Empire and Spurgeon

Readers may have seen the recent T V series 'Empire', presented by the distinguished historian Niall Ferguson.

No one can doubt that this was a serious, well informed series, so I was surprised to hear the account of C.H. Spurgeon's comments on the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857.

According to Ferguson, the 'incandescent Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon issued what amounted to a call for holy war: "The Indian government never ought to have tolerated the religion of the Hindoos" which "consisted of bestiality, infanticide and murder ... Their worship necessitates everything that is evil, and morality must put it down. The sword must be taken out of its sheath, to cut off our fellow subjects by their thousands".' Spurgeon's sermon, says Ferguson, was nothing short of an 'Evangelical dies irae' (Day of Wrath). Evangelicals generally switched from preaching redemption to revenge. It was 'a fearful paroxysm to behold - the vengefulness of the evangelicals' and 'sanctimony bred a special cruelty'.

Of course, it is not surprising to find Spurgeon applying his faith to public events. Spurgeon agreed with his contemporary Abraham Kuyper that 'there is not a single inch of the whole terrain of our human existence over which Christ... does not proclaim: "Mine!"'. Nor is his outspokenness unexpected. After all, this was the man whose opposition to animal cruelty was so blunt that the newly-founded Anti-vivisection Society declined his endorsement on the grounds that it was too radical! But it is surprising to anyone familiar with Spurgeon's writings that he allowed the gospel of redemption to be eclipsed by revenge.

A bigoted rant?

So did Spurgeon really preach a bigoted rant against Hinduism? Did he call for a 'holy war?'.

The story of the mutiny is widely known. In May 1857, some 85 sepoys (native Indian soldiers employed by the East India Company) refused, on religious grounds, to use cartridges greased with beef and pork fat. The mutiny spread with increasing violence, and English press reports were lurid, sensationalist and inaccurate. Public opinion was outraged, particularly over the re-ported slaughter of children, and the torture, public rape and murder of women. There were widespread calls for vengeance, and the mutiny was ultimately put down by the British with great brutality. Spurgeon preached about it at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens on September 6; and again at the Crystal Palace on October 7, when he addressed some 24,000 people at a service of national reconciliation.
Spurgeon would have been aware of the campaigns by a previous generation of evangelicals over female infanticide, the burning of widows on their husband's funeral pyres (Sati), and the murderous cult of 'assassin-priests' called Thugee. Nowadays we know that none of these practices were unambiguously identified with Hinduism. For example, Hindu reformers, in coalition with colonial administrators and missionaries, campaigned for the abolition of Sati; and Thugee may not have existed at all - at least not as a cult of Hindu priests. However, Spurgeon did not know this.

This popular image of Hinduism was reinforced by the reported atrocities of the Mutiny. Spurgeon was responding, not to a primarily religious issue, but to a Hinduism which he believed had sponsored hideous crimes. In modern terms, he saw Hinduism as a sort of Mafia which must be condemned. He called for its suppression, as we might call for the overthrow of a terrorist organisation which kills innocent women and children.

With our better knowledge of Indian culture, we can now recognise Spurgeon's stereotyping of Hinduism as the result of prejudice and ignorance. But this is to be wise after the event. Spurgeon did not possess our knowledge.

The sermons

Spurgeon's rant was not quite the religious bigotry it might appear, and neither did he call for a holy war of retribution. On the contrary, he argued that there should not be a war, but the mutineers should be punished as criminals. The mutiny, he says, was a criminal act by voluntary employees of the East India Company, not opposition to British rule. More-over, Spurgeon was no apologist for British dominion in India. The sepoy rebellion 'is not the revolt of a nation. If India had revolted, history might perhaps have taught us that she had patriots in her midst, who were delivering her from a tyrannical nation (i.e. Britain)...' In such a case, he would not preach 'a crusade' for fear of 'smiting patriots who were but delivering an oppressed country'. However, as the Mutiny was a crime, not a revolt, he emphasised that punishment should be judicial, according to law, not 'as soldiers should we war with them'. 'Long have I held that war is an enormous crime; long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale'. Spurgeon seems to have shared John Calvin's view that wars 'open the gate to robbery, pillage, arson, slaughter, rape, and every violence' because war brutalises soldiers who no longer see God's image in the enemy. War atrocities are not an invention of the 21st century, although in our day we have taken them to a new refinement of cruelty.

The phrase about cutting off our 'fellow citizens by their thousand' may have been metaphorical, as Ferguson seems to suggest, but Spurgeon certainly regarded capital punishment as justified in the case of the Mutiny because of the nature of the crimes (the alleged atrocities against women and children had especially appalled public opinion). This was not said lightly, as Spurgeon, perhaps surprisingly for 1857, usually opposed capital punishment.

Cooling tears

As for vengeance, Spurgeon accepted that this would happen and affirmed that no one could deny its justice. But he, personally, advocated not revenge but mercy. His chosen text for the September sermon was not 'Smite the Amalekites' which for some reason is often said to typify Christian attitudes to war. Rather he chose Jeremiah 9.1: 'Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people'. 'I am inclined', he preached, 'if I can, to sprinkle some few cooling tears upon the fires of vengeance'. 'I would cool down the vengeance of Britons, and therefore I would bid you weep'. 'Not on the bayonets of British soldiery, but on the prayers of British Christians do we rest'. He called not for vengeance inflaming the public mood, but for fasting and prayer for the gospel in India so that the crimes would not be repeated.

Spurgeon did not advocate war or vengeance. What, then, did he advocate?

A prophetic message

Spurgeon does not dwell on the crimes committed during the Mutiny. Astonishingly, he chose this national occasion to denounce British crimes against India: 'It is for us today humbly to confess our crime. The [British] government of India has been a cruel government; it has much for which to appear before the bar of God. Its tortures - if the best evidence is to be believed - have been of the most inhuman kind; God forgive the men who have committed such crimes in the British name' (my emphasis). After ridiculing the idea that every event whatever is a judgement for our sins, he says that the mutiny was exceptional: 'A wise man', he says, 'believing revelation, could have prophesied that God would visit us. The sins of the (British) government of India have been black and deep. He who has heard the shrieks of tormented natives, who has heard the well-provoked cursing of dethroned princes, might have prophesied that it would not be long before God would unsheathe his sword to avenge the oppressed'. In Britain, the rich and the church attract Spurgeon's particular attention. Debauchery, he says, is not a sin of the poor, for it begins with 'the noblest classes of society - who are 'received into the drawing-room... of the highest society, while the poor creature who has been the victim of their passions is hooted and cast away!' (my emphasis). It is 'class sins' which 'are the most grievous... the sins of the rich': low wages, oppression of the poor, cruel employers, dishonest merchants. We are reminded of Calvin's striking phrase that the rich would snatch the sun from the sky for our own enjoyment if we could, leaving the poor in the dark. But, for Spurgeon, the Church has been the greatest sinner, wrapping itself in a 'shroud of orthodoxy' and asking: 'Who is my neighbour?'. Weep, he says, not only for 'men in foreign lands'. Weep also for yourselves.

Now these are radical remarks. In the mid-19th century, British rule was publicly held in high regard, and Britain had suffered what was nationally perceived as a great wrong committed against it by supposedly wicked people. It would have been like saying on September 12 2001, that the West had been violent and oppressive in the Middle East, and that the rich financial institutions symbolised by the Twin Towers were exploitative.

It is hard to say whether Spurgeon's attitudes to the mutiny were characteristic of evangelicals more generally as Ferguson suggests. But it is certain that they were far more complex and nuanced than Prof. Ferguson was able to indicate in his brief discussion. Spurgeon was no gung-ho militarist, nor even supportive of Empire in India. Moreover, Spurgeon's address has a remarkably contemporary ring. Do crimes, however serious, ever justify war? Do rich nations find it easier to see the sins of the poor than our own? Spurgeon's own answer was to point to the gospel of redemption, not vengeance.

Philip Sampson is the author of 'Six Modern Myths', IVP, £9.99.

Defending the preacher's honour

A bigoted rant?

The sermons

Cooling tears

A prophetic message

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