The Untrained Preacher Who Shook London

In 1854, a nineteen-year-old with no seminary degree and no formal ordination stepped into the pulpit of London's New Park Street Chapel. The deacons who invited Charles Haddon Spurgeon expected a temporary fill-in. The religious establishment expected embarrassment. Here was a boy from the rural fenlands of Essex, educated in a one-room school, with a thick country accent and no academic credentials to speak of.…