CHARLES SPURGEON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 118, 21 May 1934, Page 9

CHARLES SPURGEON.

"A REALLY BIG CHRISTIAN." HIS EXCELLENCY'S TRIBUTE. An impressive service was held in the Town Hall last night in connection with the Spurgeon centenary celebrations. ' The Rev. Dr. J. J. North presided, and with the Rev. H. Knowles Kempton led the prayers. Dr. W. Graham Scroggie, who preached his final sermon in Auckland, was the principal speaker. Combined choirs led the audience in singing before the service began. The lesson was read by his Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, who, ih the course of a brief address, pakl an eloquent tribute to the subject of the celebrations. "Charles Haddon Spurgeon," said his Excellency, "was a really great man, a really big Christian in the largest sense. He owed his power, as all great preachers did, not only to his wide knowledge, of human affairs and the history of the Christian era, not only to his melodious voice and the magnetic capacity for using it, but to his transparent sincerity and the conviction which he conveyed that he was absolutely convinced of the truth of the gospel he "preached. I shall always respect his memory as one who perhap« more than any other preacher brought people who were leading a worldly life to a realisation of the joys of a Christian life."

The story of Spurgeon's visit to a small primitive Methodist chapel in an Kssex township when he was only 10 years of age was told by Dr. Scroggie. who said an old, illiterate and unprepared teacher's homely words had so appealed to the young man that the course of his whole life was changed. The world had reason to be thankful for that message. The boy who sat at the back of that smail church lived to be the sreatest preacher of the Christian era so far, and to preach in the Tabernacle to 20.000,000 people over a period of 33 years.