Customer Reviews

Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers

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This book captivates you. Spureon stood out as a preacher and pastor far above most who ever pastored. Dr.Dummand has given a vivid description of the many faceted sides of the great preacher. When I finished the book I felt like it should be studied rather than just read. You will love the many tidbits of fascinating information about the man and his ministry. Mr. Spurgeon was involved in controversary quite often. The author tells how and why. Spurgeon took a strong stand on the fundamentals of the faith when many others were not as open. There are many paralells to prominent pastors of today. It will especially encourage and strengethen younger pastors. As I read the book two thing struck me. How I wish I had read this 50 years ago. Then how we need more his tribe today. Every Christian would be blessed and profited by this book.

Lewis Drummond has given the Church of God a great book with this massive, 800+ page book on the life of one of the English language's greatest pastors, Charles Spurgeon. The book reads very quickly and you will find yourself getting lost in the life of Spurgeon from his early childhood to his glorious days in ministry to the very dark days of the end of his life. You will read the good and the bad of Spurgeon for he was just a sinner redeemed by God's grace and you will also find a man passionate for the truth of God's inerrant Word.

In short, you will be challenged to pray that God would raise up more Spurgeons not only for the United States but for Great Britain and all the world. How we need godly men to once again proclaim God's truth in an age of compromise and spiritual decay.

While this is a rather good biography and offers more details about the life of perhaps the most well known preacher of the 19th century than even I knew about, the book suffers where the author has unfortunately adopted a cut-and-paste method in his work. What he has done is lift many sections from the works of others and placed them in his book with such frequency that nearly every page has an insertion of this type. And to find and read this on nearly every page is disconcerting to say the least. It's almost as if one is reading someone else's book or books. If you can ignore this discrepancy then this is a book well worth the read. If, however, you find this as troubling as I did then you may want to look elsewhere.

I just finished reading this yesterday(It took about six weeks). Since my early days as a graduate student, I've admired the sermons C.H. Spurgeon. Though over a hundred years old now, they never fail to inspire, convict, or encourage. There simply was no one, before or since, who could preach God's word quite like Spurgeon did.

While surfing Amazon in 2009, I first came across this text. I'd read some about C.H. Spurgeon before, but wanted to get an exhaustive overview of his life. This book did not fail on that account. In fact, at times it seems to give too much information(e.g. Almost twenty pages is devoted to Spurgeon's diary from 1950). There are also numerous quotes that could have been more effectively paraphrased. Yet, despite these shortcomings, I'm glad I read this. It truly can invigorate any follower of Jesus Christ to more effectively share and preach the Gospel with power from the Holy Spirit. Studying the London pastor's life also reminds us that all Christians, not just religious leaders, should give faithfully and without hesitation. Finally, in a day of great moral and theological compromise, this biography proves that being a faithful, historically-rooted Christian remains the best path to follow.

I would recommend this book as an excellent intro (though it is thorough) to the life and work of Charles Spurgeon. It goes into considerably more depth than Dallimore's "Spurgeon: A New Biography" and is still an enjoyable read.

For the casual reader, I would recommend Dallimore's book. For the more serious reader or student, I would recommend this book as the first resource biography. For more depth of research I would recommend CHS' autobiography.

This biography by Lewis Drummond was recommended to me by several leading evangelical church history scholars and Professors, and it did not disappoint at all. Drummond takes an interesting approach in in this biography on the life of Spurgeon by basing it around John Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress. Having read several biographies on Spurgeon in preparation to write a research paper on him this is by far my favorite on him, as the author engages Spurgeon. The author excels at setting Spurgeon in his time period and then explains what he believes and what he during his long ministry. I recommend you get a copy of Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers by Lewis Drummond its well worth the read and you'll learn a ton about Charles Spurgeon and his ministry along the way.