We had to pay for this one, but we simply could not pass it up. It's just too meaningful of an item and we knew it would find a good home. 

The present single page manuscript, entirely in the hand of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, is as close to a model of ministry and life as Spurgeon ever articulated. 

Preaching on Isaiah 45.22 in January 1856, just six years after his conversion to Christ, Spurgeon shares about the precious day his spiritual life began:

"Six years ago to-day, as near as possible at this very hour of the day, I was 'in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity,' but had yet, by divine grace, been led to feel the bitterness of that bondage, and to cry out by reason of the soreness of its slavery.

Seeking rest, and finding none, I stepped within the house of God, and sat there, afraid to look upward, lest I should be utterly cut off, and lest his fierce wrath should consume me. The minister rose in his pulpit, and, as I have done this morning, read this text, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." I looked that moment; the grace of faith was vouchsafed to me in the self-same instant; and now I think I can say with truth,

"Ere since by faith I saw the stream
His flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die."

I shall never forget that day, while memory holds its place; nor can I help repeating this text whenever I remember that hour when first I knew the Lord."

That single verse, stanza four of William Cowper's There is a Fountain Filled with Blood, would show up in Spurgeon's life and preaching over and again through the remainder of his life.

He quotes it in when sharing his conversion in the sermon above in 1856, in his sermon Withholding Corn from 1865, in The Royal Prerogative from 1879, then quite movingly toward the end of his life [1888]. He also quotes it in his autobiography and in various other sermons and works. 

That final 1888 use, some 32 years after the first account, reminds us just how fresh the Gospel remained to him, to his dying day:

". . . till one day I heard a simple preacher of the gospel speak from the text, 'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' When he told me that all I had to do was to 'look' to Jesus— to Jesus the crucified One, I could scarcely believe it. He went on, and said, 'Look, look, look!' He added, 'There is a young man, under the left-hand gallery there, who is very miserable: he will have no peace until he looks to Jesus'; and then he cried, 'Look! Look! Young man, look!' I did look; and in that moment relief came to me, and I felt such overflowing joy that I could have stood up, and cried, 'Hallelujah! Glory be to God, I am delivered from the burden of my sin!' Many days have passed since then; but my faith has held me up, and compelled me to tell out the story of free grace and dying love. I can truly say—

'E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.'

I hope to sit up in my bed in my last hours, and tell of the stripes that healed me."

And he held to this. As death approached, he requested that his tombstone be engraved with the same words. It was. We include an image of it with this listing [not included as part of sale]

Framed with a photograph of C. H. Spurgeon, double matted with acid free matting, and framed. Very good condition save some minor adhesive remain to frame.