Archibald Geikie Brown (1844-1922) was born in London in 1844. He was impressed in boyhood under the ministry of C. H. Spurgeon in the Surrey Music Hall and Exeter Hall, but was actually led to decision for Christ through a personal appeal made to him by S. A. Blackwood.
Desiring to become a minister, he entered Pastors’ College, and was sent, before he was nineteen, to start a Baptist cause at Bromley, Kent. He served this Church for four years, and then accepted a call to East London, where he erected the East London Tabernacle, and built up one of the largest churches in the land. Mr Brown held this charge from 1867 to 1896, gaining great influence by his luminous expositions of Scripture, his ardent proclamation of Christ, and his winning appeals to the consciences and hearts of his hearers. His name became a household word in East London, and the Tabernacle witnessed many memorable scenes—none, perhaps, more remarkable than the great Saturday evening prayer meetings which formed a fitting prelude to Sundays of grace and power.
At length, however, feeling the strain of the work, he removed from East London, and fulfilled faithful ministries at Chatsworth Road, Norwood, from 1897 to 1907, and at the Metropolitan Tabernacle from 1907 to 1910. During the next few years Brown conducted services in many centres, and undertook preaching tours in Australasia and South Africa. His last years were shadowed by affliction, and on 2 April, 1922, he fell asleep in Christ.
He was four times married, his last wife predeceasing him by a few days. He left nine children and many grandchildren. He will be remembered as a preacher of genius, a natural orator, and a man of glowing devotion to Christ and the souls of men. He was an intimate friend and follower of C. H. Spurgeon, whose evangelical and spiritual ideals he deeply shared
[J.W.E. in The Face of Jesus Christ, a selection of Brown’s sermons on the person and work of Christ, published by the Trust in 2012. Brown’s remarkable, and largely forgotten, story is told by Iain Murray in Archibald G. Brown: Spurgeon’s Successor, and by Faith Cook as one of the biographies in her Sound of Trumpets, both also published by the Trust.]