Spurgeon is emphatically of the earth, earthy. This we say, not as anything against him intellectually or spiritually, but simply as indicating the material ballast, which in this man is grosser and heavier than in most men, pulling forever against his sails, and absolutely forbidding that freer movement of the imagination which usually belongs to minds of a power equal in degree to his. Not that this freedom flows necessarily out of a great degree of mental power, or by any organic law is associated with what we term _genius_. Every one would admit that Luther was a man of genius; yet Luther was in this respect no better off than Spurgeon,--he was as totally destitute of wings, of the possibility of aerial flight. His power we consider to be far higher than that of Spurgeon; but this we argue from the fact, that, although equally with Spurgeon he was excluded from the sovereignty of the air, although he was equally denied both the faculty to create and the capacity to receive subtile speculation, he had what Spurgeon has _not_, an almighty, irresistible _impetus_ in his movements,--movements which, though _centripetal_, forever seeking the earth, and forever trailing their mountain-weight of glory along the line of and through the midst of flesh-and-blood realities, yet never found any impediment in all their course, but swept the ground like a whirlwind. This distinction between Spurgeon and Luther in the matter of _strength_ is an important one; and it is, moreover, a distinction which may easily be derived--even if no other source lay open to us--from a palpable difference between their faces. But the resemblance between these two men as to tendencies and modes of operation is still more important, and especially as helping us to draw the line between two distinct orders of human genius. Upon this resemblance we desire to dwell at some length. Luther and Spurgeon are both grossly _realistic_. They are both _groundlings_. In their art, they build after the simple, but grand style of the Cyclops; they have no upward reach; with no delicate steppings do they haunt the clouds; because they _will_ not soar, they draw the sky down low about them, and, wrapping themselves about with its thunders and its sunlights, play with these mysteries as with magnificent toys. In them there is no subtilizing of human affections, of human fears, or of human faith. All these maintain their alliance magnetically, by channels seen or unseen, but forever _felt_, with the earth, and, Antaeus-like, from the earth they derive all their peculiar strength as sentiments of the human heart.