Christmas Day, 1888, was an particularly joyous event for Auckland’s esteemed Spurgeon family.
It was on today London-born Thomas and Dunedin native Lila welcomed their firstborn baby.
“Our infant rejoices within the identify of Daisy,” the proud father wrote, “her full title being Marguerite Could … she is, after all, superlatively beautiful in her dad and mom’ eyes!”
The Spurgeon Legacy
Thomas got here to New Zealand in 1881 as a missionary. His father was legendary evangelist Charles Spurgeon, and Thomas clearly took after him.
By 1884 he was packing out Auckland’s Choral Corridor and shortly launched into a marketing campaign to construct a brand new home of worship in Auckland to be modelled on his father’s spectacular Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
This after all is the Auckland Baptist Tabernacle positioned on the nook of Queen Road and Karangahape Highway.
Upon its completion in 1885, the town newspapers gushed that Thomas’s work was “an decoration to the town, and an everlasting monument to the self-devotion and vitality of the gifted younger preacher who initiated the enterprise ….”
Quickly he married fellow Baptist Lila Rutherford at Dunedin’s Hanover Road Church, and going from success to success, the much-praised preacher continued to minister to overflowing crowds, apparently set to hold on for a few years to come back.
Brief-lived pleasure, long-lived religion
Alas, it was to not be. Simply three months after her Christmas beginning, little Daisy grew to become ailing and died.
“Have a few of my readers misplaced their little ones?” Thomas wrote, “then hear me, for I too have walked that Through Dolorosa.
“I personal no foot of land save a bit plot in an Auckland cemetery … a bit shell-strewn mound, and a easy stone with this inscription – ‘Daisy Spurgeon, aged 3 months’. Even so, Father….”
It was a devastating blow that took its toll on the younger minister’s well being.
“I didn’t really feel in a position sufficient to do justice to the all of the work,” he wrote his father and on November the third, he preached his farewell sermon.
Restoration
Owing to the initiative of retired Tabernacle Pastor Bruce Patrick, Purewa Cemetery has now restored Daisy’s grave – Thomas Spurgeon’s shell-strewn mound.
It serves as a reminder of Thomas and Lila’s religion within the face of demise.
As Thomas later wrote, he might know consolation in grief due to an assurance of life past the non permanent and materials: “Did we do fallacious to grieve? Is weeping sin?” ‘No, no – for ‘Jesus wept…’ However we didn’t sorrow as these with out hope; we didn’t refuse to be comforted …”
Purewa is at all times open to guests who want to go to Daisy’s memorial and replicate on hope.
Whereas there, make sure to obtain the Purewa Heritage Excursions app and revel in many extra tales of the lives of these remembered on Purewa’s lovely, park-like grounds.
