Hugh Dunlop Brown’s (1858–1918) friendship with C.H. Spurgeon through the desperate days of the Downgrade Controversy over the Scriptures in the 1880s made him a witness to the toll that this controversy took on the London Baptist minister.
The Downgrade Controversy was when Spurgeon aired concerns about the Baptist Union in relation to Scripture, the atonement, hell and universalism. He withdrew from the denomination in 1887 as a result.
In 1898, six years after Spurgeon’s death, Brown wrote an article on Spurgeon for a denominational newspaper, setting out the effect the stress of the time had on the great preacher. As Brown recalled:
