It is impossible to know just how many people Charles Spurgeon’s ministry affected. His preaching reached thousands each week. He trained ministers through the Pastor’s College, who went on to reach millions themselves. But where did Spurgeon’s ministry begin? With his conversion, and for this, Spurgeon expressed thanks that his mother and father so earnestly invested in his soul.

The first looking after the soul of the child belongs to the Christian parent, and there it should begin. I have in my own person to thank God that my father and mother thought their first business was the conversion of their children . . . My mother always stayed at home on Sunday evening and gathered us around the table, and we read passages of Scripture, and she spoke to each one of us in such a way that I seldom spent a Sunday evening without tears. She prayed with us, her arms around our necks, and laboured to bring us to Christ. She asked us if we could not pray. I remember I could not, though I felt a good deal. I never forgot father’s words and mother’s tears; and if all fathers and mothers did the same as mine did, maybe all the children would not be saved, but the exceptions would be very few. They are the persons who have the greatest influence over the children—especially the mothers; and if we can get them to be true and earnest matrons, if they live near to God, we shall have the young people surely enough.1

Footnotes:
1
Quoted by G. Holden Pike, The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, vol. 6 (London: Cassell and Company, 1894), 225.
article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located across from the Principio Health Center on Rt. 40 in Perryville, MD.