Till He Come is a collection of Charles Spurgeon’s communion meditations — short, tender addresses given at the Lord’s Table and gathered into one book. Its title comes from Paul’s words that in the Lord’s Supper we “shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26), and that single phrase holds the whole spirit of the volume: a feast of remembrance kept in the space between Christ’s cross and his return. If you are looking for a summary and study guide to help you read it well — or to prepare your heart for communion — this page walks through what the book is, how it is arranged, what it is really about, and how to read it today.
What Till He Come is, and where it comes from
These are not ordinary sermons. They are the words Spurgeon spoke to his own people as they sat around the communion table at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London — the quiet, intimate side of a ministry usually remembered for its thundering crowds. The “Prince of Preachers” who held six thousand hearers still could also lean over the bread and cup and speak to a smaller gathering as a friend among friends. That is the voice you meet here.
Spurgeon addresses the reader as one of the company at the table, and the effect is disarmingly personal. He opens the first full meditation by turning to those gathered with him:
To know that Jesus loves me, is one thing; but to be visited by Him in love, is more.
Charles Spurgeon
That sentence sets the aim of the whole book. Spurgeon is not chiefly arguing about what the Lord’s Supper is; he is trying to help believers meet Christ in it. The addresses are devotional rather than controversial, warm rather than technical, and every one of them bends toward the same end — a heart drawn near to the Saviour whose death the supper proclaims. You can read the complete text free on Ochorus and follow the guide alongside it.
How the book is organized
The book is a garland of short pieces — around twenty communion meditations and two hymns, each able to stand entirely on its own. There is no argument that runs from front to back, so you never have to start at the beginning; you can open at whatever address suits the hour. A brief prefatory note leads in, and Spurgeon’s own communion hymn closes the collection.
Many of the meditations take a single verse or image and turn it slowly in the light. “Under His Shadow” gathers three pictures of shelter in Christ — the rock in a weary land (Isaiah 32:2), the fruitful tree, and the covering wing (Psalm 63:7). “Under the Apple Tree” lingers over the bride’s delight in her beloved (Song of Solomon 2:3). “I Will Give You Rest” opens the Saviour’s own invitation (Matthew 11:28), and “Redeemed Souls Freed from Fear” rests on the word “Fear not: for I have redeemed thee” (Isaiah 43:1). Others follow a moment from the Gospels — Jesus asleep on the pillow in the storm (Mark 4:38), or the trembling woman who reached through the crowd to touch his garment (Mark 5:27).
The collection also carries its music. Alongside the addresses sit hymns — “The Memorable Hymn” and Spurgeon’s own communion hymn that ends the book — for Spurgeon knew that the heart which has meditated on Christ longs, at last, to sing. The verse woven through the meditations does the same work, so that reading often slides gently into praise. It is worth letting those hymns close your own time at the table, as Spurgeon meant them to.
Because each address was written to be spoken in a few minutes, the pieces are short and self-contained. That is a feature, not a limitation: it makes the book unusually easy to use as a companion for the Lord’s Supper, a single meditation at a time.
The central themes
Remembering Christ crucified
The supper looks first to the cross. Paul’s instruction was to eat and drink “in remembrance” of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:24), and Spurgeon keeps the bread and cup tethered to the broken body and shed blood they signify. In “The Sin-Bearer” he meditates on the healing bought by Christ’s wounds — “By whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24), the mercy foretold when the prophet said “with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Repentance itself, he says, is born of this backward look to the pierced Saviour (Zechariah 12:10). Before the elements are ever touched, the meditation in “Redeemed Souls Freed from Fear” turns the mind to the ransom:
But I take it that the chief reference of these words are to that redemption which has been wrought out for us by Him who loved us, and washed us from our sins by His own blood. Let us think of it for a minute or two before we break the bread and drink of the cup of communion.
Charles Spurgeon
Communion and fellowship with Christ
If the cross is what the supper remembers, communion is what it gives. Spurgeon presses again and again toward real contact with a living Lord, not a mere ceremony observed:
What does this supper mean? It means communion: communion with Christ, and communion with one another.
Charles Spurgeon
This is the beating heart of the book. In “Real Contact with Jesus” he begs the reader to make it the whole point of the ordinance — that in the use of every means and ordinance our chief aim should be to come into personal contact with the Lord Jesus Christ. And that communion is never private only; the table binds believers to one another as well. In “Christ and His Table-Companions” Spurgeon draws out what it means to sit down with the Master:
This festival shows all the members of the Church of Christ to be, through divine grace, table-companions with one another, and with Christ Jesus their Lord.
Charles Spurgeon
The forward look — “till He come”
The supper also leans into the future. The very phrase Spurgeon took for his title turns the eyes forward: we proclaim the Lord’s death only until he comes again (1 Corinthians 11:26). So the table is a meal held between two comings — a remembrance that is also a hope. Spurgeon urges the worshipper, in the anticipation of the joy that shall be theirs, to forget present troubles and rejoice in the future so soon to be their own. The believer at the bread and cup looks back to Calvary and forward to the return of the Lord who promised he would not leave his people orphaned (John 14:18).
Tender devotion
Above everything lies the tone. Spurgeon writes as a man in love with his Lord, and he wants to warm cold hearts back to affection. The meditations dwell on the sweetness of Christ’s presence, the rest he gives, the shelter of his shadow — always aiming, as he puts it, at more than the assurance of salvation, at being visited by Christ in love. It is this tenderness, more than any argument, that has kept the book alive.
Who should read it
This is a book for any Christian who longs for warmer, closer fellowship with Christ at the Lord’s Table — and especially for those who feel their communion has grown routine. If the bread and cup have become a form you keep without feeling, Spurgeon is a gentle physician for that ailment.
- Believers preparing for communion — who want to come to the table with their hearts fixed on Christ rather than wandering.
- Pastors and those who lead the Lord’s Supper — who will find here a master of the short, heart-searching table address to learn from and to read aloud.
- Readers new to Spurgeon — who may find these tender meditations a warmer doorway into his work than the great doctrinal sermons.
- Anyone weary or afraid — the recurring notes of rest, shelter, and “fear not” make the book a comfort well beyond the communion service.
You do not need theological training to profit from it. Spurgeon wrote, as always, in language a child could follow and a scholar could not fault.
How to read it today
The best way to use Till He Come is the way it was made to be used — one meditation at a time, as a devotional companion around the Lord’s Supper. Here is a simple pattern:
- Read one address in preparation for communion. Before your church’s next Lord’s Supper — the night before, or that morning — take a single meditation and let it turn your thoughts toward Christ. The pieces are short enough for this by design.
- Follow the verse Spurgeon is holding. Each address grows from a text. Open your Bible to it, read the surrounding passage, and let Spurgeon’s reflection deepen rather than replace your own.
- Do not rush to finish the book. This is not a volume to read straight through in a sitting. Twenty-odd communions is twenty-odd meditations; let it accompany you across a season of the Lord’s Table.
- Pray it back. Spurgeon repeatedly turns his meditations into prayer. Pause where he does and ask the Lord for the very nearness he describes.
Read this way, the book becomes less a thing you get through and more a friend who sits beside you at the table. If it warms your heart toward Spurgeon, two natural next steps on Ochorus are his classic gospel invitation All of Grace and his teaching gathered as Mighty Power in Prayer. You can also read more about the preacher himself on the Charles Spurgeon author page.
For reflection
Use these questions on your own before communion, or with a group.
- Spurgeon distinguishes knowing that Jesus loves you from being visited by him in love. Which have you known — and which do you long for?
- The supper both remembers the cross and awaits Christ’s return (1 Corinthians 11:26). When you come to the table, does your heart look back, forward, or both?
- Spurgeon says the whole aim of the ordinance is “personal contact with the Lord Jesus Christ.” Where has your own communion drifted toward mere form, and how might that change?
- The table makes believers “table-companions with one another.” How does the Lord’s Supper shape the way you regard other Christians — even those you find hard to love?
- Which of Spurgeon’s images of Christ — the sheltering rock, the fruitful tree, the covering wing, the giver of rest — most meets you where you are today, and why?
