How Spurgeon Learned of Grace Well can I remember the manner in which I learned the doctrines of Grace in a single instant. Born as all of us are by nature, an ‘Armenian’, I still believed the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit, and did not see the Grace of God. When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I received these truths in my own soul - when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron: I can recollect how I felt that I had grown all a sudden from a babe into a man - that I had made progress in scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for all, the clue to the truth of God. One weeknight when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher’s sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, ‘how did you come to be a Christian?’ — I sought the Lord. - But how did you come to seek the Lord? - The truth flashed across my mind in a moment — I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then asked myself, ‘how came I to pray?’ — I was induced to pray by reading the scriptures. I did read them; but what led me to do so? - Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith; and as the whole doctrine of Grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make it my constant confession. ‘I ascribe my change wholly to God’. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon YWSH Main Page