It seems strange that I shall never behold that homely, honest countenance again; and since that time, London has hardly seemed to be London without him.  It is a cause for congratulation that his son, the Reverend Thomas Spurgeon, is so successfully carrying forward the great work of his sainted father.  If my readers would like a sample taste of the pure Spurgeonic it is to be found in this passage which he delivered to his theological students:  “Some modern divines whittle away the Gospel to the small end of nothing; they make our Divine Lord to be a sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salvation to mere possibility; they make certainties into probabilities and treat verities as mere opinions.  When you see a preacher making the Gospel smaller by degrees, and miserably less, till there is not enough of it left to make soup for a sick grasshopper, get you gone with him!  As for me, I believe in an infinite God, an infinite atonement, infinite love and mercy, an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, and of which the substance and reality is an Infinite Christ.”

I once asked Dr. James McCosh, who was the greatest preacher he ever heard.  He replied, “Of course, it was my Edinboro Professor, Dr. Chalmers, but the grandest display of eloquence I ever listened to was Dr. Alexander Duff’s famous Plea for Foreign Missions, delivered before the Scottish General Assembly at a date previous to the disruption,” I can say Amen to Dr. McCosh, for the most overpowering oratory that I ever heard was Duff’s great missionary speech in the Broadway Tabernacle during his visit to America.  In the immense crowd were two hundred ministers and the foremost laymen of the city.  When the great missionary arose (he was then in the prime of his power), his first appearance was not impressive, for his countenance had no beauty and his gestures were grotesquely awkward.  With one arm he huddled his coat up to his shoulder, with the other he sawed the air incontinently, and when intensely excited, he leapt several inches from the floor as if about to precipitate himself over the desk.  All these eccentricities were forgotten when once the great heart began to open its treasures to us, and the subject of his resistless oratory began to enchain our souls.  In his vivid description of “Magnificent India” its dusky crowds and its ancient temples, with its northern mountains towering to the skies; its dreary jungles haunted by the tiger; its crystalline salt fields flashing in the sun; and its Malabar hills redolent with the richest spices, were all spread out before us like a panorama.

When the Doctor had completed the survey of India, he opened his batteries on the sloth and selfishness of too many of Christ’s professed followers; he poured contempt upon the men who said:  “They are not so green as to waste their money on the farce of Foreign Missions.”  “No, no, indeed,” he continued, “they are not green, for greenness implies verdure, and beauty,