11 Reasons Spurgeon Was Depressed 

The Spurgeon Center at Midwestern Seminary has a fascinating article about Spurgeon’s depression: 11 Reasons Spurgeon Was Depressed. I’d encourage you to read the original article.

I’ll highlight a few thoughts and quotes, especially related to Spurgeon’s own belief that his depression was not simply a spiritual matter, but also an embodied-soul matter.

Spurgeon’s Reflections on His Depression 

Spurgeon thought deeply and frequently about his depression. According to the Midwestern Seminary article:

Spurgeon owned more than thirty books on mental health. He read about depression, wrote about depression, and suffered from depression. Spurgeon’s letters contain numerous references to his sinking spirits.

Some today falsely proclaim an emotional health and wealth gospel, suggesting that “spiritual people” don’t get overwhelmed by emotions, depression, and anxiety.

Spurgeon would like to have a word with those folks.

He often called himself a “prisoner” and wept without knowing why.

Spurgeon said of himself, “I pity a dog who has to suffer what I have.”

The great preacher at times was unable to preach due to his emotional distresses.

“To my great sorrow, last Sunday night I was unable to preach. I had prepared a sermon upon this text, with much hope of its usefulness; for I intended it to be a supplement to the morning sermon, which was a doctrinal exposition. The evening sermon was intended to be practical, and to commend the whole subject to the attention of enquiring sinners. I came here feeling quite fit to preach, when an overpowering nervousness oppressed me, and I lost all self-control, and left the pulpit in anguish.”

Spurgeon’s Embodied-Soul Depression

The Midwestern Seminary article asks a vital question:

Was Spurgeon’s depression only a spiritual problem?

They then answer their own question:

Spurgeon didn’t think so. He did acknowledge “soul sickness,” but also understood that the brain is just as broken as the body. If the body needs medicine, why not the mind?

11 Spurgeon Quotes on His Embodied-Soul Depression 

According to his own writings, what did Spurgeon think about the cause of his depression?

1. “It is not repentance,” he speculated, “but indigestion or some other evil agency depressing the spirits.”

2. “The troubled man experiences a good deal, not because he is a Christian, but because he is a man, a sickly man, a man inclined to melancholy.”

3. “Do not think it unspiritual to remember that you have a body. . . . The physician is often as needful as the minister.”

4. “The mind can descend far lower than the body, for there are bottomless pits.”

5. “Some are touched with melancholy from their birth.”

6. “I have been very ill for more than five weeks, and during that time I have been brought into deep waters of mental depression.”

7. “A sluggish liver will produce most of those fearsome forebodings, which we are so ready to regard as spiritual emotions.”

8. “All mental work tends to weary and to depress, for much study is a weariness of the flesh.”

9. “I cannot yet call myself free from fits of deep depression, which are the result of brain-weariness; but I am having them less frequently, and therefore I hope they will vanish altogether.”

10. “Living in an unbroken series of summer days, where no cold mists are dreamed of, it is no great marvel that rheumatic pains fly away, and depression of spirit departs.”

11. Spurgeon called his depression “a prophet in rough clothing.” His weakness reminded him that, as humans, we are all designed from dust. “As to mental maladies, is any man altogether sane? Are we not all a little off the balance?”