Baptist Stalwarts

This Day in Baptist History Past



March 22, 1720 – John Gill, one of the long line of pastors of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, was ordained to the gospel ministry. He was born in Nov. 1897 and died on Oct. 14, 1697, sixty-three years before Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s birth. Spurgeon was a very young man when he became pastor of this church, that under his ministry, became the largest and most renowned church in the world at that time. Others that preceded him were Benjamin Keach and Benjamin Stinton, before Gill, and John Rippon, Joseph Angus, and James Smith prior to Spurgeon. Every preacher is different, but all have stories ascribed to them that in reality happened to those that went before them. Who hasn’t heard the one about the woman who Spurgeon allowed to cut off a portion of his tie because she didn’t like it, and then suggested that he allow her to let him cut off a portion of her tongue because he had something against her? However an 1849 periodical called The Baptist Memorial relates that the exact anecdote had taken place in 1769, and Rev. John Gill was the pastor. Gill was not known for his humor, but apparently even he could enjoy a good laugh. Spurgeon had a keen sense of humor. One wrote of him, “What a bubbling fountain of humor…I have laughed more…when in his company…than during all the rest of my life…He had the most fascinating gift of laughter I ever knew in any man, and he had also the greatest ability for making all who heard him laugh with him. He was a good example of the words of Solomon: A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones [Pr 17:22].

Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 157-59. [C.F: Enoch Hutchinson and Stephen Remington, The Baptist Memorial (New York: Z.P. Hatch, 1849, p. 30.]