On October 19, 1856, Charles H. Spurgeon was preaching to a congregation of about 10,000 that had assembled at the Surrey Music Hall in London, when someone suddenly shouted out “Fire!” Seven people were killed in the stampede toward the exits that ensued, and dozens more people were injured. Spurgeon felt the blow of the tragedy very deeply. “I was pressed beyond measure and out of bounds with an enormous weight of misery,” he would later write. “The tumult, the panic, the death, were day and night before me, and made life a burden.” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, reprinted ed. [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1954], 162). Where did Spurgeon find comfort in the wake of such a horrific calamity? He writes:
From that dream of horror I was awakened in a moment by the gracious application to my soul of the text, “Him hath God the Father exalted” [Acts 5:31, KJV]. The fact that Jesus is still great, let His servants suffer as they may, piloted me back to calm and reason and peace.
(Spurgeon, Lectures, 162). In other words, the great preacher found peace in the knowledge that Jesus Christ is an exalted Savior, and in him we find not just salvation from sin and eternal death but even deliverance from deep despondency of soul.
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