Mary King is proof that theology is intensely practical and absolutely crucial—the joy of those who cherish him. As the psalmist put it, “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps. 111:2). Countless thousands are spiritually indebted to the Prince of Preachers. He was indebted to a cook. “From her I got all the theology I ever needed,” he wrote in his first published book in 1857.

He is history’s most widely read preacher outside of Scripture. More written material exists from him than from any other Christian author, living or dead. It’s estimated he preached to more than 10 million people during his lifetime. The ripple effect of his life and ministry is immeasurable.

And he got his theology from an old school cook.

Unlikely Mentor

Mary King was the stout and sturdy cook at Newmarket Academy in Cambridge, England, when a young teenager named Charles Haddon Spurgeon enrolled in the fall of 1849. Over the next two years “Cook,” as the students affectionately called her, would feed the boy far more than food. In his autobiography Spurgeon recounts:

She was a good old soul [and] liked something very sweet indeed, good strong Calvinistic doctrine. . . . Many a time we have gone over the covenant of grace together, and talked of the personal election of the saints, their union to Christ, their final perseverance, and what vital godliness meant; and I do believe I learnt more from her than I should have learned from any six doctors of divinity of the sort we have nowadays.

While her handle on Scripture was impressive, King didn’t live and move and have her being in the realm of ideas alone. She was a woman of vital godliness, one who “lived strongly” as well as “fed strongly.” As Spurgeon reflected, “There are some Christian people who taste, and see, and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.” King, he said, was one of those people.

The cook’s appetite for spiritual nourishment was voracious. Once when young Charles asked why she kept attending a particular church from which he himself gleaned nothing, King replied there were no other options. He then quipped it’d be better to stay home than to hear such insipid teaching. “Perhaps so,” she said, “but I like to go out to worship even if I get nothing by going. You see a hen sometimes scratching all over a heap of rubbish to try to find some corn; she does not get any, but it shows she is looking for it, and using the means to get it, and then, too, the exercise warms her.”

Spurgeon’s unlikely mentor had a sense of humor, too. On one occasion when he bemoaned not finding so much as “a crumb” in the minister’s whole sermon, she said, “Oh! I got on better tonight, for to all the preacher said, I just put in a not, and that turned his talk into real gospel.”

Read More