We record with deep regret the death on Sunday of
the great Baptist minister, Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, at the age of fifty-seven. He had been ill for many months, and though he rallied repeatedly, those who knew that he was suffering from Bright's disease had from the first but little hope. His death is a blow not only to his own congregation, one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world, but to all Protestant Churches. Though not a theologian, and scarcely to be classed among great orators, Mr. Spurgeon was not only a most eloquent and successful preacher, an able administrator of large funds, all devoted to benevo- lent work, and a man of most Christian life, but he had a personality so strong as to redeem Nonconformist Churches from the reproach of producing inferior pastors, and to show that Voluntaryism does not necessarily imply submissiveness in the teacher towards the taught. Besides being a man of deep if narrow piety, Mr. Spurgeon was a shrewd, hard-headed Englishman, full of sense, at moments so brightly expressed that it had all the effect of wit. He preached in 1)lain, sometimes even rough English, which went straight to the minds and consciences of his vast audiences, and his aermons were circulated to hundreds of thousands.
Scores of his pithy sentences have become as popular as proverbsi one of- the best and- most characteristic perhaps being: "Never chew your pills." If all Ireland could receive and. follow the teaohing in that sentence, what a different island it would be !
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