Who led Charles Spurgeon to Christ?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon is one of the best known preachers of the nineteenth century. But who led him to faith in Christ? The answer is Robert Eaglen, a Primitive Methodist believer. Here is the chain of events that led to Spurgeon’s conversion in 1850.

Link #1
A Primitive Methodist preacher called Robert Key preached at a village in Norfolk in 1832. As he spoke under the power of God, sinners came under great conviction.

Link #2
One of the converts that night was a young woman.

Link #3
The woman’s changed life led her brother, Robert Eaglen to become a follower of Christ.

Link #4
Eaglen was instrumental in pointing Spurgeon to Christ, in the Colchester Primitive Methodist Chapel.

Here is the account in Spurgeon’s own words …

I was miserable, I could do scarcely anything. My heart was broken to pieces. Six months did I pray, prayed agonizingly with all my heart, and never had an answer. I resolved that in the town where I lived I would visit every place of worship, in order to find the way of salvation. I felt I was willing to do anything if God would only forgive me. I set off determined to visit all the chapels, and though I deeply venerate the men who occupy those pulpits now, and did so then, I am bound to say, that I never heard them once fully preach the gospel. ... At last, one snowy day, I found rather an obscure street and turned down a court, and there was a little chapel. I wanted to go somewhere, but I did not know this street. It was the Primitive Methodists' chapel. I had heard of this people from many, and how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache; but that did not matter. I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if they made my head ache ever so much, I did not care. So sitting down, the service went on, but no minister came. At last a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit. He opened the Bible and read these words: "Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth." Just setting his eyes upon me, as if he knew me all by heart, he said: "Young man, you are in trouble!" Well, I was, sure enough. Says he: "You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ." Then,
lifting his eyes, he cried, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, "Look, look, look!" I saw at once the way of salvation. O, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I know not what else he said, I was so possessed with that one thought. ... I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away, and in heaven I will look on still, in my joy unspeakable.

Abridged from Charles H. Spurgeon: His Faith and Works, H.L. Wayland, 1892 and the History of the Primitive Methodist Church, H B Kendal, 1919.