Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 380
A MEETING, in which it was designed to set forth the independency, harmony, and family character of each Church, was held on Monday evening, April 8th. The Rev. John Spurgeon presided. The meeting was opened with singing and prayer, after which
The Rev. C. H. SPURGEON said before giving up the meeting to the Chairman, I will, as on former occasions, briefly state the subject of it. We have met together during the last two weeks as a part of the Baptist denomination, and as a portion of the one great Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have endeavored to give expression to our firm faith in the unity of all the faithful in Christ. We have sought, moreover, to give prominence to our own distinctive Doctrines and forms of worship. We have met here for various purposes of fellowship, and of teaching, and now tonight, the one thought is to be this—that the Church of Christ meeting here is within itself a family; that it is whole and entire, and needs nothing from without to make it complete. We do not, for instance, need to appeal to a synod, or to a general assembly. We do not look up to one minister called a bishop, or to some other person called an archbishop. The Church has its own bishop or pastor; it has its own presbytery or elders; it has its own deaconship, and is not therefore dependent on any other, but should every other Church become extinct, its organization would not be marred. I take it, so far as I have read Scripture, that a modified form of Episcopalian Presbyterian Independency is the Scriptural method of Church government; at any rate, no other form of government would have worked in so large a Church as this. You have found it necessary to have one who shall be the overseer of the Church under God. You have found it necessary to gather a presbytery around him, that they may be with him the pastors of the flock. You believe it also to be exceedingly necessary that the Church should maintain its congregational principles, and yet be always ready to enter into Presbyterian alliance with any other Church, not for its government, but for mutual assistance to be rendered and to be received. You will have before you tonight, as a representative of the family principle, my own well-beloved father, and my brother also sits beside him. To show the union of this Church with the past, as well as with the present, you will have one Brother who officiated as minister during the latter years of Dr. Rippon’s pastorate; another, Dr. Angus, now the tutor of Regent’s-Park College; and then Mr. Smith, whom none of us can ever forget, because he always insists on printing two or three books a year, so that we should always have him in mind; they are full of Gospel Doctrine, and are printed at so extraordinarily cheap a rate, that they are scattered about by tens of thousands, and thus his name is had in remembrance.
Mr. Walters would have been here tonight but he said, “There is a great work doing in my own Church, and I do not think I should be justified in sparing the time to come.” I thought this a most admirable argument, though I should have been more glad for him to have been one in our midst tonight. We wish him God-speed, and pray that wherever he goes success may attend his labors. I do not think that in the course of the next 20 years, you, as a Church, will have such a choice of pastors as you have had during the last 20 years. If I should die you can do so, I suppose, but I do not think that anything short of that, would get me to go away from this spot. I hardly agree with ministers when they get beaten, showing the white feather, and resigning the charge. I feel I am captain of a vessel, and if there should be Jonah in the ship, I shall as gently and in as Christian a spirit as possible, pitch him out; I shall not think, because Jonah is there, that therefore I ought to get out, but will stand by the ship in ill weather as well as in sunshine! I know that by God’s Grace I was called to this place; and if God’s Grace and Providence shall move me, well and good, but nothing else ever will. I have not the slightest doubt but that, as our numbers shall increase, in answer to earnest prayer, the Spirit of God will be poured out yet more abundantly upon the minister and the people, and that we, being bound together yet more surely in ties of affection, and in ties of hearty cooperation, may go from strength to strength in glorifying God, and serving one another! Why should not this ancient Church become as glorious in the future as in the past? O may God hear our prayers, and it will be so. Jesus shall here be honored, and the Truth maintained.
The CHAIRMAN—Christian Friends and Brethren—I feel tonight that I am not exactly where I ought to be; I feel that I cannot say anything, because I have so many things to say; in fact, I feel too much to be able to say anything, and I am happy to think I have been placed in the chair, because mine will be merely a nominal office. One thing, however, I would say. If we had time and it was proper, I would speak first of the love of God, and then of His faithfulness. God is