The Work
Morning and Evening was first published in two volumes by Passmore and Alabaster (London) in 1866, drawn from Spurgeon's weekly devotional texts published in The Sword and the Trowel, the magazine of his ministry. It provides one morning and one evening reading for every day of the year, each consisting of a brief scriptural text followed by a meditation of approximately 250-350 words. The total word count across 730 entries is approximately 200,000 words - the equivalent of two substantial books.
The book has been continuously in print since 1866 and has sold millions of copies. It has been updated for modern English usage several times (a major revision by Alistair Begg was published in 2003), but the original text remains the definitive version for those who appreciate Victorian prose. It is the most widely used daily devotional in the Reformed and Baptist traditions and stands alongside Oswald Chambers's My Utmost for His Highest (1927) as one of the two most influential daily devotionals in English-language Protestant Christianity.
Biblical Engagement
The book's structure is built entirely on Scripture: every entry is driven by a specific verse or phrase from any book of the Bible, and Spurgeon's method is to illuminate that text through cross-references, illustrations from life and literature, and homiletical application. The effect is an informal encyclopedia of the entire Bible, organized by devotional time rather than canonical sequence.
Psalm 5:3 ('My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up') provides the theological rationale for the morning devotion: morning is the time of renewed covenant with God, the time of prayer and expectation before the day's demands begin. Spurgeon consistently treats the morning as the hour of trusting preparation - the orientation of the whole person toward God before engagement with the world.
Psalm 63:6 ('When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches') provides the rationale for the evening devotion: night is the time of reflection, of taking stock of the day's encounters with grace and failure, of meditation on the character of God in the darkness. Spurgeon's evening entries tend toward the contemplative: they counsel surrender of the day's unfinished anxieties to divine providence.
Psalm 119:105 ('Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path') is perhaps the single verse most frequently echoed across the book's entries. Spurgeon's method of illuminating each day's experience with a specific biblical text embodies this Psalm's conviction that Scripture is the practical guide for daily life - not an abstract doctrinal repository but a lamp for the actual path.
Lamentations 3:23 ('They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness') is the theological heartbeat of the morning entries. Spurgeon's consistent tone in the morning sections is one of renewed expectation - each morning is a new gift, new mercies, new opportunities for obedience and joy. Thomas Chisholm's hymn 'Great Is Thy Faithfulness' (1923), which takes this verse as its foundation, captures precisely the emotional register Spurgeon cultivates.
Author and Context
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was born in Kelvedon, Essex, the son and grandson of Independent (Congregationalist) ministers. He was converted at fifteen in a Primitive Methodist chapel and was baptized as a Baptist the same year. He began preaching in villages around Cambridge at sixteen, and at nineteen was called to New Park Street Chapel in Southwark, London. He preached his first sermon there on December 18, 1853, to a congregation of eighty.
Within two years, Spurgeon had become the most famous preacher in London and the most widely read minister in the English-speaking world. He moved the congregation to the Metropolitan Tabernacle, built specifically for his ministry, which seated 5,600 and was regularly filled. His sermons were published weekly and sold thousands of copies in Britain, the United States, and in translation worldwide. He founded sixty-six charitable institutions, including an orphanage, a college for pastors (still operating as Spurgeon's College), and numerous almshouses.
Morning and Evening was compiled from devotional texts written over many years, not from a single concentrated period of composition. Spurgeon had the Victorian's gift for the striking phrase, the illuminating illustration, and the direct application of scriptural truth to ordinary experience. His prose is warm, direct, and unembarrassed about its devotional purpose: he writes as a pastor to his congregation, not as a scholar to an academy.
Structure and Method
Each entry follows the same pattern: the biblical text (usually a phrase or verse), then Spurgeon's meditation connecting the text to the reader's daily experience. The meditation typically moves through two or three observations on the text's meaning, illustrated by analogy, cross-reference, or homiletical illustration, and concludes with a direct application to the reader's life or a brief prayer.
The range of biblical texts is the entire canon: Genesis through Revelation, Psalms alongside Epistles, wisdom literature alongside prophecy. Spurgeon had memorized vast portions of Scripture and could draw cross-references with natural fluency. His theology is consistently Calvinist - affirming divine sovereignty, unconditional election, particular redemption, and perseverance of the saints - but the devotional register is warm and experiential rather than polemical.
Representative Entries
The January 1 morning entry is characteristic: the text is Ephesians 1:3 ('Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ'), and Spurgeon begins: 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... May we be always in a blessed condition.' He then unpacks what it means to be 'blessed' - to be chosen in Christ, to be adopted, to be forgiven - and concludes with a prayer of gratitude. The entry is devotionally warm, doctrinally sound, and practically connected to the beginning of a new year.
The December 31 evening entry closes the book with a reflection on Zechariah 14:7 ('in the evening time it shall be light'): 'We are approaching the evening of life... Let us bless the Lord that the evening of life, to the Christian, is not the close of day, but the beginning of a better day.' The eschatological note - that death is not darkness but the beginning of eternal light - is characteristic of Spurgeon's approach to suffering and mortality throughout the book.
Critical Reception
The book's reception in Spurgeon's own time was immediate and enthusiastic. Copies were distributed to family households, Sunday school teachers, missionaries, and hospital patients. In the twentieth century, the book's reputation has remained remarkably stable: it is almost universally praised in Reformed and Baptist circles for its doctrinal reliability, its devotional warmth, and the quality of Spurgeon's prose.
A minority of critics have found the book's tone relentlessly positive - that Spurgeon does not give adequate attention to the psalms of lament, the dark night of the soul, or the experience of prolonged spiritual dryness. Defenders note that the book's format (250 words per entry) does not permit extensive treatment of any single theme, and that the entries taken as a whole include a wide range of moods including sorrow, doubt, and lamentation.
Theological Significance
The book's theological contribution is its demonstration that the entire canon of Scripture is relevant to ordinary daily life. By organizing 730 entries around texts from every part of the Bible - not just the familiar devotional passages - Spurgeon implicitly argues that the whole Bible is devotional: that Leviticus and Chronicles, Obadiah and Nahum, are as applicable to Monday morning as the Psalms and the Gospels. This implicit claim about the unity and relevance of Scripture is one of the book's most significant theological contributions.
The book also demonstrates the Victorian Baptist conviction that theological precision and pastoral warmth are not opposites. Spurgeon's Calvinism is never cold; his pastoral concern is never theologically vague. This combination - precise doctrine expressed with warm humanity - is the model toward which the best evangelical devotional writing has aspired.
Legacy
The book's legacy in the Reformed and Baptist traditions is enormous. It has shaped the devotional practice of millions of Christians for over 150 years. The practice of daily Scripture-based devotion, two readings per day, that Spurgeon popularized became standard in evangelical households worldwide. The form has been imitated by hundreds of subsequent devotional writers, none of whom have matched the combination of doctrinal depth and prose quality that Spurgeon achieved.
Spurgeon's influence on subsequent preachers - from D.L. Moody and Charles Finney through Billy Graham - through this and his published sermons has been incalculable. The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (sixty-three volumes of Spurgeon's sermons) remains a primary reference for Reformed and evangelical preaching.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Psalm 5 (morning prayer), Psalm 63 (seeking God in the night watches), Psalm 119:97-105 (meditation on God's word all day and night), Lamentations 3:19-26 (great is thy faithfulness, new every morning), and Ephesians 1:3-14 (every spiritual blessing in Christ).
Further Reading
- Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon: A New Biography (1984) - the most thorough modern biography. - Lewis Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers (1992) - comprehensive treatment of Spurgeon's ministry and its global impact. - Peter Morden, C.H. Spurgeon: The People's Preacher (2009) - the most balanced recent scholarly biography, with good coverage of the devotional literature.