ABSTRACT
Spurgeon devoted his whole life to preaching the gospel, and nothing less than the meaning of his life was at stake for him in the issue of scriptural infallibility. A number of years have passed since the Downgrade Controversy split the Baptist Union, and all of the principals in that struggle are now dead, but the subject of the controversy remains a chapter in the history of their denomination which the Baptists of Britain prefer to forget. The impact of Spurgeon's break with the Baptist Union was sharpened by two factors; first, Spurgeon's great personal prestige, and second, the conservative reputation of the denomination. The prediction of the Westminster Review that modernism would eventually infiltrate the ranks of the conservative Baptists proved true. The Downgrade Controversy took its name from a series of articles on "the downgrade in religion" which appeared in Sword and Trowel in the spring of 1887.
