SPURGEON AS A POPULAR AUTHOR.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3887, 4 January 1884, Page 4

SPURGEON AS A POPULAR AUTHOR.

Mr Spurgeon as one of the sights of London is familiar enough, but Mr Spurgeon as a popular author is a novelty to many. Yet Mr Spurgeon is a popular author, and no mistake. Almost alone among popular authors, he has a firm of publishers almost exclusively occupied with the publicatiou and distribution of the literature oonnected with his name. The catalogue of tho " Spurgeon publications " fills four closely-printed octavo pages, and their supply constitutes the chief business of Messrs Passmora and Alabaster, Paternostor Buildings. Tho backbone of the Spurgeon Library is the Tabernacle soi-mou. Tho regular weekly publication of the sermon dates back to 1855, when Mr Spurgeon occupied New Park Street Chapel, Southwark -the groat demand for the sermons being suggested by those which had previously boeu published on special occasions. No. I in this series was preached on the morning of January 7, 1855, and its subject was '-The Immutability of God." it has oficn been re-printed. In the cellars of his publishers, in racks and cases running along the floor aro reams of sermons of various dates in sheets; but these anticipatory stores rarely uatiafy the demands of the public. A visit has every vow and again to be paid to the room where the 1730 odd stereo plates are racked; and some of those plates luivo been printed from over and over again. Up to this time a sermon delivered in 1864, entitled "Baptismal Regeneration," has had tho most extensive circulation. It is now in its one hundred and ninety-ninth thousand, and it is still in demand. Every admirer of Mr Spurgeon has his or her favourite sermons, and there are " runs "on different sets. Next to the one on "Baptismal Regeneration," it is curious to note, tho sermon which has had the largest salo is that which Mr Spurgeon delivered on the occasion of the loss of the Prmee.-s Alice ; and, perhaps, when it lias attained a proportionate "age," it will even rise in point of circulation with the sermon on " Baptismal Regeneration." The sermons in largest circulation, speaking generally, aro those which are evangelical hi their tone. A sermon is published every Thursday. It is usually the one preached tho previous Sunday morning. Tho sermons are regularly reported by a professional shorthand writer, whose "copy" undergoes revision by Air Spurgeon. E\ory week of the past 29 years has seen a sermon of Mr Spurgeon issued to tho public. The regular weekly safe of tho-sermon (counting in'the numbers put into monthly covens) is now about twenty-five thousand. Tabernacle literature is largely exported to our colonies, and pirated in tho United States. Mr Spurgeon's sermons have been translated into nearly all thu languages of tho world. Proof that Mr Spurgeon's popularity, and consequent usefulness, is no more on tho wane abroad than at home is furnished in the fact that for several weeks recently full reports of the Sunday morning discourses were cabled across the Atlantic to a Chicago newspaper. Those reports have nosy been discontinued, not 1 c .ause of their expense, but because an enterprising contemporary tapped tho wires, and secured the sermons for nothing. Their popularity is greatest in Scotland, where they arc on salo at all tho bookstalls and read everywhere.—Pall Mall Gazette.