John Ploughman's Talk

It is a book of plain advice by Charles Spurgeon, written in the voice of a Surrey farm labourer called John Ploughman. In twenty-four short talks, packed with country proverbs and rough humour, John speaks his mind on idleness, religious grumblers, gossip, debt, spending, home, wives, hypocrites, bragging and ignorance — the everyday faults and virtues of working people.

He is Spurgeon himself in a smock-frock. In the preface Spurgeon says that Ploughman is a name he may justly claim, since every minister has put his hand to the plough and his business is to break up the fallow ground. John talks about his master's farm, his old mare, his wife and his boys, and Our Minister, but the opinions are Spurgeon's own.

Because he was writing for ploughmen and common people. He says he discarded refined taste and dainty words for strong proverbial expressions and homely phrases, so that these lowly pages might teach thrift and industry all the days of the week, in the cottage and the workshop. He makes no apology for the humour: there is, he says, no particular virtue in being seriously unreadable.

It is mostly practical and moral rather than doctrinal — Spurgeon later called its tone rather moral than religious. But it is written by a preacher and it shows. The talks keep returning to God's word, to honest living as part of a Christian's witness, to the hope of the next world, and to the folly of those who see God nowhere when John the ploughman feels him everywhere.

Idleness and opportunity, patience and good nature, gossip and tall talk, debt and spending, hints on thriving, home and a good word for wives, men with two faces, things worth trying and things not worth trying, monuments and epitaphs, and very ignorant people. Each chapter takes one subject and turns it over with a string of sayings, stories and a rhyme or two.

At the beginning, with To the Idle, which sets the tone — though each talk stands on its own and the book is easy to dip into. Readers who enjoy it can go straight on to John Ploughman's Pictures, the sequel, which turns a famous proverb into a talk in each chapter.