Depression & Suffering

What he [Charles Spurgeon] suffered in these times of darkness we may not know. They usually accompanied his days and nights of physical agony under the strength of a gout attack, and even his desperate calling upon God often brought him no relief. "There are dungeons," he said, "beneath the Castle of Despair," and he had often been in them.
Those terrible experiences had their good effect upon his ministry, however. In his audiences each Sunday sat hundreds of persons who had come from a week of trial and who needed kindness and encouragement, and here was the man who could give it. His voice was often broken with his feeling for the sorrowing. Many a time he was in excruciating pain as he preached. He knew what suffering was, and his words were full of sympathy that lifted spirits and sent tried men and women forth to face their circumstances with new strength.

-Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon P.186-187