Charles Spurgeon and Depression: When You Can’t Preach the Sadness Away

The greatest preacher of the 1800s wept in the dark, and he never hid it. On a single night in 1856, a false cry of fire sent a packed London crowd into a deadly stampede while 22-year-old Charles Spurgeon stood helpless on the platform. Seven people died. The memory haunted him for the rest of his life. The Prince of Preachers, the man who drew six thousand listeners every Sunday, spent his years battling a depression he could not always explain.

Even the Prince of Preachers Walked Through the Valley

Spurgeon refused to fake a holy smile. He spoke openly of dungeons beneath the castle of Despair, and he admitted he had been in them. Some of his sorrow had causes, like chronic pain, a crushing workload, and cruel critics. Some of it came with no cause he could name. If you carry a sadness you cannot explain, hear this. The man who loved Jesus so visibly still wept. Your heavy feelings are not proof of a failing faith.

How Spurgeon Preached to His Own Soul

He could move thousands, yet he could not always move himself out of the shadows. So he learned to do what the psalmist did. He talked back to his own heart. Psalm 42:11 says, Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him. Spurgeon did not wait to feel hope before he spoke it. He spoke it until it came. That same posture is what Horatio Spafford reached for the night he wrote It Is Well With My Soul over the spot in the Atlantic where his daughters drowned. Hope spoken before it is felt.

What to Say When the Fog Rolls In

You do not have to pretend the darkness is not real. You can look right at it and still tell your soul the truth. The same God who is near on the bright days has not moved an inch on the gray ones. When you cannot find a feeling, reach for a fact, and say it out loud. I will yet praise Him. The same kind of plain, honest truth-speaking we use to forgive is what Spurgeon used to keep believing.

Spurgeon’s honesty is still a gift to every believer who has ever wondered if something was wrong with them. Nothing was wrong with his faith. And nothing is wrong with yours.

And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.

Keep looking up!
Pastor Rodney

Listen to the audio version on the Lift Up Your Day podcast.