Page 3 - Spurgeon

You have nothing to do but look and live.’ I did look, blessed be God! I
know I looked then and there; and he who but that minute ago had been
near despair, had the fulness of joy and hope.
“The cloud was gone, the darkness rolled away, and in that moment I
saw Jesus. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard the word
Look, I could almost have looked my eyes away. I could have risen that
instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of
Christ, and the simple faith that looks alone to Him.
“I thought I could dance all the way home. I could understand what John
Bunyan meant when he declared he wanted to tell all the crows on the
ploughed land about his conversion... Between half past ten, when I entered
that chapel and half-past twelve, when I returned home, what a change had
taken place in me!”
One of the places at which he preached regularly was the little Baptist
Chapel of Waterbeach, six miles from Cambridge. Surprisingly enough, this
is the village where Rowland Hill is said to have preached his first sermon.
The homely village congregation were much taken with the youthful Spurgeon,
and in spite of his age invited him to be their pastor. They surely had
spiritual discernment in so doing. The chapel was small, originally a barn,
with a steeply-pitched thatched roof.
The congregation was not large, but they contrived to pay him £45 per
annum. After much prayer, and consultation with his father, he accepted
the pastorate. He commenced his ministry in January 1852 and remained
with them until February 1854. A pastor at sixteen! The ministry there was
a great success and blessing from the start. People flocked from the thatched
cottages and farms in the district to the village chapel to hear the boy
preacher. In a real sense it was a foreshadowing of his future career.
But if Waterbeach shaped him, it can be said that he, through God’s
gracious power, transformed Waterbeach. His evangelical passion increased.
In a few weeks the little chapel was packed to the doors. The membership
jumped from forty to a hundred - quite remarkable for a village church. It
was the ancient miracle of the Spirit honouring a lad with a blameless life
and a mighty message. Reprobates, despisers and drunkards were reclaimed

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