Archibald G Brown, Spurgeon’s Successor, by Iain H Murray, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 419 pages, £16.00, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
Brown (1844-1922) was a Baptist pastor very much in the mould of C H Spurgeon. He did spend around three years as pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle some years after Spurgeon’s death, but during the most active part of his life he was minister of the East London Tabernacle, which was situated not far from where the Free Presbyterian congregation in London presently worships.
From the numbers attending, Brown came to the conclusion in 1869 that the original building at Stepney Green ought to be replaced by one which would be at least three times as large. The new structure could accommodate 3000 and many found salvation there through Brown’s preaching. One instance, which illustrates the difference between then and now in Evangelical attitudes to worldly entertainments, was a young local woman who first attended the East London Tabernacle on a Sabbath evening. “For nine years her occupation had been to sing at a playhouse and to dance in ballets. That is where she would have been found the previous evening. But the word preached so touched her heart that she could not go back to it the next evening. Pike [an earlier biographer] has recorded her reaction: ‘Knowing what she now did of her condition as a sinner in the Lord’s sight, she was afraid to go; and although the employment represented her livelihood she has never
been since. She is now almost constantly employed in making garments for poor children.”
Brown’s was a demanding charge, with such a large congregation; besides the directly-spiritual responsibilities, his church ran orphanages and made other attempts to address, in some little measure, the dire poverty of much of the surrounding area. By 1897 his health was much less robust than it had been; besides his heavy workload, repeated bereavement would also have taken its toll. (In fact, his fourth wife died just nine days before himself.) Brown gave strong support to Spurgeon in the Downgrade controversy, which was a rearguard action in defence of scriptural views on inspiration and other central doctrines; this too must have worn him down.
An interesting instance of God’s care for His needy children is recorded. After the death of his third wife in 1895, Brown had taken a short break in the South of France. On his return journey he spent a night in Paris. He felt “tired and depressed” and was anxious to get to bed. He was disturbed, however, by a clear, strong voice coming from the next room. “I could not fail to hear what was being read,” he wrote afterwards, “and I heard these words coming through the panel [in the door between his room and the next]: ‘For we know that if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’. So I quietly drew a chair to my side of the door and sat down, an unknown audience, as the reader read the chapter right through to his fellow traveller. . . . God knew that it was what I needed, and that this chapter was more calculated to be a pillow for a weary heart than any material pillow could be for a tired head.”
Before his spell at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Brown took charge of another church in South London. And after his time as Spurgeon’s successor he spent much of his time abroad, but still preaching the gospel while he was able to do so. Among the principles, we are told, which influenced Brown’s preaching were the following: (1.) “In the church, the Word of God must have ‘the highest possible position of honour’.” (2.) “The preacher must know the Holy Spirit in his personal life.” (3.) “The preacher needs the Holy Spirit in both the preparation and delivery of sermons.” Such principles lay at the basis of Brown’s ministerial labour, labour which God was pleased to bless. It is significant how, at the end of his days, Brown was lamenting an absence of conviction of sin; the power of the Spirit was being restrained in a way that, earlier in his life, it was not.
Among the appendices is a defence of unaccompanied singing in public worship; this was Brown’s position, though he may not always have insisted on it. Mr Murray quotes John Calvin: “Now that Christ has appeared, and
the Church has reached full age, it were only to bury the gospel, should we introduce the shadows of a departed dispensation” – where he is referring to the use of musical instruments in Old Testament worship and insisting that it was not carried over to the New; instruments were but shadows, types of the spiritual worship of the New Testament age.
In the light of his previous writings, it should be no surprise that Mr Murray’s latest book is well written and interesting.