Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

The renown preacher and pastor in England was known in his day as the “Prince of Expositors.” Numerous books that he published remain in print, including commentaries, devotionals and an informative volume titled Lectures To My Students, which I highly recommend for preachers and classroom teachers of Bible. He struggled physically in his latter years with severe gout, and throughout his adult life experienced periodic bouts of depression.

In my opinion, he was ahead of his time in understanding depression: its complexity, causes and treatments. And for his era, Charles exhibited unusual transparency about his episodes of depression, even mentioning his despondency in multiple sermons. His best known message on depression, “The Minister’s Fainting Fits,” was apparently delivered to pastoral students. The quotes that follow represent just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to his views on the subject. Most quotes I derived from Zack Eswine’s Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression (Christian Focus Publications, 2014).

Eswine’s book may have exceptional applicability to Christian leaders, but anyone who experiences depression or wants to understand it better due to a loved one’s struggle will benefit from reading it. At the end of this post there’s a link to my review of the book from the archives of my blog at penetratingthedarkness.com.

All italicized sentences or phrases are direct quotes from Spurgeon.

 

Spurgeon’s Experience with Depression

My spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for…..Causeless depression cannot be reasoned with….as well fight with mist as with this shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness.

I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever go to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to.

Personally, I know that there is nothing on earth that the human frame can suffer to be compared with despondency and prostration of mind.

The mind can descend far lower than the body, for in it there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.

 

Spurgeon’s Views on A Christian’s Depression

Depression is a misfortune, not a fault. Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace. It is Christ, not the absence of depression, that saves us. Our sense of God’s absence does not mean that He is so. Though our bodily gloom allows us no feeling of His tender touch, He holds on to us still. Our feelings of Him do not save us. He does! Our hope does not reside in our ability to preserve a good mood, but in His ability to bear us up.

We do not profess that the religion of Christ will so thoroughly change a man as to take away from him all his natural tendencies. It will give the despairing something that will alleviate the despondency, but as long as  it is caused by a low state of body or a diseased mind, we do not profess that faith in Christ will totally remove it. There are lines of weakness in the creature that even grace does not erase.

Referring to Christians who experience recurring bouts of depression, yet cling to their faith, he said this: “There is much to admire ” about their perseverance and the Savior who cares for them.  

Charles believed that though Satan does not originate or cause depression, he nonetheless preys on the vulnerability of believers who experience it. He said that a believer undergoes more relentless temptation when despondent: The enemy makes a dead set at anxious souls. He delights in taking sorrows and making more of them.

 

His Warning to Some Christians’ Misconceptions about Faith and Depression

Judge not the sons and daughters of sorrow. Allow no ungenerous suspicions of the afflicted, the poor and the despondent. Do not hastily say they ought to be more brave and exhibit a greater faith. Ask not, “Why are they so nervous and so absurdly fearful?” No, I beseech you, remember that you understand not your fellow man.

Strong minded people are apt to be hard on nervous folk, and to speak harshly to people who are very depressed in spirit, saying “Really, you ought to rouse yourself out of that state.” But we would feel more for the prisoner if we knew more about the prison….We tend to judge others according to our circumstances rather than theirs.

 

Christ’s Affliction Comforted Spurgeon (See Mark 14:32-42, Hebrews 4:14-16 and 5:7)

Bodily pain should help us to understand the cross, but mental depression should make us apt scholars of Gethsemane. The sympathy of Jesus is the next most precious thing to His sacrifice. How completely it takes the bitterness out of grief to know that it was once suffered by Him. To feel in our being that the God to whom we cry has Himself suffered as we do enables us to feel that we are not alone and that God is not cruel.

 

The Comfort of God’s Word and Nature

Spurgeon focused on God’s timeless promises to help him when a dark mood descended. He referred often to a book someone else published on the Bible’s promises. He viewed God’s promises as the fuel needed for flagging hope. He said, “Hope, kindled by a divine promise, affects the entire life of a man in his innermost thoughts, ways and feelings.” Then he linked the promises to prayer, saying, “What is prayer, but the promises pleaded?”  He added, “I like in my time of trouble to find a promise which exactly fits my need, and then to put my finger on it, and say, ‘Lord, this is Thy Word. I beseech Thee to prove that it is so by carrying it out in my case.'”

He advocated periods of rest from one’s routine and “communion with nature” to help assuage a depressed spirit. Spurgeon also advocated medical intervention and natural remedies for a dark mood: It would not be wise to live by a supposed faith and cast off the physician and his medicines, any more than to discharge the butcher and the tailor, and expect to be fed and clothed by faith.

In his book, Eswine goes into much more detail about areas of Scripture that helped Spurgeon through depression, and how to handle the effect of depression on one’s faith.

 

Experiencing Depression Enhanced His Ministry to Church Members

The strong are not always vigorous, the wise are not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy….Good men are promised tribulation in this world, and ministers may expect a larger share than others, that they may learn sympathy with the Lord’s suffering people and so may be fitting shepherds of an ailing flock.

I often feel very grateful to God that I have undergone fearful depression. Hundreds of times I have been able to give a helpful grip to brethren and sisters who have come into that same condition, which grip could never have been given if I had not known their deep despondency. (This is but one of the reasons Charles expressed gratitude for his depression.)

 

A Sustaining Truth for Spurgeon: the Sovereignty of God

It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by His hand, that my trials were never measured out by Him, nor sent to me by HIs arrangement of their weight and quantity. 

See below for my review of Eswine’s book.

 

 

THE OUTRAGEOUSLY FRUITFUL MINISTRY OF A DEPRESSION-PRONE SPIRITUAL GIANT