Daily Spurgeon

I [Spurgeon] wish to bear a personal testimony by narrating an incident in my own life.

I have been preaching in Essex this week, and I took the opportunity to visit the place where my grandfather preached so long, and where I spent my earliest days. Last Wednesday was to me a day in which I walked like a man in a dream. Everybody seemed bound to recall some event or other of my childhood. What a story of divine love and mercy did it bring before my mind! Among other things, I sat down in a place that must ever be sacred to me. There stood in my grandfather’s manse [parsonage] garden two arbors made of yew trees, cut into sugar-loaf fashion. *Though the old manse has given way to a new one, and the old chapel has gone also, yet the yew trees nourish as aforetime. I sat down in the right hand arbor and bethought me of what had happened there many years ago. When I was a young child staying with my grandfather, there came to preach in the village Mr. Knill, who had been a missionary at St. Petersburg, and a mighty preacher of the gospel. He came to preach for the London Missionary Society, and arrived on the Saturday at the manse. He was a great soul-winner, and he soon spied out the boy.

He said to me, “Where do you sleep? for I want to call you up in the morning.” I showed him my little room. At six o clock he called me up, and we went into that arbor. There, in the sweetest way, he told me of the love of Jesus, and of the blessedness of trusting in him and loving him in our childhood. With many a story he preached Christ to me, and told me how good God had been to him, and then he prayed that I might know the Lord and serve him. He knelt down in that arbor and prayed for me with his arms about my neck. He did not seem content unless I kept with [stayed beside] him in the interval between the services, and he heard my childish talk with patient love. On Monday morning he did as on the Sabbath, and again on Tuesday. Three times he taught me and prayed with me, and before he had to leave, my grandfather had come back from the place where he had gone to preach, and all the family were gathered to morning prayer. Then, in the presence of them all, Mr. Knill took me on his knee, and said,

“This child will one day preach the gospel, and he will preach it to great multitudes. I am persuaded that he will preach in the chapel of Rowland Hill, where (I think he said) I am now the minister.” He spoke very solemnly, and called upon all present to witness what he said. Then he gave me sixpence as a reward if I would learn the hymn.

“God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”

I was made to promise that when I preached in Rowland Hill’s Chapel that hymn should be sung. Think of that as a promise from a child! Would it ever be other than an idle dream?

Years flew by. After I had begun for some little time to preach in London, Dr. Alexander Fletcher had to give the annual sermon to children in Surrey Chapel, but as he was taken ill, I was asked in a hurry to preach to the children.

“Yes,” I said, “I will, if the children will sing, God Moves In A Mysterious Way. I have made a promise long ago that so that should be sung.”

And so it was: I preached in Rowland Hill’s Chapel, and the hymn was sung. My emotions on that occasion I cannot describe. Still, that was not the chapel which Mr. Knill intended. All unsought by me, the minister at Wotton-under-Edge, which was Mr. Hill’s summer residence, invited me to preach there. I went on the condition that the congregation should sing, “God moves in a mysterious way” which was also done. After that I went to preach for Mr. Richard Knill himself, who was then at Chester.

What a meeting we had!

Mark this! he was preaching in a theater*! His preaching in a theatre took away from me all fear about preaching in secular buildings, and set me free for the campaigns in Exeter Hall and the Surrey Music Hall. How much this had to do with other *theater services, you know.

“God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”

After more than forty years of the Lord’s loving-kind ness, I sat again in that arbor [the same grove of trees where the prophesy took place]!