The Legacy Of Susannah Spurgeon’s Book Fund

Though Susannah (Susie) Spurgeon is often remembered as the wife of the “Prince of Preachers,” Charles Spurgeon, Susie was also used by the Lord in significant ways. She changed the lives of countless pastors and their congregations through the ministry of her Book Fund, which began 150 years ago in the summer of 1875.

Due to a serious illness, Susie spent much of her life as an invalid. Being confined to the home allowed her to serve the Lord and his church beyond what she and her husband could have imagined.

Susie’s Service

After Charles completed his first volume of Lectures to My Students, Susie voiced her desire to place it in the hands of every minister in England. Her husband responded, “Then why not do so: how much will you give?”

Taken aback by his challenge, Susie responded with conviction and obedience. She found in an upstairs drawer the exact amount of money to pay for 100 copies. Though she didn’t yet know it, this was how the Book Fund began.

Susie changed the lives of countless pastors and their congregations through the ministry of her Book Fund.

Spending countless hours in her husband’s well-stocked study, Susie mourned the financial state of Baptist ministers at the time. Often, they could barely afford to clothe their children, let alone fill their bookshelves. Countless applications to the Book Fund revealed that many were earning 60 to 80 pounds a year while caring for multiple children and paying hospital bills for their wives. Receiving even one book was an invaluable gift for these poor men hungry for biblical literature.

As one of them wrote to her, “Through the long illness of my dear wife . . . I have been unable to add a single book to my very small stock for the last two years; therefore any present of a book is most thankfully accepted. . . . May the Lord raise up many other friends, so that you may be able to help poor ministers yet more and more.”

After accepting an application, Susie would send a parcel, including “seven or eight books, several single sermons, and often bundles of stationery that had been donated to her by a generous benefactor. The poorest pastors also received copies of [Charles’s magazine] The Sword and the Trowel.”

Susie was a meticulous bookkeeper, tracking every book distributed and every donation received. Her records reveal that 9,941 volumes were distributed in 1886 alone. Her reports on the Book Fund in The Sword and the Trowel were informative but also beautifully written and saturated with Scripture and rich theology.

Susie spent countless hours answering letters and sending parcels. In one month, February 1883, she received 657 letters. There were times when her husband had to “place an urgent veto upon the continuance of the labor at its present rate.” Susie could confidently say of this demanding ministry, “The Book Fund is the joy of my life, and ever since the Lord gave the sweet service into my weak and unworthy hands He has led me by green pastures and beside still waters.” Charles, too, saw the blessing it was to his suffering wife:

[It has] supplied my dear suffering companion with a happy work which has opened channels of consolation for her, imparted great interest to the otherwise monotonous life of an invalid. She has entered into this most gracious work with great zest, and continued in it with unflagging perseverance, and, while it has frequently cost her exertion beyond her strength, it has also relieved her weary hours and helped her to forget a portion of her pains. Such an alleviation of her affliction is the most suitable and effective that could have been devised by the wisest affection.

Little did Charles know that the Book Fund would play a crucial role in carrying Susie through 11 years of a different kind of pain and suffering.

Susie’s Suffering

On January 31, 1892, Charles entered glory to be with Christ his Savior. Sorrowful yet rejoicing, Susie remembered “the comforting power of the assurance, that even though [her] precious husband had bidden adieu to the best that earth could give, his being ‘with Christ’ was ‘far better.’”

While Susie had spent much time separated from her husband due to his frequent travels, this began what she called “the great separation.” She “found that to ‘do the next thing’ was earnestly to set to work at the Book Fund.” In her widowhood, Susie was able to write more than she had before Charles’s death, including several stand-alone books and numerous articles in The Sword and the Trowel.

The Book Fund would play a crucial role in carrying Susie through 11 years of a different kind of pain and suffering.

One of her most valuable contributions was compiling, coediting, and contributing to her husband’s massive four-volume autobiography. Though she knew there was no one better fit for the task, she didn’t feel prepared to embark on this strenuous endeavor. To write of her beloved husband seemed to pour salt into fresh wounds: “Many a time, I feel I must lay down my pen, and give it all up; for in reading and transcribing my husband’s letters, and living, as it were, over again those days of precious sweetness and sympathy, the inexpressible loss I have sustained is recalled.”

By leaning heavily on the Lord and the prayers of her readers, she completed the publication of all four volumes of Charles’s autobiography in 1900. Through these volumes, her other writings, and the ministry of her Book Fund, Susie preserved her husband’s legacy and advanced the gospel message they both cherished so dearly.

Susie’s Legacy

Susie is known because of her more famous husband, but her husband wouldn’t have been quite so famous apart from her work which advanced his legacy. Susan Valerie Barker writes of her,

During the 28 years that Susannah Spurgeon was in charge of the Book Fund nearly 200,000 books were placed into the hands of over 25,000 ministers and many hundreds of thousands of sermons were sent throughout the world. As a result, Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s name became known, not just because he was a powerful preacher, but because his books and sermons were distributed widely in Britain, and, indeed, throughout the world by “Mrs. Spurgeon’s Book Fund.”

Through her life as a faithful servant of her King, Susie displayed to her readers, then and now, how to do all things for God’s glory and how to suffer well by leaning on the Lord for comfort during serious affliction.

In her book Carillon of Bells, Susie wrote, “The soul that has learned the blessed secret of seeing God’s hand in all that concerns it, cannot be a prey to fear, it looks beyond all second causes, straight into the heart and will of God, and rests content, because He rules.”

May we, like Susie, serve him faithfully until the day we see his face and suffer no more.