Spurgeon makes Reader's Digest

"They never said that" --
Spurgeon said it.

Pastor Lennie Wilson of Rosedale Baptist Church, Beaumont, Texas, called my attention to an item in the June 2009 Reader's Digest, pages 158, 159.

In the article entitled, "They Never Said That," we find the following;

Just as an exercise, go to your computer's search engine and type in four words: lie, truth, boots, and world. You will get thousands of references to variations of the following quote: "A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on."

Most will cite Mark Twain as the author of the aphorism. Al Gore has given Twain credit for it. So has Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.

But Twain didn't say it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon did, in 1855, and he attributed the wisdom to "an old proverb." Spurgeon was a mid-19th-century British pastor, as famous in his time as Rick Warren and Billy Graham are today in the United States. But that's the thing about fame: It can be fleeting. -- Carl M. Cannon.

While we appreciate Mr. Cannon's information about the quotation, his comment about fame might come in for some question in regard to Spurgeon's fame. If you enter Spurgeon's name in any form on your web search engine or on the image search, you will find that Spurgeon is still rather famous. There are thousands of links to Spurgeon, and there are many websites which feature his sermons and other writings.