Phil Johnson of spurgeon.org writes:

It is well known that Charles Spurgeon came to Christ when he ducked into a small church to escape a snowstorm and heard the gospel proclaimed. Some wrongly think Spurgeon was thus suddenly converted to Christ out of a life of sheer paganism. Spurgeon himself used to talk about how he had suffered for a long time under the weight of sin before he finally found Christ. Because of the way he described himself as a great sinner utterly in debt to divine grace, many who heard him preach came away with the impression that he was a man who had gone deeply into sin and come to Christ fairly late in life.

But the facts are that Charles Spurgeon was converted to Christ while still in his youth, and he was the product of godly upbringing in a pastor’s home. Spurgeon’s two main role models, his father and his grandfather, both were godly pastors.

Spurgeon was raised in his grandfather’s home from his infancy until he was nearly six years old. Something, possibly economic difficulties, made it necessary for Charles to live with his paternal grandparents, in a village near the one where his parents lived, from the time he was nearly two years old until he was ready to start elementary school. Charles Spurgeon was his grandfather’s constant companion, both in the pastor’s study and when the elder Spurgeon made pastoral visits. Young Charles loved his grandfather’s books. He was a prodigy when it came to reading, and he developed a love for books very early. He especially loved Pilgrim’s Progress.

By the time Spurgeon returned to his parents’ home at age six, he already had three younger siblings, two sisters and a brother. He seemed already to feel very deeply his responsibility as the elder brother to influence them for good. That perspective, which was surely part of his grandfather’s pastoral legacy, made him mature beyond his years. And this was a persistent trait of Charles Spurgeon’s. As a young boy, even before he was a teenager, his hobbies were writing poetry and editing a magazine. Even then he was honing the literary skills that would make him legendary both as a preacher and an author.

You can look at Spurgeon in any stage of his development and what you will see is someone who was wise beyond his years, with an exceptionally mature outlook on life. Even Spurgeon himself made reference to this. When he was 40 years old he lectured a group of young men, and he said in that lecture that he was already an old man at age 40. He told them,

I might have been a young man at twelve, but at sixteen I was a sober, respectable Baptist parson, sitting in the chair and ruling and governing the church. At that period of my life, when I ought perhaps to have been in the playground, developing my legs and sinews, which no doubt would have kept me from the gout now, I spent my time at my books, studying and working hard, sticking to it, very much to the pleasure of my schoolmaster. [W.Y. Fullerton, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Chicago: Moody, 1966), 21.]

At age 6, when Spurgeon returned to his parents’ home, he entered school for the first time. With his ability to read and his love for books, his teachers immediately recognized him as a gifted student, and he excelled from the beginning. He was ahead of his classmates from the start, even though he was a late-comer to school. (There was only one time in his school career when his grades began to fail and his performance wasn’t what it ought to be. The teacher was shocked, because Spurgeon was her best student. Then it occurred to this teacher that the top student’s place was away from the fire and next to a drafty door. He realized that Spurgeon was actually doing poorly in school work on purpose because he didn’t want the best seat. After all, it was the most uncomfortable. So the teacher reorganized the seating arrangements, and Spurgeon’s academic performance rebounded. He never failed again.)

When Spurgeon was about 14, he and his brother James went to school in Maidstone, where Spurgeon’s uncle was one of the teachers. It was there, as a very young teenager in a conversation with the school staff, that Charles was first exposed to the Baptist view on baptism. (Spurgeon’s grandfather was a congregationalist who practiced infant baptism, and that was all that Spurgeon had ever known.) An Anglican school was an unlikely place for anyone with a congregational heritage to embrace Baptist beliefs. But Spurgeon, even at that young age, felt compelled to study the issue from Scripture and make up his own mind. As he did so, he found the Baptist position unassailable. So he made up his mind at age 14 that if he ever experienced conversion, he would be baptized. Such was the seriousness of his interest in spiritual things, even before his conversion.

When Charles was about 10 or 11 years old, he began to be deeply convicted about his sin. He was convinced that he had no saving knowledge of Christ. So he set out on a quest for salvation that lasted about 5 years. This was an agonizing time of life for Spurgeon, because he already viewed spiritual matters with far more seriousness than any other boy his age. The knowledge that he himself was not a true Christian was something that weighed more heavily on him than language can express. It became a burden he carried around continually.

W. Y. Fullerton, one of Spurgeon’s biographers and a close friend in Spurgeon’s adult years, wrote this about those years of Spurgeon’s searching for salvation:

Into those years was crowded a world of experience which enabled him in his subsequent ministry to probe the secrets of many hearts. He learned more of the things that matter in those years than most men learn in a lifetime.

That one so young, so sheltered, trained from his babyhood in the ways of God, could have felt so much and have had such exercises of soul may seem impossible, his own account of his darkness and despair may appear exaggerated; but those who are versed in the ways of God will understand [Ibid., 23].

Spurgeon’s own account of his struggle to find salvation does indeed leave us marveling that such a boy could feel his own sin so deeply. After all, he grew up in a godly family, in a pastor’s home; he had never committed any sort of scandalous sin (probably the most serious sin he had ever fallen into was a lie); and yet the burden of his sin weighed so heavily on him that he was brought to the brink of utter despair by it.

Here’s what Spurgeon himself wrote about those dark days of conviction:

When I was in the hand of the Holy Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while, I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honour of God’s name, and the integrity of His moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came the question,—”How could God be just, and yet justify me who had been so guilty?” I was worried and wearied with this question; neither could I see any answer to it. Certainly, I could never have invented an answer which would have satisfied my conscience . . .. I had heard of the plan of salvation by the sacrifice of Jesus from my youth up but I did not know any more about it in my innermost soul than if I had been born and bred a Hottentot. The light was there, but I was blind: it was of necessity that the Lord Himself should make the matter plain to me. [C. H. Spurgeon, Autobiography 4 vols. (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1897), 1:98.]

Notice the poetic way Spurgeon describes the sense of guilt he felt. Remember, he’s talking about himself as a boy. He was a young teenager at the time he is describing—perhaps not even in his teens yet. (The whole period of his conviction lasted from age 11 until he was 16.) He further writes:

There was a day, as I took my walks abroad, when I came hard by a spot for ever engraven upon my memory, for there I saw this Friend, my best, my only Friend, murdered. I stooped down in sad affright, and looked at Him. I saw that His hands had been pierced with rough iron nails, and His feet had been rent in the same way. There was misery in His dead countenance so terrible that I scarcely dared to look upon it. His body was emaciated with hunger, His back was red with bloody scourges, and His brow had a circle of wounds about it: clearly could one see that these had been pierced by thorns. I shuddered, for I had known this Friend full well. He never had a fault; He was the purest of the pure, the holiest of the holy. Who could have injured Him? For He never injured any man: all His life long He “went about doing good;” He had healed the sick, He had fed the hungry, He had raised the dead: for which of these works did they kill Him? He had never breathed out anything else but love; and as I looked into the poor sorrowful face, so full of agony, and yet so full of love, I wondered who could have been a wretch so vile as to pierce hands like His. I said within myself, “Where can these traitors live? Who are these that could have smitten such an One as this? Had they murdered an oppressor, we might have forgiven them; had they slain one who had indulged in vice or villainy, it might have been his desert; had it been a murderer and a rebel, or one who had committed sedition, we would have said, “Bury his corpse: justice has at last given him his due.” But when Thou wast slain, my best, my only-beloved, where lodged the traitors? Let me seize them, and they shall be put to death. If there be torments that I can devise, surely they shall endure them all. Oh! what jealousy; what revenge I felt! If I might but find these murderers, what would I not do with them! And as I looked upon that corpse, I heard a footstep, and wondered where it was. I listened, and I clearly perceived that the murderer was close at hand. It was dark, and I groped about to find him. I found that, somehow or other, wherever I put out my hand, I could not meet with him, for he was nearer to me than my hand would go. At last I put my hand upon my breast. “I have thee now,” said I; for lo! he was in my own heart; the murderer was hiding within my own bosom, dwelling in the recesses of my inmost soul. Ah! then I wept indeed, that I, in the very presence of my murdered Master, should be harbouring the murderer; and I felt myself most guilty while I bowed over His corpse . . .. [Ibid., 99-100.]

That, of course, was written by Spurgeon in his adult years, so it represents his mature way of describing how he felt as a child. But it is clear that even as an 11- or 12-year-old child, he was carrying around a sense of personal guilt that was unusually intense. The guilt was so profound that for 5 years it colored all his thinking. He never could get his thoughts completely away from the sense that he was a sinner, that he was guilty, and that he deserved hell.

Spurgeon’s mother was the one whose influence first awakened him to the claims of Christ on his life. Her exhortations to her children, as well as her prayers on their behalf, made an indelible impact on Charles as a young boy.

Spurgeon’s father played a somewhat lesser role in the children’s spiritual instruction. He was a pastor and a godly man. He himself admitted that his wife more than he was responsible for the children’s spiritual instruction. In fact, he used to recount an incident that occurred when he was on his way to some preaching engagement. (His ministry had an itinerant aspect that often took him out of the home.) On this particular occasion he became convicted that he was caring for other people and their spiritual needs, but neglecting his own family and his own children. He went back home. When he got home, upon entering the house quietly, he heard Mrs. Spurgeon in another room, praying for her children’s conversion. John Spurgeon says he decided that his children’s spiritual welfare was in good hands, and he returned to his preaching engagement.

It would be wrong to conclude, however, that John Spurgeon was inattentive or a compassionless father. He was devoted to his children. He was involved in their lives. Fullerton records a touching story about the father-son relationship:

When the boy returned home from his grandfather’s house, he greatly scandalised the congregation on Sunday by singing the last line of each verse twice. His father took him to task, but he said that his grandfather did it, and he would do it too. So his father told him that if he did it again he would give him a whipping that he would remember as long as he lived. Sunday came, and again the boy sang the last lines twice. It must have been amusing, for he had no singing voice. After the service his father asked him if he remembered what he had said. The boy remembered. Father and son then walked into the wood, passing a wheat field on the way, the father trying to win his son to repentance. There they kneeled and prayed together, and both were greatly moved. Turning back to the wheat field, the father plucked a stalk of wheat, and told Charles to hold out his hand. The wheat stalk was laid gently across it. “I told you I would give you a whipping you would never forget. You will never forget that,” said his father. The gentle sternness of the punishment broke him down and won him over, and he never forgot it [Fullerton, 25-26].

(continued in part 2 here)