Reared a Congregationalist, Spurgeon became a Baptist in 1850 and, the same year, at 16, preached his first sermon. In 1852 he became minister at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, and in 1854 minister of New Park Street Chapel in Southwark, London. Within a year a new structure had to be built to accommodate his following, and almost immediately an even larger church was required. From the opening in 1861 of the tabernacle, which held 6,000, until his death, he continued to draw large congregations.

The editor of a monthly magazine, Spurgeon also founded a ministerial college (in 1856) and an orphanage (1867). His sermons, which he published weekly, ultimately filled more than 50 volumes in the collected edition. An ardent fundamentalist, he distrusted the scientific methods and philological approach of modern biblical criticism and in 1887 left the increasingly liberal Baptist Union.