“Next to the preaching of the Gospel, the most necessary thing to be done in England is to induce our people to become abstainers.”
Charles Spurgeon, 1882 (Baptist Church)
See also: Southern Baptist Convention - Resolution
“Next to the preaching of the Gospel, the most necessary thing to be done in England is to induce our people to become abstainers.”
Charles Spurgeon, 1882 (Baptist Church)
See also: Southern Baptist Convention - Resolution on Alcohol (2006)
Charles Spurgeon promoted teetotalism more and more consistently and strongly from the 1880s following a closer examination of the Holy Bible.
1855: the twenty-year-old Spurgeon preached: ‘I might speak of men who will venture into the midst of temptation, confident in their boasted power, exclaiming with self-complacency, “Do you think I am so weak as to sin? Oh! no, I shall stand. Give me the glass; I shall never be a drunkard. Give me the song; you will not find me a midnight reveller. I can drink a little and then I can stop.” Such are presumptuous men.’
Charles Spurgeon 1855, A Caution to the Presumptuous, Sermon 22, Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 13, 1855, by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon At Exeter Hall, Strand.
1865: Charles and Susannah’s twin sons took the teetotal pledge at his church. ‘I am not a teetotaller myself, and it is not likely that I shall ever be. I believe, however, that if children are brought up to abstain from alcoholic liquors, they will never need them; and therefore I think it right that they should have no instruction on the use of them from their parents... knowing that the society [Band of Hope - a teetotal society] does a great deal of good, I am glad to help it as much as I possibly can.’ [Actually, he did later quit himself.]
Charles Spurgeon 1865 cited in Lewis A. Drummond 1992, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, p. 449.
1874: Dr. Pentecost (a fellow Baptist preacher) had told the church where Spurgeon ministered how the Lord had helped him renounce a smoking habit. On this occasion, Spurgeon had defended his own use in front of the church. Subsequently he received rebuke from another Christian for defending his cigar-smoking like this. Newspapers reported the issue. To Spurgeon’s disgust, some cigar sellers kept putting the preacher’s name / picture on their advertisements. More is known today about tobacco’s harm, but a friend of the preacher would become very sick from it. So Charles gave it up for several months, and finally William Williams says for many years.
W. M. Hutchings wrote to Spurgeon in 1874: ‘The crusade against tobacco is conducted on precisely the same principles as the crusade against strong drink; and the arguments by which we advocate the one are almost identical with those by which we advocate the other.’
W. M. Hutchings, October 1874, Letter to the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon.
‘Not a few caricatures represented him smoking a pipe, but he never used a pipe all the years I knew him.’
From William Williams, Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Personal Reminiscences (London: The Religious Tract Society, n.d.), 30-32.
1877: Spurgeon would ‘wish the utmost success to the abstinence cause.’ Nevertheless, at this time he relied on somebody - who seemed to be convincing - and who thought teetotallers had misunderstood the Bible on the Lord’s Supper. By the 1880s, he further examined matter by the Holy Bible. ‘The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him.’ (Prov. 18:17)
The Sword and the Trowel, 1877, p. 437.
1880: By this time Spurgeon become a teetotaller himself. ‘I abstain myself from alcoholic drink in every form.’ He preached, ‘That which goes under the name of wine is not true wine, but a fiery, brandied concoction of which I feel sure that Jesus would not have tasted a drop.’ ‘Had our great Exemplar lived under our present circumstances, surrounded by a sea of deadly drink, which is ruining tens of thousands, I know how he would have acted.’ [He now began to see that non-intoxicating wine existed. Both types existed in Biblical times. A couple years later, his views became stronger still.]
Charles Spurgeon 1880, The Waterpots at Cana, Sermon 1556, Delivered by C. H. Spurgeon, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
1882: ‘Drunkenness is one of the most debasing of sins - it lowers the whole tone of the person who is held in bondage by it. We sometimes talk of a man being “as drunk as a beast,” but whoever heard of a beast being drunk? Why, it is more beastly than anything a beast ever does! I do not believe that the devil himself is ever guilty of anything like that. I never heard even him charged with being drunk! It is a sin which has no sort of excuse - those who fall into it generally fall into other deadly vices. It is the devil’s backdoor to Hell an