Spurgeon was called to a church at age 23 and was addressing crowds of 5,000 at 30. He wrote this:
“Before any great achievement in my life, some measure of depression is very usual. Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London; my success appalled me and the thought of that career which seemed to be opening up, so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depths out of which I uttered my misery. I found no room for a Gloria in Excelsis. Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude? I would slip away to my village obscurity or prefer to emigrate to American and find a solitary nest in the backwoods. It was just then that the curtain was rising on my greatest life’s work and I dreaded what it might reveal to me. I hope I was not faithless! But I was timorous and filled with a sense of my own unfitness. This depression sweeps over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my life and ministry. Some of you are right at the door.”