“The wind blew down the river with a cutting blast, as my turn came to wade into the flood, but after I had walked a few steps, and noted the people on the ferryboats, and in the boats, and on either shore, I felt as if Heaven and Earth and Hell might all gaze upon me, for I was not ashamed, then and there, to own myself a follower of the Lamb. My timidity was washed away; as if floated down the river into the sea, and must have been devoured by the fishes, for I have never felt anything of the kind since. Baptism also loosed my tongue, and from that day it has never been quiet. I lost a thousand fears in that River Lark, and found that ‘in keeping his commandments there is great reward.'”

Spurgeon, Autobiography 1:149, 150; quoted in Tom Nettles, “The Child is the Father of the Man,” p. 58.