The Forgotten Spurgeon

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

I t is eleven years since the majority of these pages first appeared in The Banner of Truth magazine, 1 and in that period much has happened which is connected with Spur geon, though he died eighty years ago. There have been chang es, for example, in regard to places associated with his mem ory. His first London home, in the New Kent Road, has been pulled down; the chapel in Artillery Street, off Hythe Hill, Colchester, where he was converted on that January Sunday in 1850, has been re-opened for evangelical services; and the Metropolitan Tabernacle, after some years of difficulties, has once more been extending its influence for the gospel in the heart of London. But over and above all has been the repub lication in recent years of many of the volumes of the Met ropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit . Until 1969, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have concluded that this great series of volumes – unquestionably the most influential of all that Spurgeon prepared for the press – would never again be re-issued in toto; consequently, they did no more than issue abridgements and selections of Spurgeon’s writings. But since 1969 the publishers of this paperback have reprinted twelve

1 These words were written in 1972.

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