men however. One man preached the divine sovereignty. I could hear him with please; bur what was that for a poor sinner who wished to know what he should do to be saved? Another was a great practical teacher. I heard him, but it was the very manoeuvres of war to a set of men without feet. What could I do? All his exhortations were lost to me. I knew it was said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31), but I did know what it was to believe in Christ.
I sometimes think that I might have been in darkness and despair now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snow-storm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a court and came to a little hall. In the hall there were a dozen or fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning; snowed up, I suppose. A poor man, a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort went up into the pulpit to preach.
He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason he had nothing else to say. The text was “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isa 45:22). He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter.
Then he shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ!” I did “look”. Then and there the could was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun: I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me that before:
Trust Christ, and you shall be saved.
It was no doubt, wisely ordered, and I must say:
“E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy wounds supplied for me,
Reedeming love has been my theme
And shall for ever be.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon