This incident is related by the Rev. James J. Ellis, of the first student, Mr. T. W. Medhurst. He called upon Spurgeon, and said that he feared he had made a mistake in entering the ministry.
"What do you mean?" asked Spurgeon.
"Well, I've been preaching for five or six months, and have not heard of any conversions."
"You don't expect conversions every time you preach, do you?"
"No, I don't expect them every time," said Mr. Medhurst.
"Then be it unto you according to your faith," was the reply. "If you expect great things from God, you'll get them; if you don't, you won't."
"The large sale of my sermons in America, together with my dear wife's economy," writes Mr. Spurgeon, "enabled me to spend from £600 to £800 a year in my own favorite work; but on a sudden—owing to my denunciations of the then existing slavery in the States—my entire resources from that 'Brook Cherith' were dried up. I paid as large sums as I could from my own income, and resolved to spend all I had, and then take the cessation of my means as a voice from the Lord to stay the effort; as I am firmly persuaded that we ought, under no pretence, to go into debt."
This was Mr. Spurgeon's life-long rule. He once related this story of his childhood. He wanted a slate-pencil, and had no money to buy it. So he went to the shop of a Mrs. Dearson, who kept nuts, cakes, and tops, and got trusted for one, the amount of debt being one farthing. His father heard of it, and reprimanded him severely; told the young Charles, "how a boy who would owe a farthing, might one day owe a hundred pounds, and get into prison, and bring his family into disgrace." The child cried bitterly, and hastened to pay the farthing.
Mr. Spurgeon said in later life, "Debt is so degrading, that if I owed a man a penny, I would walk twenty miles, in the depth of winter, to pay him, sooner than to feel that I was under an obligation.... Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible.... Without debt, without care; out of debt, out of danger; but owing and borrowing are bramble-bushes full of thorns. If ever I borrow a spade of my neighbor, I never feel safe with it for fear I should break it."
"I was reduced to the last pound," says Mr. Spurgeon, "when a letter came from a banker in the city, informing me that a lady, whose name I have never been able to discover, had deposited a sum of £200, to be used for the education of young men for the ministry.... Some weeks after, another £100 came in from the same bank, as I was informed, from another hand.... A supper was given by my liberal publishers, Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster, to celebrate the publishing of my five-hundredth weekly sermon, at which £500 were raised and presented to the funds. The college grew every month, and the number of the students rapidly increased from one to forty."