Preach the Whole Truth: Counting the Cost with Charles Spurgeon

On the morning of Sunday, June 5, 1864, Charles Spurgeon ascended the pulpit to deliver a sermon that he expected would cost him dearly. Friends might turn away; his influence might take a severe blow; his sermons might no longer be printed. Should he preach it? Should he publish it?

Spurgeon later recounted,

It was delivered with the full expectation that the sale of the sermons would receive very serious injury; in fact, I mentioned to one of the publishers that I was about to destroy it at a single blow, but that the blow must be struck, cost what it might, for the burden of the Lord lay heavy upon me, and I must deliver my soul. I deliberately counted the cost, and reckoned upon the loss of many an ardent friend and helper, and I expected the assaults of clever and angry foes.¹

The text of the sermon was Mark 16:15–16: “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”² The topic of this sermon was baptismal regeneration.

Spurgeon’s Challenge

That morning, Spurgeon challenged the Church of England’s teaching of baptismal regeneration, a teaching that yokes the act of baptism with spiritual regeneration. His protest was not against paedobaptism as such. Spurgeon entertained warm and affectionate respect for many paedobaptists, including men such as the Congregationalist George Rogers, whom he appointed the first principal of the Pastor’s College. Anglican evangelicals confused him, but he loved them in Christ.

Spurgeon is unmistakably clear about his views of baptism, including his opposition to infant sprinkling. Countless sermons provide explicit and incidental arguments for the baptism of believers only.³ The point in this sermon on baptismal regeneration is less about the ordinance of baptism and more about baptismal regeneration and doctrinal and practical integrity. Spurgeon’s challenge was against baptismal regeneration, formalism, and sacramentalism in the Church of England, part of which was drifting back toward Roman Catholicism through the Tractarian movement.⁴ Spurgeon was a true Nonconformist (or Dissenter), an Independent churchman, and a Baptist. He shared the British Dissenter’s horror of and opposition to Roman Catholicism. By conviction as well as situation, he existed outside the pale of the Anglican communion and was ready to challenge their formalism and national churchmanship.

Spurgeon preached the sermon that morning feeling that “I have been loath enough to undertake the work, but I am forced to it by an awful and overwhelming sense of solemn duty.”⁵ He contended that the Anglican rubric for infant baptism offered an explicit declaration that baptism saves, especially by promising that through baptism “this Child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church,” and — addressing God — that “it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.”

This belief, he asserted, was not something that any true evangelical could or did maintain. “Why then,” he asked, “do they belong to a Church which teaches that doctrine in the plainest terms?”⁶ He could honor the integrity of a bold heretic, but he was troubled by the dishonesty of good men attaching themselves to known falsehood. For men “to swear or say that they give their solemn assent and consent to what they do not believe is one of the grossest pieces of immorality perpetrated,” breeding an atmosphere of lies.⁷

Against Damning Error

The religion of Scripture is a religion of faith: “I cannot see any connection which can exist between sprinkling, or immersion, and regeneration, so that the one shall necessarily be tied to the other in the absence of faith.”⁸ Baptismal regeneration encourages hypocrisy of the worst sort and leads to damnation by assuring that all who get religiously damp are saved, though they should live godlessly. It was the side door by which popery strolled back into the Anglican communion. Spurgeon was equally merciless in his condemnation of Dissenting superstition — venerating places, people, or rituals. Christ and Christ alone must be the object of our faith:

Lay hold on Jesus Christ. This is the foundation: build on it. This is the rock of refuge: fly to it. I pray you fly to it now. Life is short: time speeds with eagle’s-wing. Swift as the dove pursued by the hawk, fly, fly poor sinner, to God’s dear Son; now touch the hem of his garment; now look into that dear face, once marred with sorrows for you; look into those eyes, once shedding tears for you. Trust him, and if you find him false, then you must perish; but false you never will find him while this word standeth true, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” God give us this vital, essential faith, without which there is no salvation. Baptized, re-baptized, circumcised, confirmed, fed upon sacraments, and buried in consecrated ground — ye shall all perish except ye believe in him.⁹

For Spurgeon, baptism — the baptism of his Scripture text — must follow after faith in the Jesus of the Bible:

Baptism is the avowal of faith; the man was Christ’s soldier, but now in baptism he puts on his regimentals. The man believed in Christ, but his faith remained between God and his own soul. In baptism he says to the baptizer, “I believe in Jesus Christ;” he says to the Church, “I unite with you as a believer in the common truths of Christianity;” he saith to the onlooker, “Whatever you may do, as for me, I will serve the Lord.” It is the avowal of his faith.¹⁰

The falsehood of baptismal regeneration introduces a fatal frailty into any church: “Out of any system which teaches salvation by baptism must spring infidelity, an infidelity which the false Church already seems willing to nourish and foster beneath her wing.”¹¹ The sermon is not bitter in tone, but it potently manifests the spirit of a man who is deeply persuaded of the danger of the lie he exposes, and desperate that sinners should realize that only faith alone in Christ alone can save. He wants the people of God to know what they believe and to speak and live accordingly.

Gospel Issues

For all its preening pomposity, our age often lacks the kind of straightforwardness that Spurgeon championed and displayed. Sniping from cover is more the order of the day. Corresponding to that posture is a vindictiveness toward those with whom we disagree or who disagree with us. It is hard for us today (and was not easy in Spurgeon’s day) to reconcile strong opposition with affection and respect for some who hold to what we oppose. I can, and do, appreciate and respect men whom I am persuaded are wrong, sometimes badly wrong, on certain issues. I am grateful for what I perceive to be the happy inconsistencies that keep my brothers from wandering too far from the right road. I suspect that they entertain the same thoughts of me; if not, they need to sharpen up!

For Spurgeon, every scriptural truth was important. If God has spoken, men should listen and obey. Spurgeon was not suggesting that salvation hinges upon the embrace of every truth that God has revealed. He entertained warm and affectionate relationships with men who did not see eye to eye with him on every matter. Nevertheless, he was concerned that men should take God at his word and not pretend that anything God has spoken is insignificant. Spurgeon was not prepared to treat any point of revelation as if it were unimportant.

Alongside of that, Spurgeon recognized that not all issues were gospel issues — hinges upon which spiritual life and death hung. A matter like baptismal regeneration, however, was (and still is) a gospel issue. It offered what it could not deliver in the sphere of salvation, and — for the glory of God and the good of men — it must be withstood and exposed. It was not enough to disagree with it; it must be addressed: “I might be silent here, but, loving England, I cannot and dare not; and having soon to render an account before my God, whose servant I hope I am, I must free myself from this evil as well as from every other, or else on my head may be the doom of souls.”¹² Where errors have the capacity to be dangerously wrong, damningly wrong, we must speak.

Cost of Conviction

Do we, with Spurgeon, believe what we say and say what we believe, appropriately and clearly and humbly, following the word of God where it takes us? We need not attack everyone and everything with which we disagree, and we can entertain genuine affection for some with whom we have genuine difference of conviction. However, we must be clear where the glory of God in the salvation of souls is at stake, and we cannot condone — either by speech or silence — those errors that rob us of the gospel. Do we have the discernment, honesty, and integrity to love those with whom we might disagree in some things, but to come away from those who maintain and declare damning error?

Such conviction requires sacrifice. As we saw earlier, Spurgeon expected this address, when published, to cost him financially and reputationally. But, he asserted,

No truth is more sure than this, that the path of duty is to be followed thoroughly if peace of mind is to be enjoyed. Results are not to be looked at, we are to keep our conscience clear, come what may, and all considerations of influence and public estimation are to be light as feathers in the scale. In minor matters as well as more important concerns I have spoken my mind fearlessly, and brought down objurgations and anathemas innumerable, but I in nowise regret it, and shall not swerve from the use of outspoken speech in the future any more than in the past. I would scorn to retain a single adherent by such silence as would leave him under misapprehension. After all, men love plain speech.¹³

You do not know what the Lord will do with your honesty. Both this sermon and its controversial successors were runaway bestsellers, even as they called forth real vitriol from opponents. Far from destroying Spurgeon’s reputation, though, they enhanced it among those who valued “plain speech,” even when they disagreed with its content. Remember that Spurgeon did not know what the results would be when he first wrote and spoke, but he wrote and spoke nonetheless.

The man of conviction is going to be criticized. The man who speaks his mind, even with humility and love, is likely to be assaulted. However, we must be concerned first to honor God by faithfulness to all his revealed truth, in its proper place, perspective, and proportion, and to serve men by speaking that truth in love — a love more concerned for their souls than for our reputations. We need not suggest that Spurgeon gets everything right here or all the time. Nevertheless, we find in this an example of conviction and courage that we would do well to follow.