The Lion of Anacostia and the Prince of Preachers

On July 6, 1887, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass sat down to write a letter to one of the most famous men in Great Britain. “Dear Mr. Spurgeon,” he wrote.

While crossing the Atlantic, last September, and looking out upon its proud dashing billows and their varied forms, and thinking of the diversity in the human family, I remarked that ‘we are many as the waves, but we are one as the sea.’ I had never heard this simile before, and thought it was original with me; but, while reading your sermon, published on the 30th June, I noticed that you said, speaking of the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, ‘Its expressions are many as the waves, but its testimony is one as the sea.’”

I am led to ask,—Is this a coincidence; or have I, unconsciously, borrowed from you, or have you borrowed this formula from me?

The record of Charles Spurgeon’s correspondence indicates that he responded shortly thereafter. Sadly, Spurgeon’s reply seems lost beneath the waves of history. I very much would like to read it. But this glimpse of the correspondence between The Lion of Anacostia and the Prince of Preachers draws our attention to the impact of Spurgeon’s sermons in America—Douglass noted in his letter that he had enjoyed them, but this was not unanimous.

In fact, Spurgeon never visited the United States, despite multiple invitations and his considering a trip in 1859. His vocal anti-slavery stance made it too dangerous. “I do from my inmost soul detest slavery … and although I commune at the Lord’s table with men of all creeds, yet with a slave-holder I have no fellowship of any sort or kind,” he wrote. “Whenever one has called on me, I have considered it my duty to express my detestation of his wickedness … as a man-stealer.”

Spurgeon’s stance was noticed. “If the Pharisaical author should ever show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat,” thundered The Southern Reporter and Daily Commercial Courier in 1860. The North Carolinian noted that many “would like a good opportunity at this hypocritical preacher.” The Weekly Raleigh Register stated that anyone selling his sermons should be arrested and charged with “circulating incendiary publications.” A Florida paper accused him of being a “beef-eating, puffed-up, vain, over-righteous, pharisaical, English blab-mouth.”

Spurgeon’s sermons were banned and burned. Some Southern newspapers actually put out calls inviting people to contribute to scheduled bonfires of Spurgeon’s works. “Spurgeon’s character was assassinated throughout the Confederacy,” noted The Spurgeon Center at Midwestern Seminary. “His sermons, which in 1862-1863 sold one million copies annually, were censured. His books, which sold 1,000 copies per minute at trade shows, were publicly destroyed. Sermon bonfires illuminated jail yards, plantations, and bookshops throughout the Southern states.”

The vitriol stemmed, in part, from Spurgeon’s response to an allegation made by the New York abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). After John Brown’s fateful raid on Harper’s Ferry, Beecher—who opposed Brown’s violence but supported his abolitionist fervor—claimed that many Northern churches were avoiding the subject of slavery, even removing anti-slavery passages from Spurgeon’s works.

Spurgeon responded with at least two letters. The first included his declaration of no fellowship with slaveholders and stated that he had never edited his work for an American audience, and the second called American slavery “a crime of crimes, a soul-destroying sin, and an iniquity which cries aloud for vengeance.” As historian Thomas Kidd observed, Spurgeon’s final line triggered the backlash: “John Brown is immortal in the memories of the good in England, and in my heart he lives.” For Southerners who lived in perpetual fear of a slave uprising, this was unforgivable.

According to Kidd, Spurgeon’s willingness to endorse an insurrectionist like Brown may have been inspired, in part, by his relationship with John Andrew Jackson, a runaway slave who had fled to Canada from South Carolina and traveled to Britain in 1857 “using references from antislavery figures such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Federick Douglass in hopes of raising funds to liberate family members who remained in slavery.” Jackson gave a speech detailing his life in slavery at Spurgeon’s New Park Street Chapel in 1859, and Spurgeon, Kidd noted, “commended Jackson’s speech.”

It should come as no surprise that Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest American orators of the 19th century, was an admirer of Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers in England.

Thus, in his letter to Spurgeon, Douglass notes that he had long wanted to hear him preach in person, and that he was grateful to have finally done so. “Through the kindness of a friend, I had the privilege of listening to you a few Sundays ago,” he concluded his letter. “It was the realization of an ardent desire born of reading some of your sermons in America, and of what was said to me of you by my friend, Dr. H. L. Wayland, a gentleman to whom I have been much indebted for friendly sympathy and advice while battling with slavery and prejudice in America.’

“Very truly yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS.”

The very existence of this correspondence confirms the fact that there are more connections in history than we can imagine. The very fact that in the 20th century Charles Spurgeon would become one of the most inspirational preaching models for pastors in America—including the Southern states—profoundly underlines the power of his remarkable ministry.