If you were to visit any city, town or village in England, walking down the high streets and side streets you would be struck by the many, many small chapels and meeting rooms of the many various dissenting denominations each one representing once thriving gospel communities where the extended families of God would meet for prayer and worship and fellowship of the word according to their denominational interpretation.
You would also note how very few these little buildings now exist as living churches, their primary functions ranging from commercial office space, social groups of a vast variety to mums and tots.
Christians in other countries and especially America have very little concept of the sad decline of bible believing christianity in the U.K.
C.H.Spurgeon is well known for his many sermons preached and faithfully recorded in the Metropolitan Tabernacle.Volumes that span 40 years of fruitful ministry in London's east end. But that his life and ministry were overshadowed in his latter years by bitter controversy is not so well known. Nor is the nature and scope of the controversy at all understood or appreciated by christians, or few, christians today. But Spurgeon looked into the present day with the sure eye of a prophet and foretold the "emptying out" of [then] full and prospering gospel communities, and amid almost universal condemnation and derision(despite his popularity as a preacher) he bravely proclaimed "I am willing to be eaten alive by dogs for a hundred years, but I shall be proved right."
The controversy is known to history as THE DOWNGRADE, in the march 1887 issue of Spurgeon's monthly periodical "the sword and trowel." Spurgeon wrote an article decrying, what had at first been a trickle but had suddenly become a flooding, infiltration into the Baptist and other dissenting denominations of men in high positions of authority within the bible schools and leading pastorates throughout the British Isles, who held what was called a more enlightened view. These men no longer believed in the divine inspiration of the bible, they rejected the substitutionary nature of the atonement, the virgin birth, the resurrection and virtually every other supernatural revelation. These men had been infiltrating by stealth, step by step and often covered their true beliefs by carefully balanced words which made them appear orthodox and so acceptable.
Suddenly with Spurgeons article they were thrown into the glaring spotlight. A great dust storm of controversy ensued and enquiry was made everywhere in the churches as to who these men were and so they were forced to declare themselves and their new theology.
The devil does not like to be thus exposed, and even former close associates and lifelong friends of Spurgeon withdrew from the stand he had made. Spurgeon's solution to the problem was simple, let there be a simple credal fomula to which all ministers and aspiring ministers must adhere. For this suggestion Spurgeon was censured by the Baptist Union and this led to his withdrawal from that denomination.
This was a great victory for the men of the NEW THEOLOGY and their encroachment and advance went forward with little resistance or impedement.
The stress and sorrow of the controversy almost certainly contributed to the early death of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.