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Charles H. Spurgeon, What Depth of Love: Devotions on the Cross and Resurrection, edited by Geoffrey Chang, Greensboro: New Growth Press,  2026.

Lent has an ambiguous status in Reformed circles, but here are forty devotions on the death and resurrection of Christ which will strengthen and encourage any believer. As those who read Spurgeon will know, he is most adept at summarising issues in a memorable way. In commenting on the crown of thorns (Matt.27:29), he draws a link with the thorns and thistles associated with the Fall in Genesis 3:18, and states: ‘There was no part of our humanity without sin, and there must be no part of his humanity without suffering.’

 On Mark 15:23, Spurgeon says: ‘I do think that, if our Savior had drunk this myrrhed cup, the atonement would not have been valid.’ The suffering had to be complete. The Prince of Preachers pours out his eloquence in his treatment of Jesus’s forgiving of His tormentors in Luke 23:34. Spurgeon says of the test for Christ to save himself (Matthew 27:43): ‘the test is fair’. Spurgeon’s application is that such a test came to Christ, and it will come to us.

On Matthew 27:51, ‘God has rent the veil, and the devil cannot mend it.’ Nothing now can separate the believer from Christ (Rom.8:35). The invitation to sinners is wide open. Spurgeon can speak wonderful truths while not quite nailing the right text. He expends his talents on Matthew 27:51-53 by concentrating on the cross and its capacity to raise the spiritually dead, when the emphasis surely ought to be on the physical resurrection.

Whatever the case with that episode, Spurgeon is unrivalled in his ability to recreate a scene in a masterly way. He could have been a novelist, a poet, or perhaps an artist. Dealing with Luke 23:48, he imagines the crowd returning home, all affected by the cross, but in different ways. For some, ‘A handkerchief has dried up their emotions.’ To be swayed for a time is not the same as conversion: ‘Their beating of the breast was not a breaking of the heart.’

As a preacher, Spurgeon was not one to engage in detailed apologetics. Citing John 20:27, he grounded the relief of doubt in the wounds of Christ. Noting Revelation 5:6, he stated: ‘A crucified Christ with his wounds still open will be a terrible sight for an assembled universe.’ He commented too that he preferred John 20:28 (‘My Lord and my God’) to the minute distinctions of the Athanasian Creed. Here, we walk by faith, not by sight (John 20:29), for ‘God often hides himself in order to teach us to trust him more’.

Spurgeon’s illustrations tended to be both telling and short. He simply mentions Spain’s military champion from the eleventh century, Cid, Rodrigo Diaz. Even after he had been slain in battle, his followers mounted his corpse on his horse so that his adversaries, thinking he was still alive, would flee. Spurgeon comments: ‘We see no dead Christ in the forefront of our army; it is the living Christ who marches before us, and therefore we are confident of victory’. So Spurgeon’s final word, appropriately enough, is ‘Hallelujah’.

– Peter Barnes