plete his legitimate studies! "Backed like a weasel, or very like a whale,"—it is all the same. Well, one might think such things; but if I were Mr. Spurgeon I should not say them. However they may affect the unthinking mass, they cannot but make the judicious grieve. They are a direct incentive to ignorant spiritual self-sufficiency.
What is the consequence to Mr. Spurgeon himself? He began to preach when he was sixteen, and between his earliest and his latest discourses there is but little to choose, whether as regards matter or manner. From the first he was popular,—a great preacher, but a very indifferent thinker,—the prophet of incipient reflection, the high priest of emotional religion. He had scarcely passed his nineteenth year when he was appointed pastor of his present metropolitan charge. His first London sermon, in December, 1853, was addressed to two hundred hearers; in three months' time he counted auditors by the thousand. Since then he has touched nothing which has not prospered, and his industry has been enormous. In 1859 was laid the first stone of the vast Metropolitan Tabernacle, which, completed in 1861 at a cost of $156,660, accommodates with ease an audience of six thousand persons. In connection with the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and owing its origin to Mr. Spurgeon's persistency, is the Pastors' College, an institution maintained at great cost for the education of Baptist preachers; the Stockwell Orphanage, the Colportage Association, and a great variety of other benevolent institutions, large and small, which bear eloquent testimony to the enduring zeal of Mr. Spurgeon in promoting what he regards as the truest interests of humanity. In addition to all these achieve-
