"When but young in years I felt much sorrow for sin. Day and night God's hand was heavy on me. If I slept at night I dreamed of the bottomless pit, and when I awoke I seemed to feel the misery I had dreamed. Up to God's house I went; my song was but a sigh. To my chamber I retired, and there, with tears and groans, I offered up my prayer without a hope and without a refuge, for God's law was flogging me with its two-thonged whip, and then rubbing me with brine afterwards, so that I did shake and quiver with pain and anguish.

"It was my sad lot to feel the greatness of my sin without a discovery of the greatness of God's mercy. I had to walk through this world with more than a world upon my shoulders, and I wonder to this day how it was that my hand was kept from rending my own body in pieces through the awful agony which I felt when I discovered the greatness of my transgression. I used to say that if God did not send me to hell, He ought to do it. I sat in judgment upon myself and pronounced the sentence that I felt would be just. I could not have gone to heaven with my sin unpardoned, even if I had the offer to do it, for I justified God in my own conscience, while I condemned myself.

"When I was in the hands of the Holy Spirit under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honour of God's name, and the integrity of His moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgive unjustly."

Spurgeon's surrender to irresistible grace happened thus. On Sunday, January 6, 1850, a snowy day, he rose before sunrise to pray and read his Bible. But he found no rest for his soul. Later in the morning, with the snow coming down more heavily, he set out for a certain Colchester church recommended by his mother. The fury of the storm, however, compelled him to turn down a side street and, coming upon the Primitive Methodist Church in Artillery Street, he decided to go no further, and turned instead into the little chapel. It was not the place of his choice, but it was the place of God's choice. It was the day of deliverance after five weary years in the shadows. There were only fifteen people in the congregation who had braved the snowstorm. Even the appointed minister was snowed up, and the preacher, a thin man with no pretence to education, who could hardly read the Bible aright, entered the pulpit and spoke a few words on the text, 'Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth' (Isaiah 45:22). As Spurgeon himself, who had a remarkable memory, recalled it in a sermon in March 1861 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle:

"Blessed be God for that poor local preacher. He read his text. It was as much as he could do. The text was, 'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' He was an ignorant man, he could not say much; he was obliged to keep to his text. Thank God for that. He began: 'Look -- that is not hard work. You need not lift your hand, you do not want to lift your finger. Look -- a fool can do it. It does not need a wise man to look. A child can do that. It don't need to be full-grown to use your eyes. Look -- a poor man may do that, no need of riches to look. Look -- how simple.' Then he went on: 'Look unto ME. Do not look to yourselves, but look to ME, that is Christ. Do not look to God the Father to know whether you are elected or not, you shall find that out afterwards; look to ME, look to Christ. Do not look to God the Holy Spirit to know whether He has called you or not; that you shall discover by and by. Look unto Jesus Christ.' And then he went on to put it in his simple way thus: Look unto ME; I am sweating great drops of blood for you; look unto ME, I am scourged and spit upon; I am nailed to the cross, I die, I am buried, I rise and ascend, I am pleading before the Father's throne, and all this is for you.

"Now that simple way of putting the Gospel had enlisted my attention, and a ray of light had poured into my heart. Stooping down, he looked under the gallery and said: 'Young man, you are very miserable.' So I was, but I had not been accustomed to be addressed in that way. 'Ah,' said he, 'and you will always be miserable if you don't do as my text tells you; and that is, Look unto Christ.' And then he called out, with all his might, 'Young man, LOOK; in God's name LOOK, and look NOW. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!' And I did look, blessed be God! I looked then and there, and he who but that minute ago had been near despair, had the fullness of joy and hope.

"The cloud was gone, the darkness rolled away, and in that moment I saw the sun. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard the word LOOK, I could almost have looked my eyes away. I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith that looks alone to Him.

"I thought I could dance all the way home. I could understand what John Bunyan meant when he declared he wanted to tell all the crows on the ploughed land about his conversion. Between half past ten, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve, when I returned home, what a change had taken place in me!

Excerpted from Spurgeon: Heir Of The Puritans