On July 6, 1887, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass sat down to write a letter to one of the most famous men in Great Britain. “Dear Mr. Spurgeon,” he wrote.
While crossing the Atlantic, last September, and looking out upon its proud dashing billows and their varied forms, and thinking of the diversity in the human family, I remarked that ‘we are many as the waves, but we are one as the sea.’ I had never heard this simile before, and thought it was original with me; but, while reading your sermon, published on the 30th June, I noticed that you said, speaking of the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, ‘Its expressions are many as the waves, but its testimony is one as the sea.’”
I am led to ask,—Is this a coincidence; or have I, unconsciously, borrowed from you, or have you borrowed this formula from me?
The record of Charles Spurgeon’s correspondence indicates that he responded shortly thereafter. Sadly, Spurgeon’s reply seems lost beneath the waves of history. I very much would like to read it. But this glimpse of the correspondence between The Lion of Anacostia and the Prince of Preachers draws our attention to the impact of Spurgeon’s sermons in America—Douglass noted in his letter that he had enjoyed them, but this was not unanimous.
In fact, Spurgeon never visited the United States, despite multiple invitations and his considering a trip in 1859. His vocal anti-slavery stance made it too dangerous. “I do from my inmost soul detest slavery … and although I commune at the Lord’s table with men of all creeds, yet with a slave-holder I have no fellowship of any sort or kind,” he wrote. “Whenever one has called on me, I have considered it my duty to express my detestation of his wickedness … as a man-stealer.”
Spurgeon’s stance was noticed. “If the Pharisaical author should ever show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat,” thundered The Southern Reporter and Daily Commercial Courier in 1860. The North Carolinian noted that many “would like a good opportunity at this hypocritical preacher.” The Weekly Raleigh Register stated that anyone selling his sermons should be arrested and charged with “circulating incendiary publications.” A Florida paper accused him of being a “beef-eating, puffed-up, vain, over-righteous, pharisaical, English blab-mouth.”
Spurgeon’s sermons were banned and burned. Some Southern newspapers actually put out calls inviting people to contribute to scheduled bonfires of Spurgeon’s works. “Spurgeon’s character was assassinated throughout the Confederacy,” noted The Spurgeon Center at Midwestern Seminary. “His sermons, which in 1862-1863 sold one million copies annually, were censured. His books, which sold 1,000 copies per minute at trade shows, were publicly destroyed. Sermon bonfires illuminated jail yards, plantations, and bookshops throughout the Southern states.”
