John Ploughman

  John Ploughman is Mr. Spurgeon’s pseudonym: “I have written for common people. Refined taste and articulate expressions have been set aside and replaced with strong proverbial expressions and plain phrases. I have aimed my blows at the faults of many and tried to instill those moral virtues without which people are devalued. Much that needs to be said to ordinary working people might not be appropriate from the pulpit. May these humble pages teach economy and honest work every day of the week, in the home and the workplace; and if some learn these lessons, I will not be sorry for adopting this unsophisticated style.

  “Ploughman is a name I may rightly claim. Every minister has put his hand to the plow—it is his business to break up the unplowed ground. That I have written in a semi-humorous style needs no apology, since by using it sound moral teaching has gained an audience of hundreds of thousands. There is no particular virtue in being seriously unreadable.” —C. H. Spurgeon