05 October 2011

The Eternal Name

In 1855, at age 20, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon entitled 'The Eternal Name.'

Many years later his wife reminisced on the end of that sermon. She said--
I remember, with a strange vividness at this long distance of time, the Sunday evening when he preached from the text, 'His name shall endure forever.' It was a subject in which he reveled, it was his chief delight to exalt his glorious Saviour, and he seemed in that discourse to be pouring out his very soul and life in homage and adoration before his gracious King.

But I really thought he would have died there, in the face of all those people! At the end of the sermon, he made a mighty effort to recover his voice; but utterance well-nigh failed, and only in broken accents could the pathetic peroration be heard--'Let my name perish, but let Christ's name last forever! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Crown him Lord of all! You will not hear me say anything else. These are my last words in Exeter Hall for this time. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Crown him Lord of all!' And then he fell back almost fainting in the chair behind him.
--described and quoted in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth, 1966), 41

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