1. Singing

Our children are blessed as they hear the whole church singing to God joyfully and heartily, with full hearts and full voices. They learn that the truths we sing are truths worth singing about. And they learn to sing. They learn how to sing the psalms. They learn the great hymns that have been passed down to us from previous generations of believers. They learn to obey Paul’s command in Ephesians 5:19, ‘[Address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.’ They learn to sing to the Lord with the congregation.

2. Prayer

To be sure, children learn to pray by listening to their parents pray, but they also learn to pray by listening to their pastors pray. They learn to pray along with those who are leading in prayer. They add their voices to the congregation as we all pray the Lord’s Prayer together, or join together in a corporate confession of sin. They learn to add their hearty ‘Amen’ to the end of the prayers, as a way of agreeing with what has been prayed and making it their own. They learn to pray in corporate worship.

3. Reading

Paul told Timothy to devote himself to ‘the public reading of Scripture’ (1 Tim. 4:13), which is for the benefit of the whole congregation, of which Ten Benefits of Corporate Worship for Our Children 27 children are a part (Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20). Children should read the Bible in their home, or have it read to them, but they should also be able to benefit from the public reading of Scripture in congregational worship. It is one of the means of grace that God has appointed for his people.

4. Preaching

The preaching of the word of God is not just for adults, it’s for children too. The whole counsel of God is for the whole people of God and therefore the preaching of the whole counsel of God is for the whole people of God. And the preaching of the word is the high point of the means of grace, and we don’t want our children to miss out. We don’t want them to miss out on what the Westminster Larger Catechism says about the way God uses sermons to change us: ‘The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners; of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ; of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing  their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation’ (Q&A 155). Those are things we want for our children.

5. Sacraments

The sacrament of baptism is a blessing to our children, not just their own baptism, but the baptism of other children, or of adults professing faith. They can see the sign and seal of the covenant of grace and their natural curiosity may spark off conversations with their parents about the meaning of it all. And the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is also a blessing to our children, even though they don’t participate in the sacred supper until they have made a public profession of their faith and been admitted to the Lord’s Table by the elders. They see what’s going on, they hear the words of institution that become familiar with them, and again their questions can generate meaningful discussion about what the Lord’s Supper signifies – much like the question the son would ask the father at the celebration of the Passover in the Old Testament, ‘What does this mean?’ (Exod. 13:14).

6. Habit

The habit of worshipping God on the Lord’s Day is formed in the hearts and minds of our children. The healthy, holy habit of attending corporate worship is formed, which, if kept up, will be a blessing to them all their lives. We are creatures of habit, and we want to form the habit of Lord’s Day worship early in the hearts and minds of our children.

7. Inclusion

It is a tremendous blessing to our children to know that they are included in the covenant community, and that they have both great privileges as a member of the covenant community and great responsibilities. Their greatest responsibility is first and foremost to trust Christ personally and to make public profession of their faith. Our children can either get the distinct impression that worship is for adults, or they can learn that worship is for them too.

8. Learning

They are blessed with the opportunity to learn how to worship God by watching their parents and the rest of the church worship God. Author Jason Helopoulos writes in his book Let the Children Worship:

Corporate worship is corporate. The entire body gathers together. This re-emphasizes the unity God’s people possess with one another. It reminds us that we are one people united in our one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Eph. 4:5). This blesses the entire congregation. The old saint looks around and sees generations that will carry on the faith once he has passed. A teenager, who may struggle to respect his parents, observes venerable and respected men and women in the community who also believe in Christ Jesus. The young child witnesses other adults possessing the same faith and heart for worship that her parents model at home. As the congregation sings, all the voices of the church unite. When God’s people read the confession of faith, they confess the same truth united. When God’s people hear the public prayers they voice a loud ‘Amen’ united. How unfortunate it is when the entire congregation should witness and voice this unity and receive encouragement from this fellowship, but our children remain absent. It steals blessing from them and the greater congregation itself.¹

9. Modelling

This is actually a blessing for the whole congregation, because by modelling I mean our children modelling for us the child-like faith we should have as we worship God. In Luke 18:15-17 we read,

Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’

We are helping our children learn to worship, but they are also helping us.

10. The special presence of God

Matthew 18:20 says, ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.’ God, of course, is everywhere, but he is present with us in corporate worship in a special way. He is present to bless us and to keep us, to make his face shine upon us and be gracious to us, to lift up his countenance upon us and give us peace (Num. 6:24-26). And if God is present, we don’t want our children to be absent. As a pastor once put it, ‘If Jesus showed up for worship on a Sunday, would we separate our children from the service?’ The answer, of course, is ‘No.’ We would want our children there if he were there. But he is there, every Sunday, and so we want our children to be there too.

Matt Purdy is Senior Pastor at Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, USA.

This article was published in the December 2019 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine, no. 675.

Featured Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.

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‘Why do you go to church twice on Sunday? Isn’t once enough?’ Since the practice of attending worship twice on Sunday has fallen on hard times this is a question that is often asked of Reformed Christians. Many people in our culture find it amazing that anyone would actually want to go to church both in the morning and in the evening on Sunday. Others find the idea of attending worship twice to be an inconvenience that takes up too much of their weekend. Sadly, even many Reformed Christians do not see the great significance of attending church twice on the Lord’s Day and, therefore, of remaining uncommitted to the practice. If you have ever wondered about the purpose of having two services on the Sabbath, let me encourage you to think carefully about the following:

1. Evening Worship Is Rooted in Scripture

While there is no explicit command in the New Testament to have two worship services instead of one, there is, nevertheless, a clear pattern in Scripture of ‘morning and evening’. This is seen in the order of creation as God structured time for us humans in terms of mornings and evenings (Gen.1–2). This pattern was also evident in Old Covenant worship as God commanded the daily offerings in the tabernacle to be made once in the morning and then again at twilight (Num. 28:1–10, cf. Exod. 29:38–39). This is why the psalmist declares in Psalm 92, which is explicitly identified as a psalm for the Sabbath, ‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night’ (verses 1–2; cf. Psa.134:1). It is not unreasonable, therefore, to believe that this pattern of morning and evening carries over into New Covenant worship, especially since the New Testament gives evidence of worship services that took place on the evening of the first day of the week (see Acts 20:7).

2. Evening Worship Helps Us To Sanctify the Lord’s Day

One great practical benefit of having both morning and evening worship is that it provides an excellent structure to help families sanctify the Lord’s Day. The two worship services become like bookends on the Sabbath, allowing the Christian more easily to keep the day holy as we are commanded, rather than merely sanctifying a couple of hours in the morning! (Despite what is popular in our culture, it is still the Lord’s Day and not ‘the Lord’s Morning’.) Since the keeping of his day is a mark of God’s covenant community that sets it apart as holy and reminds its members that they are pilgrims on the way to the eternal Sabbath, evening worship provides a beautiful rhythm for the Lord’s Day. For centuries thousands upon thousands of Christians have found the interval between the morning and evening worship services the perfect time for food, fellowship, devotional reading, family prayer, acts of mercy or – by no means the least important – a good nap! Freed up from all the craziness of the week, Christians are able to enjoy a day of worship and rest. What better way to end the holy day than by gathering together with the covenant community for the Word, fellowship, sacrament and the prayers (cf. Acts 2:42)?

3. Evening Worship, Like Morning Worship, Is a Means of Grace

Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 65 asks, ‘Since then we are made partakers of Christ and all his benefits by faith only, from where comes this faith?’ It answers: ‘The Holy Spirit works it in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.’ One of the main reasons why the evening worship service has been greatly neglected in our day is because of a generally low view of preaching and the sacraments. Who wants to sit through another boring sermon when one can get a bigger ‘blessing’ in a small-group Bible study, personal devotions or some other programme?

But if preaching and the sacraments are truly God’s primary means of grace for our sanctification, then surely Christians would not want to miss a worship service. Indeed, as Dr. W. Robert Godfrey has half-seriously pointed out, the question isn’t, ‘Why two worship services on Sunday?’ The question more rightly should be, ‘Why not three or four?’ If God nourishes our faith by the preaching of the gospel, why wouldn’t we want to hear the gospel preached more than once on Sunday? Since ‘faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10:17) and it is the ‘the preaching of Jesus Christ’ that strengthens us (Rom. 16:25), we must realize that the evening worship service provides another opportunity for our faith to be built up and our knowledge of Christ to grow. It provides a broader scope of preaching on the whole counsel of God, allowing the pastor to take his congregation through more of Scripture than only one service would allow. It is for this reason that the elders call the congregation to worship twice each Lord’s Day. As those to whom Christ has given the high calling of ‘keeping watch over [our] souls’ (Heb.13:17), they call us to worship not only so that we may serve the Lord twice on his holy day, but also so that we may benefit from God’s ordained means of grace. As God’s Word commands us to obey and to submit to our elders (again, see Heb.13:17), we should respond to the call to worship as a joyful act of obedience to the Lord.

4. Evening Worship Gives Us Continuity with the Historic Christian Church

Oftentimes Christians baulk at the practice of attending the evening worship service because it is not a part of their custom. What they must understand, however, is that if what they are accustomed to is only one service on the Lord’s Day, then they are not accustomed to the practice of the historic Christian church but to a modern novelty. As we look at the history of the church, we see that morning and evening worship on the Lord’s Day was the norm. In the early fourth century the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea described what he understood to be the universal practice of the church:

For it is surely no small sign of God’s power that throughout the whole world in the churches of God at the morning rising of the sun and at the evening hours, hymns, praises, and truly divine delights are offered to God. God’s delights are indeed the hymns sent up everywhere on earth in his Church at the times of morning and evening. (emphasis mine)¹

During the Middle Ages, morning worship became known as ‘lauds’ and evening worship as ‘vespers’. Attending both lauds and vespers was standard practice for Christians. At the time of the Reformation, the custom of morning and evening worship continued, as is evidenced in the liturgies of the Reformed churches in the sixteenth century. Typically the evening (or, in many cases, afternoon) service was devoted to an exposition of Reformed doctrine and was more catechetical in nature. So important was this second service to the life of the Reformed churches, that when it was threatened by the protests of the Remonstrants (Arminians), the matter was brought to the Synod of Dort (1618–19) and discussed at great length. The overwhelming testimony at the Synod by delegates from countries all over Europe was that the second service was something to be guarded and cherished in order that the Reformed faith might continue to flourish and Christians to have greater opportunity to mature in their understanding. Through the centuries this practice continued to be a principal part of Reformed worship, as can be traced in the traditions of the Dutch Reformed churches, English Puritanism and Scottish Presbyterianism, as well as in Anglicanism and early Lutheranism. Thus it must be understood that Protestant churches that have dropped the evening worship service altogether have sharply departed from what has historically been a normal practice of Christ’s church.

As one charged with the responsibility of feeding the flock of Christ and watching out for their souls, let me encourage you to attend the evening worship service. It is good for your soul! Indeed, some families have legitimate, pastoral reasons why attending the evening worship service is not merely an inconvenience, but a practical impossibility. But often those who do not attend evening worship do so merely out of an attitude that asks, ‘What is the least that is required of me?’ Let us lay aside such ungrateful thinking and be reminded that we are pilgrims on the way to our heavenly home. Just as our lives are marked with the beautiful sabbatical rhythm of six-and-one that was established in creation and looks forward to the consummation, so also we have a beautiful rhythm of worship each Lord’s Day that provides an opportunity both in the morning and the evening to gather together with God’s covenant community, to serve him in worship, and to receive from his open hand his good gifts of Word and sacrament.

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It may seem strange to some persons, that I should give directions for the performance of an act so well understood as the perusal of a book; and especially the perusal of a book of so simple and elementary a kind as this. But the fact is, that multitudes either do not know, or do not remember at the time, how to read to advantage; and, therefore, profit but little by what they read. Besides, simple and elementary as is this treatise, it is on a subject of infinite and eternal importance, and is perused in the most critical season of a man’s everlasting history; when, in a very peculiar sense, every means of grace, and this among the rest, will be either ‘a savour of death unto death, or of life unto life,’ to the reader. Tremendous idea! But strictly true.

Reader, whosoever thou art, it is no presumptuous thought of the author to believe that thou wilt remember the contents of this small treatise, either with pleasure and gratitude in heaven, or with remorse and despair in hell. Can it then be an impertinently officious act to remind thee how to read with advantage what I have written?

1. Take it with you into your closet

I mean your place of retirement for prayer; for, of course, you have such a place. Prayer is the very soul of all religion, and privacy is the very life of prayer itself. This is a book to be read when you are alone; when none is near but God and your conscience; when you are not hindered by the presence of a fellow-creature from the utmost freedom of manner, thought, and feeling; when, unobserved by any human eye, you could lay down the book, and meditate, or weep, or fall upon your knees to pray, or give vent to your feelings in short and sudden petitions to God.

I charge you then to reserve the volume for your private seasons of devotion and thoughtfulness: look not into it in company, except it be the company of a poor trembling and anxious inquirer, like yourself.

2. Read it with deep seriousness

Remember, it speaks to you of God, of eternity, of salvation, of heaven, and of hell. Take it up with something of the awe ‘that warns you how you touch a holy thing.’ It meets you in your solicitude about your soul’s welfare; it meets you fleeing from destruction, escaping for your life, crying out, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ and proffers its assistance to guide you for refuge to ‘the hope set before you in the gospel.’ It is itself serious; its author is serious; it is on a serious subject; and demands to be read in a most devout and serious mood. Take it not up lightly, nor read it lightly. If your spirit be not as solemn as usual, do not touch it; and when you do touch it, command away every other subject, and endeavour to realize the idea that God, salvation, and eternity are before you; and that you are actually collecting the ingredients of the cup of salvation, or the wormwood and gall to imbitter the cup of damnation.

3. Read it with earnest prayer

It can do you no good, without God’s blessing: nothing short of Divine grace can render it the means of instructing your mind, or impressing your heart. It will convey no experimental knowledge, relieve no anxiety, dissipate no doubts, afford neither peace nor sanctification, if God do not give his Holy Spirit: and if you would have the Spirit, you must ask for his influence. If, therefore, you wish it to benefit you, do not read another page, till you have most fervently, as well as sincerely, prayed to God for his blessing to accompany the perusal. I have earnestly prayed to God to enable me to write it, and if you as earnestly pray to him to enable you to read it, there is thanksgiving in store for us both; for usually what is begun in prayer, ends in praise.

4. Do not read too much at a time

Books that are intended to instruct and impress should be read slowly. Most persons read too much at a time. Your object is not merely to read this treatise through, but to read it so as to profit by it. Food cannot be digested well, if too much be eaten at a time; so neither can knowledge.

5. Meditate on what you read

Meditation bears the same office in the mental constitution as digestion does in our corporeal system. The first mental exercise is attention, the next is reflection. If we would gain a correct notion of an object, we must not only see it, but look at it; and so, also, if we would gain knowledge from books, we must not only see the matters treated of, but look steadily at them. Nothing but meditation can enable us to understand or feel. In reading the Scriptures and religious books, we are, or should be, reading for eternity. Salvation depends on knowledge, and knowledge on meditation. At almost every step of our progress through a book which is intended to guide us to salvation, we should pause and ask, ‘Do I understand this?’ Our profiting depends not on the quantity we read, but the quantity we understand. One verse in Scripture, if understood and meditated upon, will do us more good than a chapter, or even a book, read through in haste, and without reflection.

6. Read regularly through in order

Do not wander about from one part to another, and in your eagerness to gain relief, pick and cull particular portions, on account of their supposed suitableness to your case. It is all suitable; and will be found most so by being taken together and as a whole. A rambling method of reading, whether it be the Scriptures or other books, is not to edification: it often arises from levity of mind, and sometimes from impatience; both of which are states very unfriendly to improvement. Remember it is salvation you are in quest of; an object of such transcendent importance, as to be a check upon volatility; and of such value, as to encourage the most exemplary patience.

7. Read calmly

You are anxious to obtain eternal life: you are eagerly asking, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ But still, you must not allow your solicitude so far to agitate your mind, as to prevent you from listening calmly and coolly for the answer. In circumstances of great anxiety, men are sometimes so much under the power of excited feelings, that the judgment is bewildered, and thus they are not only prevented from finding out what is best to be done, but from seeing it when it is laid down by another.

This anxious and hurried state of mind is very common in those who are just awakened to a concern about salvation; they are restless and eager to gain relief, but are defeated in their object by their very solicitude to obtain it. The Scriptures are read, sermons are heard, advice of friends is received, in a confused state of mind. Now you must guard against this, and endeavour so far to control your thoughts, and calm your perturbation, as to attend to the counsels and cautions which are here suggested.

8. I very earnestly recommend the perusal of all those passages of Scripture and chapters which I have quoted, and which, for the sake of brevity, I have only referred to, without quoting the words.

I lay great stress upon this. Read this book with the Bible at your elbow, and do not think much of the trouble of turning to the passages quoted. If, unhappily, you should consider me, or my little volume, as a substitute for the Bible, instead of a guide to it, I shall have done you an injury, or rather you will have done yourself an injury by thus employing it. ‘As new-born babes,’ says the apostle, ‘desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby’ (1 Pet. 2:2). And as those infants thrive best who are fed from the breast of their mother, so those converts grow most in grace, who are most devoted to a spiritual perusal of the Scriptures. If, therefore, I stand between you and the word of God, I do you great disservice; but if I should persuade you to read the Scriptures, I shall greatly help you in your religious course. Perhaps, in the present state of your mind, it is not desirable to begin and read regularly the word of God, but to go through those passages which I have selected and recommended.

And now may God, of his great goodness and sovereign grace, deign to bless the perusal of this book to many immortal souls, by making it, however humble the production, the means of conducting them into the path of life!

Featured Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

*An earlier version of this post wrongly attributed this excerpt to Angell James’s Pastoral Addresses (1840).

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Claim: Jesus had no interest in maintaining a male-female requirement for sexual relations.

What the evidence really shows: Jesus believed that a male-female requirement for sexual relations was foundational, a core value of Scripture’s sexual ethics on which other sexual standards should be based, including the ‘twoness’ of a sexual union.

Jesus predicated marital twoness – the restriction of the number of persons in a sexual union to two, whether concurrently (no polygamy) or serially (no cycle of divorce and remarriage) – on the fact that ‘from the beginning of creation, “male and female He made them” [Gen. 1:27] and “for this reason a man . . . will be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh” [Gen. 2:24].’ (Mark 10:2-12; Matt. 19:3-9). In other words, the fact that God had designed two (and only two) primary sexes for complementary sexual pairing was Jesus’ basis for a rigorous monogamy position. He reasoned that, since the union of the two sexual halves creates an integrated, self-contained sexual whole, a third sexual partner was neither necessary nor desirable. We know that this was Jesus’ reasoning because the only other first-century Jews that shared Jesus’ opposition to more than two persons in a sexual bond were the Essenes, who likewise rejected ‘taking two wives in their lives’ because ‘the foundation of creation is “male and female he created them” [Gen. 1:27]’ and because ‘those who entered [Noah’s] ark went in two by two into the ark [Gen. 7:9]’ (Damascus Covenant 4.20-5.1). The appeal to the ‘two by two’ statement in the story of Noah’s ark is significant because, apart from the repetition of Genesis 1:27 in 5:1, that is the only other place where the precise Hebrew phrase zakar uneqevah (‘male and female’) appears, and there it is strongly linked with the emphasis on a natural pair. The twoness of the sexes is the foundation for the twoness of the sexual bond. In short, according to Jesus, if you think that limiting the number of partners in a sexual union to two persons at any one time is an important requirement for sexual unions, you should regard a male-female requirement as even more important.

There are many other arguments that one can cite as evidence of Jesus’ rejection of homosexual practice, including the fact that the Old Testament that Jesus accepted as Scripture was strongly opposed; that the man who baptized Jesus (John the Baptist) was beheaded for criticizing Herod Antipas for violating Levitical sex laws (the incest prohibitions, even in adult-consensual relationships); that the entirety of early Judaism out of which Jesus emerged believed homosexual practice to be a gross violation of foundational sexual ethics (there are no extant texts within centuries of the law of Jesus indicating any openness to homosexual relationships of any sort, in contrast to the existence of such texts among ‘pagans’); and that the early church that knew Jesus best was united in its belief that a male-female prerequisite for sexual unions was essential. The supposition of a Jesus supportive of, or even neutral toward, committed homosexual unions is without historical analogue in Jesus’ immediate cultural environment; revisionist history at its worst. Moreover, although we have no extant saying of Jesus that loosened the Law’s demand for sexual purity, we do have sayings where Jesus closed remaining loopholes in the Law’s sexual commands by further intensifying God’s demand (adultery of the heart; divorce & remarriage) and warning people that sexual impurity could get one thrown into hell full-bodied (Matt. 5:27-32). The trend of Jesus’ teaching on sexual ethics is not toward greater licence but toward fewer loopholes.

2. Eunuchs

Claim: The positive treatment that ‘eunuchs’ receive in some biblical texts (Isa. 56:3-5, Matt. 19:12, Acts 8:27-39) provides grounds for supporting homosexual unions, as does Jesus’ attitude toward the woman caught in adultery and toward other outcasts.

What the evidence really shows: The references to eunuchs in Isaiah 56:3-5 and Acts 8:27-39 refer to persons who were physically castrated against their will, not to persons who willingly removed their marks of masculinity, much less actively engaged in sexual relations forbidden by Scripture. Jesus’ saying about eunuchs in Matthew 19:12 presupposes that eunuchs are not having sexual intercourse at all, let alone having forbidden sexual intercourse. Both Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery and his outreach to sexual sinners was aimed at achieving their repentance so that they might inherit the kingdom of God that he proclaimed.

Isaiah 39:7 makes clear that the eunuchs mentioned in Isaiah 56:4-5 were Israelites who, against their will, were taken to ‘the palace of the king of Babylon’ and made eunuchs, but had now returned to Israel. According to Isaiah 56:4-5, God will not cut them off from his people so long as they ‘choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant.’ There is no way that the author would have regarded someone engaged in same-sex intercourse as still pleasing God and holding fast to the covenant. These are persons that had a portion of their masculinity taken away from them against their will. Why should they now be penalized if they do not support erasure of their own masculinity and have no intent to violate any of God’s commands regarding sexual behaviour? A first-century Jewish text, The Wisdom of Solomon, both extols a eunuch who does not violate God’s commands and condemns homosexual practice (Wisd. 3:14; 14:26). Another Jewish work presumes that eunuchs are not having any sexual intercourse (Sirach 20:4; 30:20).

This is exactly what Jesus presumes when he compares ‘eunuchs who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God’ – that is, Christians who opt out of marriage and choose a celibate life in order to have more time and freedom of movement and action to proclaim the gospel – with ‘born eunuchs’ and ‘made eunuchs’. The analogy only works on the assumption that eunuchs do not have sexual relations. So if ‘born eunuchs’ included for Jesus not only asexual men but also men who had sexual desire only for other males then Jesus rejected for them all sexual relations outside the covenant bond of marriage between a man and a woman. In fact, the whole context for the eunuch saying in Matthew 19:10-12 is Jesus’ argument that the twoness of the sexes in complementary sexual pairing, ‘male and female,’ is the basis for rejecting sexual relationships involving three or more persons. He can hardly be dismissing the importance of a male-female requirement for sexual relations immediately after establishing the foundational character of such a requirement – certainly not in Matthew’s view of the matter.

When Jesus rescued the woman caught in adultery from being stoned, he did so with a view to encouraging her repentance. Put simply, dead people don’t repent. Jesus wanted to give the woman every last opportunity to repent so that she might inherit the kingdom of God. So he warned her: ‘Go and from now on no longer be sinning’ (John 8:11). A similar statement is made by Jesus in John 5:14, where it is followed up with the remark: ‘lest something worse happen to you.’ That something worse is loss of eternal life through an unrepentant life. Whereas the Pharisees didn’t care if sexual sinners and persons who exploited the poor for material gain (first-century tax collectors) went to hell, Jesus cared enough to make them a focus of his ministry so that he might, through a proclamation of love and repentance, call them back to God’s kingdom (hence Mark’s summary of Jesus’ ministry: ‘The kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe the good news’ [1:15]). When the church calls to repentance those who engage in homosexual acts and does so lovingly, with a desire to reclaim lives for the kingdom of God, it carries out the work of its Lord.

3. Romans 1:24-27 and the Erroneous ‘Exploitation Argument’

Claim: The Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 applies only to exploitative and hedonistic forms of homosexual practice such as sex with slaves, prostitutes, and adolescents.

What the evidence really shows: Every piece of evidence that can be culled from the text’s literary and historical context confirms that the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice, like its prohibition of adult incestuous unions, is absolute, rejecting all forms of homosexual practice regardless of consent and commitment.

Five lines of evidence make this point clear.

First, Paul in Romans 1:24-27 rejects homosexual practice because it is a violation of God’s creation of ‘male and female’ as a sexual pair in Genesis. In Romans 1:23-27 Paul intentionally echoed Genesis 1:26-27, making eight points of correspondence, in the same tripartite structure, between the two sets of texts (humans/image/likeness, birds/cattle/reptiles, male/female). Paul was rejecting homosexual practice in the first instance because it was a violation of the male-female prerequisite for sexual relations ordained by the Creator at creation, not because of how well or badly it was done in his cultural milieu.

Second, the kind of nature argument that Paul employs in Romans 1:18-27 isn’t conducive to a distinction between exploitative and non-exploitative forms of homosexual practice. For Paul contended that female-female and male-male intercourse was ‘contrary to nature’ because it violated obvious clues given in the material structures of creation that male and female, not two males or two females, are each others sexual ‘counterpart’ or ‘complement’ (to use the language of Gen. 2:18, 20) in terms of anatomy, physiology, and psychology. What Paul says regarding the vertical vice of idolatry (1:19-23) is equally true of the horizontal vice of same-sex intercourse: male-female complementarity is ‘clearly seen, being mentally apprehended by means of the things made‘ (1:19-20). Some have argued that the ancients had no comprehension of a complementarity argument. Yet as classicist Thomas K. Hubbard notes in his magisterial sourcebook of texts pertaining to Homosexuality in Greece and Rome (University of California Press, 2003): ‘Basic to the heterosexual position [among Greek and Roman moralists in the first few centuries A.D.] is the characteristic Stoic appeal to the providence of Nature, which has matched and fitted the sexes to each other’ (p. 444). Hubbard is supportive of homosexual relationships, yet admits the point.

Third, the fact that Paul in Romans 1:27 specifically indicts male homosexual relations that involve mutual, reciprocal affections – ‘males, having left behind the natural use of the female, were inflamed with their yearning for one another’ – precludes any supposition that Paul is thinking only of coercive relationships.

Fourth, Paul’s indictment of lesbianism in Romans 1:26 further confirms that his indictment of homosexual practice is absolute, since female homosexuality in antiquity was not primarily known, or criticized, for the exploitative practices of sex with slaves, prostitutes, or children. And there can be little doubt that Paul was indicting female homosexuality, as evidenced by: (1) the parallelism of the language of 1:26 (‘females exchanged the natural use’) and 1:27 (‘likewise also the males leaving behind the natural use of the female‘); (2) the fact that in antiquity lesbian intercourse was the form of female intercourse most commonly labelled ‘contrary to nature’ and paired with male homosexual practice; (3) the fact of nearly universal male opposition to lesbianism in antiquity, even by men engaged in homosexual practice; and (4) the fact that lesbian intercourse was the dominant interpretation of Romans 1:26 in the patristic period.

Fifth, contrary to false claims that people in the Greco-Roman world had no concept of committed homosexual unions, there is plenty of evidence for the conception and existence of loving homosexual relationships, including semi-official ‘marriages’ between men and between women. Moreover, we know of some Greco-Roman moralists who acknowledged the existence of loving homosexual relationships while rejecting even these as unnatural (indeed, we can trace this idea back to Plato’s Laws). This is also true of the Church Fathers. For example, Clement of Alexandria (late second century) referred to ‘women . . . contrary to nature . . . marrying women’ (Paidagogos 3.3.21.3). Obviously marriage implies commitment (else there is no need to marry) yet commitment does not change the unnatural and sinful character of the relationship. And it should go without saying that Jewish writers in Paul’s day and beyond rejected all forms of homosexual activity. For example, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus stated the obvious to his Roman readers: ‘The law [of Moses] recognizes only sexual intercourse that is according to nature, that which is with a woman . . . But it abhors the intercourse of males with males’ (Against Apion 2.199).

It is hardly surprising, then, that even Louis Crompton, a homosexual scholar, acknowledges this point in his massive work, Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard University Press, 2003; 500 pgs.):

However well-intentioned, the interpretation that Paul’s words were not directed at ‘bona fide’ homosexuals in committed relationships . . . seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian. (p. 114)

Also worth noting is the falsity of claims that the ancient world knew nothing akin to our understanding of a homosexual orientation or of congenital influences on at least some homosexual development. As classicist Thomas K. Hubbard (cited above) notes:

Homosexuality in this era [i.e., of the early Imperial Age of Rome] may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an essential and central category of personal identity, exclusive of and antithetical to heterosexual orientation. (p. 386)

Bernadette Brooten, a lesbian New Testament scholar who has written the most important book on lesbianism in antiquity also acknowledges this point. She states that

Paul could have believed [that some persons attracted to members of the same sex] were born that way and yet still condemn them [better: their behaviours] as unnatural and shameful . . . I see Paul as condemning all forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from God. (Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [University of Chicago, 1996], 244).

4. Analogies

Claim: The closest analogies to the Bible’s opposition to homosexual practice are the Bible’s support for both slavery and the oppression of women and its opposition to divorce, all positions that we now reject.

What the evidence really shows: The alleged analogies cited above are far more remote than the analogies of the Bible’s opposition to incest and the New Testament’s opposition to polygamy – behaviours that would disqualify any participants from ordained office, even when the relationships in question are adult, consensual, committed, and exhibit no scientifically measurable harm.

Scripture’s opposition to incest and (in the New Testament) polygamy or polyamory (sexual love for multiple persons concurrently) are related in key ways to its opposition to homosexual practice. They are all sexual behaviours proscribed in one or both Testaments of Scripture, and proscribed absolutely, despite the fact that all three are able to be conducted as caring and committed adult sexual relationships. Incest is ultimately prohibited on the grounds that it is sexual intercourse with a person who, in terms of embodied existence, is too much of a ‘same’ or like on a kinship level (compare Leviticus 18:6: ‘no one shall approach any flesh of one’s flesh to uncover nakedness’). The higher risks of procreative difficulties that attend fertile incestuous unions are merely the symptoms of the root problem: too much identity on the kinship level between close blood relations. Similarly the inability of persons of the same sex to procreate is merely the symptom of the root problem: too much embodied identity, here as regards gender or sex, between persons of the same sex. If anything, the identity is more keenly felt in same-sex intercourse since sex or gender is a more integral component of sexuality than blood relatedness. As regards polygamy or polyamory, we have already seen in point 1 above that Jesus predicated his rejection of such behaviour on God’s creation of two sexes for complementary sexual pairing. So a two-sexes prerequisite for sexual relations and a limitation of the number of persons in a sexual union to two are related as foundation and superstructure (the latter being built on the former). These links indicate that the Bible’s prohibition of incest and the New Testament’s prohibition of multiple-partner sexual unions even for males (note that the Old Testament never allowed women to have multiple husbands concurrently [polyandry]) are very close analogies to the Bible’s strong prohibition of homosexual practice.

Slavery is a bad analogy to the Bible’s opposition to homosexual practice because,

first, the Bible shows no vested interest in preserving slavery but rather at a number of points has a critical edge against slavery (for example, having mandatory release dates, maintaining the right of kin to buy loved ones out of slavery at any time, insisting that fellow Israelites not be treated as slaves). Relative to the slave cultures of the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin, the countercultural thrust of the Scriptures is against slavery. However, as regards a male-female requirement for sexual relations, the Bible’s critical edge and countercultural thrust is decidedly in the direction of strong opposition to all homosexual practice.

Second, whereas race or ethnicity is a 100% heritable, absolutely immutable, and primarily non-behavioural condition, and so inherently benign, homosexual desire is an impulse and, like many impulses, it is not 100% heritable (there may be congenital influences but these are not absolutely deterministic), is open to some change (even if only, in some cases, a limited reduction in the intensity of impulses), is primarily behavioural (here for unnatural, i.e. structurally incompatible, sexual activity), and therefore is not inherently benign.

Third, the parallel with slavery lies with support for homosexual unions, not opposition to such, since those insisting that homosexual desires be affirmed by the church are promoting enslavement to impulses to do what God in Scripture expressly forbids.

The Bible’s stance toward women’s roles is a bad analogy for similar reasons.

First, comparing being a woman and having homoerotic impulses confuses categories. Being a woman, unlike homosexual impulses, is a condition that is 100% congenital, absolutely immutable, and not a direct desire for behaviour that Scripture expressly forbids.

Second, there are plenty of positive views of women in Scripture (e.g., the roles played by Judge Deborah and Ruth in the Old Testament, Jesus’ commendation of female discipleship and Paul’s salute to women co-workers in the New Testament), but only strongly negative assessments of homosexual practice.

As with the issue of slavery, the countercultural thrust of Scripture leans in the direction of supporting egalitarian roles for women while being far more stringently and consistently opposed to homosexual practice than anywhere else in the ancient world.

Divorce and remarriage also has serious problems as an analogue to the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice, for three reasons.

First, in Scripture divorce and remarriage is simply not as bad as homosexual practice. Jesus predicated his opposition to divorce and remarriage on the foundation that God created us as ‘male and female,’ with the twoness of the sexes defining the twoness of the sexual bond. The foundation is always more important than the superstructure built on it. Logically it is not possible to justify licence in a greater matter by limited licence in a lesser matter. For example, it would be illegitimate to argue that greater tolerance toward divorce and remarriage should lead to greater tolerance toward incest or ‘plural’ marriages. The reason is because the latter two offences are regarded as more severe. Moreover, there is no virtue to being more consistently disobedient to the will of Christ.

Second, the Bible shows a limited canonical diversity toward divorce (permitted for men in the Old Testament; in the New Testament allowed in cases of sexual immorality or marriage to an unbeliever who insists on leaving) but no diversity on the matter of homosexual practice. There are ameliorating factors in the case of some divorce/remarriage situations that simply don’t apply in the case of a consensual homosexual union (for example, a spouse can be divorced against her or his will or subject to regular and serious abuse, which creates perpetrator vs. victim distinctions irrelevant to a voluntary entrance into a homosexual union).

Third, and most importantly, the church’s stance toward divorce/remarriage on the one hand and homosexual practice on the other are alike in this respect: the church works to end the cycle. The church would not ordain any candidate for office who expressed the view: ‘I’ve been divorced and remarried a number of times and would like to continue the cycle of divorce and remarriage with the fewest negative side-effects.’ Such a person could not be ordained because that person has an unreformed mind. Why, then, should the church ordain someone who not only engaged in homosexual practice on multiple occasions in the past but also intends to continue in such behaviour in a serial, unrepentant way?

Often church proponents of homosexual unions also cite the inclusion of Gentiles in Acts 10-11, 15 apart from requiring circumcision and observance of dietary law. This too is a bad analogy, for many reasons.

First, whereas a circumcision requirement and dietary commands are not grounded in creation, a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations is so grounded.

Second, whereas circumcision is a Jewish ritual prescription enjoined in the first century only on proselytes and affecting the body only superficially, the Bible (and early Judaism’s and early Christianity’s) prohibition of homosexual practice was regarded as a universal moral proscription enjoined on all Gentiles precisely because, like sexual immorality generally, homosexual practice affects the body holistically. Both Jesus (Mark 7:14-23) and Paul (1 Cor. 6:12-20) forbade comparisons between food laws and prohibitions of sexual immorality and yet proponents of homosexual unions continue to make such comparisons.

Third, whereas Gentile inclusion in the first century was about welcoming persons but rejecting behaviours (i.e. the kinds of sexual immorality rampant in the Gentile world), today’s efforts to normalize homosexual practice are about accepting specific behaviours.

Fourth, whereas Scripture only incidentally links Gentiles to sin (it recognizes the category of righteous or God-fearing Gentiles), Scripture intrinsically links homosexual practice to sin.

Fifth, whereas Gentile inclusion receives significant Old Testament precedent (for example, Rahab, Ruth, widow at Zarephath, Naaman, the story of Jonah) and uniform New Testament support, homosexual practice is totally rejected in all parts of Scripture – so much so that to argue for affirmation of homosexual unions as the Spirit’s new work becomes absurd inasmuch as it puts the Spirit at odds with Scripture’s core values in sexual ethics.

A principle of good analogical reasoning is: The closest, and thus best, analogies are those that share the closest substantive points of contact with the thing being compared. Honest analogical reasoning does not prefer more distant analogies over closer analogies. Consequently, it is inappropriate to cite the alleged analogies of slavery, women’s roles, divorce and remarriage, and first-century Gentile inclusion as key in the discussion of Scripture and homosexuality while at the same time ignoring both the enormous differences with the Bible’s stance on homosexual practice and the more substantive parallels to the Bible’s stance on incest and polyamory.

5. Significance

Claim: The Bible is not particularly interested in homosexual practice as evidenced by the fact that it is only mentioned on a few occasions.

What the evidence really shows: All the contextual evidence indicates that ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity viewed homosexual practice of every sort as abhorrent to God, an extreme sexual offence comparable only to the worst forms of adult incest (say, a man and his mother) and superseded among ‘consensual’ sexual offences only by bestiality.

A male-female prerequisite is powerfully evident throughout the pages of Scripture. Every biblical narrative, law, proverb, exhortation, metaphor, and poetry that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes such a prerequisite. Even the male-dominated society of ancient Israel imaged itself as Yahweh’s wife so as to avoid any connotation of a marriage between members of the same sex (an image replicated in the New Testament as regards Christ and his bride, the church). There are plenty of laws in the Old Testament delimiting acceptable and unacceptable sexual relationships between a man and a woman but not between two persons of the same sex. The obvious reason: No homosexual relationships were deemed acceptable.

Those who contend that the Bible condemns homosexual practice only in ‘a handful of passages’ at best (Sodom, the prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13, Rom. 1:26-27, 1 Cor. 6:9, and 1 Tim. 1:10) usually neglect a number of other relevant texts: the Genesis creation narratives; the Noah and Ham story; the narrative of the Levite at Gibeah; the texts from Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History dealing with cultic figures known to play the female role in sex with men (the qedeshim); the interpretation of the Sodom story in Ezekiel, Jude, and 2 Peter; and Jesus’ discussion of marriage in Mark 10 and Matthew 19.

More importantly, they overlook the problem with equating frequency of explicit mention with importance. Bestiality is mentioned even less in the Bible than homosexual practice and incest gets only comparable treatment, yet who would be so foolish as to argue that Jews and Christians in antiquity would have regarded sex with an animal or sex with one’s mother as inconsequential offences? Infrequency of mention is often an indicator that the matter in question is foundational rather than insignificant. You don’t have to talk a lot about something that most everyone agrees with and that few persons, if any, violate. Scripture’s male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and its attendant rejection of homosexual behaviour is pervasive throughout both Testaments (i.e. it is everywhere presumed in sexual discussions even when not explicitly mentioned); it is absolute (i.e. no exceptions are ever given, unlike even incest and polyamory); it is strongly proscribed (i.e. every mention of it in Scripture indicates that it is regarded as a foundational violation of sexual ethics); and it is countercultural (i.e. we know of no other culture in the ancient Near East or Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin more consistently and strongly opposed to homosexual practice).

It is also grounded in the creation texts in Genesis 1:27 and 2:21-24. In the latter, woman is portrayed as man’s missing element or other half, hence the repeated mention of woman being ‘taken from’ the human and being the human’s ‘complement’ or ‘counterpart’, a being both ‘corresponding to’ him as a human and ‘opposite to’ him as a distinct sex. Man and woman may become one flesh because out of one flesh man and woman emerged – a beautiful illustration of the transcendent point that man and woman are each other’s sexual counterpart. As noted in issue 1 above, Jesus treats the two-sexes requirement for sexual relations as foundational for his monogamy principle. And Paul cites homosexual practice as a particularly egregious instance of ‘sexual impurity,’ ‘indecency,’ and a ‘dishonouring’ of the integrity of maleness and femaleness, an egregious suppression of the obvious facts of God’s design evident in the material structures of creation comparable on the horizontal plane to idolatry on the vertical plane.

If all this doesn’t qualify the Bible’s male-female requirement for sexual relations as a core value in Scripture’s sexual ethics (the flipside of which is opposition to all homosexual practice), there is no such thing as a core value in any religious or philosophical tradition.

The post The Real Evidence about Scripture and Homosexual Practice appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

After a cracking day at the Evangelical Library in London on “Reading John Owen” (opening, it has to be said, with Nigel Graham giving what may be one of the finest popular introductions to the life of Owen that it has been my privilege to hear – lively, careful, engaging, insightful), I want to do more reading and re-reading of John Owen. I was reminded, by my own efforts and those of others, why I do and may and must enjoy the privilege of reading such profound theology.

One of the works that piqued my fancy afresh was Owen on The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded (volume 7 of the collected works, beginning on pg. 262). This was in Robert Strivens’ section of the works, and what prompted me to turn there again was the warning that preachers, accustomed to handling and speaking God’s Word, can develop a facade of spirituality which masks a spiritual dryness. Conscious that one can do much apparent working for God without much genuine walking with God, I thought it would be good to dip again into this work.

Re-reading can be as fascinating as reading. I am sometimes struck by what struck me the first time, or what failed to strike. The passage of time and the expansion of experience makes one wish, perhaps, that one could be as freshly excited as one was before, and one must learn to be more deeply excited than one was. Or, perhaps, some things have simply become more relevant because of the reader’s different circumstances while reading. On this occasion, I was struck by something in the preface to the work.

Owen, as you may know, had been unwell before preaching and preparing this material. He was so sick that not only was he unable to serve others, but he feared he might be taken by death and never able to serve again. Under such circumstances, he began to meditate on the grace and duty of spiritual-mindedness from Romans 8.6, where the apostle says that “to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Later, Owen took the fruit of his sickbed meditations and turned them into sermons. “And this I did,” he says,

partly out of a sense of the advantage I had received myself by being conversant in them, and partly from an apprehension that the duties directed and pressed unto in the whole discourse wore seasonable, from all sorts of present circumstances, to be declared and urged on the minds and consciences of professors: for, leaving others unto the choice of their own methods and designs, I acknowledge that those are the two things whereby I regulate my work in the whole course of my ministry. (7:263)

I am, I confess, sometimes amused by the homiletical handbooks that pass for pastoral theology in our day. Some of the guidance given for the preparation of sermons seems entirely out of touch with the life of local churches. I am amused when I hear the big cheeses of the evangelical world assure congregations that they prepare their sermons, or perhaps know what they will be preaching on on any given Sunday, a year or so in advance. As the pastor of a small congregation, preaching and teaching several times a week, that seems to me to be ludicrous, even dangerous. I do not think I could do that even if I were in circumstances that seemed to allow it.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that pastors preach on a whim or without a plan. I am not against systematic, sequential expository preaching. But I do wonder how much even Owen’s aside might teach us here. This work of his springs from what I would call a topical expository series. But how did Owen come to it? And why did he choose to preach it?

He has those two answers: first, because it did much good to his own soul when he had considered it for himself; and, second, because he perceived that the same truths which had helped him would, with the blessing of God, prove a timely and profitable study for other believers under his care.

However, he goes on to confess that those two principles are the “things whereby I regulate my work in the whole course of my ministry.” That, in itself, is fascinating. Here is the great theologian and the profound scholar, sitting down as a pastor of God’s people, and asking, first and foremost, what has blessed me, and will it bless others also?

If you are a preacher and teacher, however far you are willing and able to plan ahead, do such considerations have a place in your own preparation? Are you so soaking in God’s truth that you can assess what has been of particular blessing to your own soul? Are you so attuned to and concerned for the saints that you can discern what would prove particularly timely and profitable for them? Are you visiting the congregation regularly and getting to know their lives and their needs so as to be able to make such a judgment? Are you prayerfully thinking of the particular congregation before whom you will stand, converted and unconverted, more and less mature, more or less wounded and wearied, more or less hale and hearty? Are you willing to put in the effort to invest in such ministry? Are you willing to get off the treadmill of your regular or scheduled course of exposition, perhaps to plough fields that would otherwise have remained unbroken, to invest in hours of composition that you had not scheduled into your work patterns? Are you improving your own studies and sufferings to this end?

Such an approach might require that you prepare far in advance a particular course of systematic and sequential exposition, compelled by the fact that this book or section of Scripture will serve those to whom you preach. It might keep you from changing to other, apparently easier or more palatable portions of the Bible, held fast by a sense of responsibility. It might demand that you drop such a long course of sermons and preach for a few weeks on a particular portion of God’s Word. It might compel you to preach a single sermon on a single text. It might prompt you to develop what you thought was a one-off into a shorter or longer series. Again, it is no excuse for a pastor-preacher simply riding his hobby-horses to death. You will note that Owen does not manipulate his hearers by the claim that the Spirit imposed the duty upon him, though I do not think anyone can fail to see the hand of God at work in the matter. This is a man who is sensitive to the truth, sensitive to the operations of the Spirit of God, sensitive to the circumstances and needs of the saints, sensitive to the spirit of the age, sensitive to the demands of a particular place and people, and deeply concerned to be a means of blessing to those to whom he speaks.

This, I would suggest, is pastoral preaching of the highest order – ministry of God’s truth that flows from the heart of a true shepherd of souls, a man who has drunk deeply of the sweet waters of the gospel, and is persuaded from the depths of his being that others need to taste and see that the Lord is good, and to obtain the blessing designed for those who trust in him.

Featured Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

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It was like that with Jesus. Entrusted to him by God the Father was a work more demanding than any ever attempted in all of human history. The work of securing the forgiveness of our sins. The work of bringing us back to the God from whom our sin had separated us. The work of defeating Satan, delivering us from death, and winning for us eternal life. The work of banishing evil and renewing the whole fabric of creation. What a task! And Jesus was the one selected to do it.

This is Easter. What is Easter all about? It’s about Jesus finishing the all-important first part of this work – the part he had to do here on earth. It’s about Jesus doing and enduring all that was needed so that the good things planned for us could be ours. All the blessings listed above will be everlastingly enjoyed by those who receive him as their Lord and Saviour. And all because by his sufferings and death he brought the work he had been given to a triumphant close.

His work wasn’t easy to finish

You know how it is with ourselves. Finishing is sometimes the easy part. The hard part is getting started. Or getting through the early stages. Not with Jesus. For Jesus, finishing the work was by far the hardest part of all.

Consider what we might call the outer history. People subjected Jesus to one of the cruellest forms of capital punishment ever devised. They crucified him. It was a slow, a shameful, and an agonising way to die.

And then to the outer history add the inner history. There was more going on at Calvary than met the eye. Onlookers saw only the physical suffering. That in fact was the least of it. From a judicial standpoint Jesus was an innocent man. He had done nothing to deserve this awful death. But there was another side to it; a side known only to God. The guilt of countless sinners both from all across the world and from all across the ages had been laid upon him. He had voluntarily accepted it as his own and consented to be treated as if it were his own. Wasn’t that amazing? Jesus, the holy Son of God, made guilty with our guilt, dying our death, suffering in his own soul and body what we deserved to suffer in ours. And all so that we might be free of sin forever and enjoy instead the gift of eternal life.

His work had to be finished

Imagine you are moving house and the house you have bought needs a lot of work done to it. You get the keys a few weeks before moving day and you begin to work through the list. How nice if you could get all the work finished in advance! And it’s frustrating when you find that you can’t. But it doesn’t prevent you moving in, unpacking, and getting settled.

What about Jesus’ work? He had done a lot already. His work was literally a life-long work and he had been at it for over thirty years. So much had been accomplished through his teaching, his miracles, and the beautiful life of love and obedience he had lived. Was it really necessary for him to go as far as the cross – with all the suffering, visible and invisible, that that would involve? Could we not have had the Saviour we needed without the horrors of Good Friday?

It’s a question we hear Jesus answering himself. In one place, for example, referring to his death, he says this: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John Ch.3.14-15). The key word is must. He cannot stop short of the cross. Or here is something he said when the cross was at last behind him. It’s the day of his resurrection and he’s speaking to two disciples who are thoroughly perplexed at what has happened: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24.26). The key word now is necessary. Finishing the work by enduring the cross wasn’t an optional extra. It was an absolute necessity. There would be no restored relationship with God, no new hearts, no resurrection bodies, no new world ahead of us, had it not been for his suffering and death.

His work got finished

As Jesus was about to breathe his last he cried out, “It is finished” (John 19.30). He had gone through with it! The whole of what was needed in order to atone for our sins and open the way to heaven had been done. And we can be sure of it. That’s the message of Easter Sunday. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (and the exaltation to heaven that followed) is the testimony of God to the completeness of his beloved Son’s accomplishment. The one who died for sin now lives to bless us with the fruits of his finished work.

Which brings us to the all-important question: how do we get the benefits of what Christ has done on behalf of sinners? We’ve heard the answer already. We must receive him as our Saviour and Lord. It is a terrible mistake to think that eternal life comes to us automatically – as if no response on our part was necessary. It is a terrible mistake, too, to imagine that the good things purchased for us we must somehow or other earn. No! There is certainly something required of us. But it’s not to work for our salvation. The work has already been done. Jesus has done it all. And the fruits of that work are freely given to all who welcome him.

Welcome him as your Saviour. You cannot save yourself. Say then to Jesus, “Come, and be to me the Saviour that I need”. From this day place all your reliance on him.

Welcome him, too, as your Lord. His rightful place in every life is that of king and lord. Cease, then, from your rebellion. Stop living the way you wish to live. Place yourself entirely in his hands – to direct you and change you. His golden promise is that none who do so will ever be turned away: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6.37).

David Campbell is the minister at North Preston Evangelical Church and a Trustee of the Banner of Truth.

Featured photo by Jonas Allert on Unsplash

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‘The Lord gave the word; great was the company of those that published it’ (Psalm 68.11)

THE NEED FOR TRUTH

I would like to speak to you today about the importance of the use of liter­ature in the church, for evangelism, for instruction in Christian truth, for devotion, and for its role in planting churches.

Protestants, in particular, are very weak in the proper use of literature to spread God’s truth. We still do not remember the words of Daniel Webster who said:

‘If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end’.

In Isaiah 1:3, we read, ‘Israel doth not know, my people doth not con­sider’. Then, chapter after chapter in that prophecy we have a terrible picture of the life and practice of a people who were the professed people of God. Surely their sin and wickedness was the result of not ‘knowing’, and they did not know because they did not consider.

Books are to be used to dispel darkness and ignorance. If men do not know, then they must acquaint themselves with facts by reading and study­ing. We need to use books to fight ignorance – the ignorance of Christian truth and doctrine that is so prevalent in our churches today.

It is appalling to meet people who have been communicant church members for years and who cannot find a place in the Bible, who do not have even a vague idea of the great doctrines of the Bible, and who cannot attach any true meaning to such basic terms as justification, sanctification, regen­eration, election, and predestination.

Have we forgotten that Christianity is primarily a religion of facts – historical facts? The Bible is a body of divine information; and to be igno­rant of the information is to be ignorant of Christianity and to be ignorant of God.

Surely one of the reasons for the deadness and weakness of our churches is ignorance. We will not have churches that are strong and fruitful in experi­ence until we have Christians who are strong in biblical doctrine. Christian experience is nothing less than truth and its evidence revealed and applied by the Spirit to our minds, to our affections, and to our wills. Those who ‘do not the truth’ are those ‘in darkness’ (1 John 1.6).

THE POWER OF THE PRESS

The ministry of books can be used to evangelize, teach, train and expel ignorance as it has done in the past. A cursory glance at history should con­vince us that God has used books and literature to enlighten blinded peoples and nations.

How was it that in places where the voices of Luther and Calvin were never heard, their doctrines were embraced, and many of the countries of Europe threw off the yoke of Rome and turned Protestant? It was because books and tracts became, in the hands of God, a mighty reforming and regenerating power.

In reference to the printing press, Sir Thomas More, defender of the Roman Church, complained bitterly that the Reformers had become its master: ‘These diabolical people print their books at great expense, notwithstanding the great danger; not looking for any gain, they give them away to everybody, and even scatter them abroad by night’. ‘The Pope’, rejoiced John Foxe, (the martyrologist), ‘must abolish printing or he must seek a new world to reign over; for by this printing the doctrine of the Gospel soundeth to all nations and countries under heaven’. Thus was the power of the printed page acknowledged.

A book by Richard Sibbes, one of the choicest of the Puritan writers, was read by Richard Baxter, who was greatly blessed by it. Baxter then wrote his Call To The Unconverted which deeply influenced Philip Doddridge, who in turn wrote The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. This brought the young William Wilberforce, subsequent English statesman and foe of slavery, to serious thoughts of eternity. Wilberforce wrote his Practical Book of Christianity which fired the soul of Leigh Richmond. Richmond, in turn, wrote The Dairyman ‘s Daughter; a book that brought thousands to the Lord, helping Thomas Chalmers the great preacher, among others.

What an eye-opener it was for me to read that the Watch Tower building in New York City puts out 12,000,000 pieces of Jehovah Witness literature a month, fifty percent of which is shipped overseas. They have large three-­storey buildings in which they do nothing but turn out their doctrines and heresies. They use one carload of paper per day and have the world’s largest religious bindery in which it is said that they are able to turn out 30,000 books per day. Still more disturbing is the fact that young men and women, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, give their lives to this cause, with no remuneration apart from their lodging and food. Oh, that the day would come when more young men and women would give their lives to the cause of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ with such dedication as this.

The Russians, a few years ago, published 29,301,400 books in 701 titles. An even greater volume was produced by 700 Communist publishers in 58 countries. Yet at that time the Communists were aiming at a 300% increase in the circulation of the printed page.

In the past the pen has been the hammer to break the errors of centuries. But now the enemies of the truth have learned the value of books and with word processors and printing presses they have left those who love bibli­cal Christianity far behind.

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS

You may say you are convinced that books have been, and can be, used to evangelize, to teach, and to train, but, you ask, ‘How do I do it?’ Here are a few suggestions:

A minister can lead his people to see the importance of the use of good literature just as he leads them in other truths.

I know a minister who led his people to give good books with their Christ­mas gifts, wedding presents, hospital visits, and to their friends and neigh­bours. Believe me, it will help you build a strong church.

I know a minister who went to a church and there was not one copy of Pilgrim’s Progress in any home, in fact, when he first mentioned Bunyan many in his congregation thought he meant Paul Bunyan, the fellow who chopped down trees! Well, in three years there was a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress in 90% of the homes and many had read it.

I know a case where a church introduced a little book table. A lawyer’s wife took charge of it and in one year sold $10,000 worth of Christian books (wholesale ).

I know a church where they sell $1,000 worth of books at Christmas time to be used with gifts – mostly for evangelistic purposes. And in every case this ministry can be traced to the pulpit where a minister caught the vision and had a burden to use this means to evangelize and build up Christians.

Charles H Spurgeon tells how, when he was a child, his mother would often read a piece of Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted to the family as they sat round the fire on a Sunday evening and, when brought under conviction of sin, it was to this old book that he turned.

‘I remember’, he writes, ‘when I used to awake in the morning, the first thing I took up was Alleine’s Alarm, or Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. Oh those books, those books! I read and devoured them … ‘

BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

I want to mention one book specially today that has been mightily used in the history of Christianity, that is my favourite book, Pilgrim’s Progress. Without doubt, next to the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress has been used to bless more people than any other single book, and you should not rest until every family in your church has a copy. Use it in your sermons!

William Chalmers Burns, the first Presbyterian missionary to go to China, translated Pilgrim’s Progress as a means of evangelizing – a different kind of evangelism than we have today. Later, when he worked farther back into the interior of that nation, he translated it into the local dialects.

I want to tell you a few facts about this immortal volume, Pilgrim’s Progress, hoping to make you anxious to read it – yes, and study it, and have some family discussions about it.

– It has some excellent preaching material. Spurgeon read it one hundred times, and it permeated his sermons.

– Pilgrim’s Progress communicates the biblical message of salvation by grace.

– It is pregnant with Bible truth. Spurgeon said, ‘You can prick John Bunyan anywhere for all his blood is “bibline” ‘.

– It is not fiction – it bathes and swims in Scripture. The more you know the Bible and the theology of the Bible the better you will understand and appreciate this useful volume.

– It is the life of the Christian travelling between two worlds. Hear it in Bunyan’s words:

‘And thus it was I, writing of the Way

And the race of saints in this our gospel day,

Fell suddenly into an allegory

About their journey, and the way to Glory.’

– It is the great doctrines of the Bible, set forth in an experimental and illustrative manner.

– It is as relevant today as the day it was written (between 1675 and 1684).

Like the Bible, it is always relevant because it is about God, Man, Sin, Christ, Salvation, Life, Death, Heaven, and Hell.

The poet Browning said, ‘Tis my belief that God spake; no tinker has such power’.

James Montgomery said, ‘God gave a great gift to His church when He converted John Bunyan to write Pilgrim’s Progress’.

No amount of literary study in itself could ever produce Pilgrim’s Progress. It took not only the natural gifts and graces of John Bunyan, but also his deep spiritual experiences and insights into the Word of God, and a biblical interpretation of those experiences. Bunyan travelled so close to the Master’s steps that he gives a marvellously accurate picture of the road to the Celestial City and of the difficulties we shall find on the way.

Today Pilgrim’s Progress stands next to the Bible in sales and translations (198 languages). There are indeed so many editions that it is virtually impos­sible to compute them. There are 50 editions in Africa alone.

Where the Bible goes, we may say, the Pilgrim’s Progress will follow! Bunyan and his book have no appeal, at first, to the men and women of this world, as I have often noticed. The men and women who are too wrapped up in this world either do not understand it, or see no great depth of spiritual truth in it. Others do not care for it. I recall the words of one, a professional man who had to stop reading it because, as he told me, ‘It upsets me too much – spiritually and emotionally’. I am afraid he saw himself too plainly!

Pilgrim’s Progress is better than any book on anthropology or psychology.

Why do I say that? Because most books on these subjects study man without God or the Bible. Now, you can learn a lot about man without God or the Bible, but you can never get to his real problems, and therefore you cannot come up with the correct answers. Bunyan will give you a real insight into yourself and all other sinners as no other book but the Bible.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

Vanity-Fair has not changed. There is a Vanity-Fair every day. Madam Bubble still seeks to draw away pilgrims. Madam Wanton walks on every street. Mrs Bats-Eye still thinks everyone is blind. Men with muckrakes are all around us who will not give up their muckrake for the crown offered by the One above. They will not turn their eyes upward. Are there any of you here today who are so busy with straws, small sticks and dust on the floor, that you have not looked up? Is all your time and energy spent without look­ing up?

The Church is full of Talkatives, the son of Say- Well of Prating Row. Does this not tell you volumes about this type in just a sentence? Ready at a moment’s notice for what you will, this man can, with equal facility and equal emptiness, ‘talk of things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home; and the only condition that the wretched windbag stipulates is that all be done to spiritual profit’.

Surely you have met By-Ends of Fair-Speech. ‘A subtle knave’ whose grandfather was a waterman, looking one way and rowing another and whose distinguishing characteristics are that, in religion, he makes it a point ‘never to go against wind and tide, and to be the best friend of religion when she goes in silver slippers, walking in the sunshine and is applauded of the people’.

What infinite skill Bunyan had to draw such a character picture in just a few sentences!

Who has not been the prisoner of Giant Despair and suffered in Doubting Castle, and then experienced that wonderful release by the Key of Promise? A beautiful picture and very relevant. Christians and their problems do not change with the calendar. Despair, doubt, fear, and death are still with us.

I hope you have been to Interpreter’s House where you see things rare, things profitable, things pleasant, and awesome things to make one stable.

Real lessons can be learned about receiving people into the church at Pa­lace Beautiful from that grave and beautiful damsel named Discretion.

A PRACTICAL LESSON

All of us need to be cheered by the help of Great-Heart, Stand-Fast, and Val­iant-for-the- Truth, and good old Honest. Some of us have been in Doubting Castle. Some in The Slough of Despond. Some have experienced the tempt­ations at Vanity-Fair. All of us have to climb The Hill Difficulty, all of us need to be instructed by the Interpreter in The House Beautiful. All of us bear the same burdens. All of us need the same armour in our fight with Apollyon. All of us have to pass through The Wicket-Gate. All of us must pass through The Dark River. And for all true Christians there awaits The Shining Ones at the gates of The Celestial City, ‘which, when we see, we wish ourselves amongst them’.

‘TWENTY-SIX SOLDIERS’

I hope I have encouraged you to use good sound literature in your ministry. There is power in those twenty-six soldiers – the letters of our alphabet upon the printed page.

Francis Bacon said, ‘If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the wellbeing of the church and state’.

Martin Luther said, ‘We must throw the printer’s inkpot at the devil’. Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, ‘The smallest tract may be the stone in David’s sling. In the hands of Christ it may bring down a giant’s soul’.

August Schlegel said, ‘Literature is the immortality of speech’.

John Trapp said, ‘Be careful what books you read, for as water tastes of the soil it runs through, so does the soul taste of the authors that a man reads’.

Samuel Zwemmer said, ‘No other agency can penetrate so deeply, witness so daringly, abide so persistently and influence so irresistibly as the printed page’.

The printed page never flinches, it never shows cowardice; it is never tempted to compromise. The printed page never gets tired; it never gets dis­heartened.

The printed page travels cheaply – you can be a missionary for the price of a stamp. It requires no buildings in which to operate.

The printed page works while you sleep. It never loses its temper in dis­cussion. And it works when you are gone from the scene.

The printed page is a visitor that gets inside the home and stays there. It always catches a man in the right mood, it speaks to him only when he is reading it.

It never answers back and it sticks to the point.

There are some principles in using literature in your ministry that will be helpful:

– Know the books you give to others.

– Know the person, his needs and capacity, to whom you intend to give a book.

– Know the most serious areas of ignorance and the errors of our day. (The doctor does not give green pills to everyone, and he does not give medicine that is not relevant to what he believes to be the problem.)

– Do not be afraid to invest some money in your own missionary project. Follow through with other books and with discussion on subjects in the books you use.

– Aim to have a book-table in your church and see that its appearance is varied from week to week.

– Be sure to use books and literature that are consistent with the teaching of the Bible.

– Soak all the books you distribute in fervent prayer.

A WORD ABOUT THE BANNER OF TRUTH

For those of you who are not acquainted with our history, and our purposes, may I take a moment to mention a very brief summary of our history.

The work began in 1955 with a little magazine. lain Murray was the principal editor. Two years later, in 1957, The Trust was formed. The two men who had the vision and burden were, Jack Cullum, who was the prin­cipal financier, and lain Murray.

Mr Cullum put thousands and thousands of dollars into the work. He never allowed his name to appear in the magazine or in any of our publi­cations, and it never did so until after his death in 1971.

Mr Murray is to a large degree ‘Mr Banner’. He is the Editor of the magazine and has been responsible for the selection of most of our titles. He has given much of his life to this great work.

The main objects of the Trust have been to help ministers secure good books, particularly those out of print, to encourage true piety, God-centred evangelism, experimental Calvinism, and prayer for revival.

I can say without any equivocation, mental reservation, or evasion what­ever, that we understand and believe the most biblical view of the Christian Faith is that which is known as Reformed and set forth in the great historic creeds of the church, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith, The London Baptist Confession of 1689 and the articles of the Synod of Dort.

The Trust could say that over thirty years ago, and it can say it today.

Banner has never wavered from its position or found it necessary to adopt a new policy.

Our motive has been to promote that system of biblical truth which is most clearly expressed in that exalted system of Pauline theology, nick­named Calvinism!

We have reprinted many of the old Puritan writers, but we do not worship the Puritans, or wish to garnish their sepulchres. We value them as Christian teachers who brought together true biblical doctrine and devotion, doctrine and piety, doctrine and evangelism, more than any other group of men since the days of the apostles.

My dear young minister friends, let me encourage you to use sound Chris­tian literature in your ministry. Never cease to teach your church to use sound Christian literature to evangelize, to instruct, to comfort, and to encourage Christians.

The post Every Christian a Publisher! appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

In times such as ours it is easy to seem a bigot, if one keeps a firm hold of truth, and is careful to have the seal of Heaven on his hope. No Christian can be true and faithful now-a-days on whose brow the world shall not brand the name of bigot. But let him bear it. It is a mark of honour, though intended to be a brand of shame. It proves him to be an associate of the men of whom the world was not worthy, but who, under the world’s lash, did more for the world’s good than all besides. The world ever suffers by the men it honours. The men of mercy to it are the men it hates. Ah, these old Covenanters of our native land were stern bigots in their day. It was well for Scotland that they were. They could part with their lives, but they could not sell the truth. They would yield all for conscience, but they would yield nought to despots. They could bear to suffer and to die, but they were afraid to sin. It was this bigotry which won its liberty for their native land. The legacy bequeathed to it by these men of faith, whose only home was oft the mountain cavern, and to whom the snow was oft the only winding-sheet which wrapped their bodies when they had given their lives for Christ, was a richer boon than all ever given to it by the kings who occupied its throne, and by all men of title and of wealth who owned its acres. Oh yes, they were bigots these, in the judgment of scoffing sceptics and of ruthless persecutors, and not all the piles they could kindle could burn their bigotry out of them.

And these were stern bigots, too, according to the world’s estimate, who headed the crusade against Antichrist, when, at the era of the Reformation, a fire from Heaven had kindled in their hearts the love of truth. It was by unflinching resolution, induced by living faith, these men overcame in the times of stern trial in which they unfurled their banner in the name of God. A pliant Melanchthon would have bartered the gospel for peace–the stern courage of a Luther was needed to prevent the sacrifice. In every age, from the beginning, when the cause of truth emerged triumphant from the din and dust of controversy, the victory was won by a band of bigots who were sworn to its defence.

There is need now of the men whom the world calls bigots. Men of grasp less firm and of love less fervent will do little for the cause of truth and for the best interests of humanity. Other men than these will even barter their own eternal prospects for the honour which comes from men and for the ease which is won by compromise. How many such as these there are, even in the Churches, and even there in the van, who boast of a charity which is indiscriminate in its regards, of a sentiment that refuses the form which the truth imposes, and who have learned from the worldling his scorn of all seriousness, his contempt for all scrupulousness of conscience, and his sneers at the religion which is sustained by intercourse with Heaven! These have their followers. A widespread movement has begun away from vital religion, fixed beliefs, and holy living. The Churches are moving with the current. The time may be fast approaching when the one alternative shall be living faith or open scepticism. A tide which few seem careful to resist is bearing us on to such a crisis. How the result may tell on Churches, communities, and individuals we cannot forecast, nor can we attempt to conjecture without sadness of feeling. But an assured victory is the destiny of the cause of truth. Till the hour of its triumph shall come, all who have linked their interests to the chariot of the gospel shall find themselves a diminishing band as they advance, their loneliness of feeling deepening as former friendships wane into neglect, coldness is changed into scorn, and contempt passes into bitter enmity; and they can follow the cause of truth only amidst the scoffs of unbelievers and the shafts of persecutors.

But let no lover of the truth–let none whose eye ever rested on the hope of the gospel–turn craven-hearted back from trial. To fall in the cause of truth is but to rise in the kingdom of glory. To be trampled under foot till crushed dead by the heel of persecution is but to have the prison broken open, that the ransomed spirit may pass from bondage to a throne. And in his saddest hour let not the sufferer for truth refuse the joy which glimpses of prophetic light bring to his heart as they break through the clouds of present trial. His King shall triumph in His cause on earth, and His friends shall share His glory. All nations shall touch His sceptre. The old strongholds of unbelief shall be levelled in the dust. Iniquity shall hide its face ashamed. Truth, as revealed from Heaven, shall receive universal homage, and be glorious in the halo of its blissful triumphs before the eyes of all.

The post Truth’s Defenders Vindicated appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Last week I noticed that Ryan Gosling was nominated for an Oscar for playing Ken alongside Margot Robbie’s Barbie in last summer’s hit by the same name. Robbie, incidentally, was not so nominated. I won’t watch the film, but I recall reading that the plot features a wayward Ken promoting patriarchy, and that Barbie—won’t this help us all sleep better—rescues the world from patriarchy. It is likely that I am not the only one to detect a total public relations failure when the man gets the trophy after all.

This in turn reminded me of something I read around the time the movie came out: that the Archbishop of York of the Church of England was also worried about patriarchy, and that its troubling existence makes some understandably uncomfortable with a certain prayer that begins with the words “Our Father.”¹

And the bishop is hardly alone. Many professing Christians sound just like Barbie and the bishop, and tell me that the church has missed something—a two-thousand-year-old fifth column called patriarchy must be rooted out of Christianity for Christianity to survive in our enlightened age.² Without pulling this invasive weed, they tell me, we are doomed.

What do we make of this assessment? Is this really a noxious weed? What is patriarchy?

What is True: Decades of Bad News Concerning Bad Men

In 2002 the Boston Globe published a series of stories revealing a pattern of criminal sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The hypocrisy caused a crisis of confidence that spread in the church worldwide, and continues to the present day—the fathers were not what they claimed to be.

American evangelicalism has not fared much better. Vision Forum promised the restoration of the Christian family through “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy;” instead its president confessed to inappropriate sexual conduct. Mr. “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” left his wife and left the faith.  Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention faced serious allegations. To our shame the church has often looked more like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein than Job or Joseph.

My own tribe—evangelical Presbyterianism—has its own cases of the same sordid substance. This is the hypocrisy of which Jesus said: “Woe to you!” This is also the way of sinful flesh; there is nothing new under the sun, and what has been will be. Sexual desire, apart from the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit, produces all manner of wicked fruit. The lust of the flesh is destructive and evil.

But some suggest that these failures are not fundamentally rooted in individual fallen human nature but rather social structures that unequally place men in positions of influence, leading to the imbalance and abuse of power. If we solve the imbalance, so the logic goes, we will eliminate the abuse. Utopia requires the elimination of patriarchy.

What is Patriarchy?

Patriarchy simply means father-rule. The word clearly indicates an apportioning of authority. It is an uncomplicated word, used by the church for millennia. Today’s use of the word, however, appears to be confused by two things: (i) people who use it to describe unbiblical schemes (we will call this not-patriarchy) or (ii) people who think patriarchy itself is actually bad.

About not-patriarchy: The promises of I Kissed Dating Goodbye or Vision Forum or Bill Gothard should never have appealed to Christians, ever. These schemes went beyond the Law of God, lacked Gospel basics, and understated dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is no surprise that adherents later kiss Christianity goodbye. All forms of legalistic, harsh, and sinful leadership are not fatherhood but delinquency. We need to learn to recognize and reject counterfeit patriarchy.³

The second concern is the unequivocal rejection of the whole thing: Patriarchy is simply very bad. Countless journalists, opinion writers and professors, the bishop and Barbie (and a growing chorus of evangelical-egalitarian influencers) are in agreement: Very, very bad.

I hear this sentiment in the Presbyterian denominations in which I travel: “Beware patriarchy,” which then is inexplicably defined as “men being unkind to women.” This particular definition often makes its appearance during discussions of abuse or sexual sin; for some this is apparently indistinguishable from patriarchy. If we were playing Clue, it was patriarchy in the church that did it. Case closed.

The net effect? Listen up, everybody: Patriarchy is a big problem. Father-rule is bad. The father is bad.

The Dangers That Follow the Loss of Patriarchy

So why even try to rescue a sullied word? Doesn’t language change? I would submit that acquiescence to the popular equation patriarchy–is-evil will result in the loss of our nation, the Christian home, the church and the Gospel. How, you ask, could this little word be so important?

First, the Bible honors fathers. God instituted fatherhood when he made Adam (first), then Eve, then marriage and then gave the command to be fruitful and multiply. Paul honored Israel’s patriarchs. Peter preached about the patriarch David, and Stephen said the p-word, twice, just before going to heaven as a martyr. The writer to the Hebrews thought Abraham a fine patriarch.⁴ Jesus was not ashamed of his Father.⁵ This is God’s design and this is God’s language.

Second, this is God’s language with profound meaning and import. The association of patriarchy with evil runs against the grain of the nature of God and His creation. It induces in me a cognitive dissonance that surges on the Lord’s Day as I lead the people of God in the confession of our faith:⁶

“I believe in God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

Is this not patriarchy? Is this not “father-rule”?

My mind scans the created order and lo, the fatherly structure echoes in my own home—I am a patriarch! There are fathers throughout the natural world, that lead, are stronger than women⁷, and are designed by God to serve and protect women and children. Creation is stamped with patriarchy. Sin has distorted and twisted what was beautiful—yes—but the good pattern is unmistakable.

The creeds amplify an inextricably related pattern in redemption, the pattern of marriage: “I believe in Jesus Christ, [the Father’s] only begotten Son, our Lord.”⁸ Jesus is the bridegroom and the church is his bride; Paul says that marriage is a mystery that points to Christ and His church; and so wives are to submit to their husbands and husbands are to love their wives. Husbands and fathers exercise rule.

It is this entire weight of the superstructure of reality—God and man made after his image, male and female—that is under crafty attack by the kingdom of darkness. Since Satan cannot have the kingdom, he appears to be trying to burn it all down. The smoldering peat fire underfoot is breaking out in all kinds of places, such as the NCAA women’s swimming championships and in the last summer’s SBC debate over the future of Saddleback Church and in discussions of abuse in NAPARC churches.⁹

We have to think carefully. It is true that powerful men have long abused anyone weaker. History’s Epsteins will face an eternal reckoning for their monstrous evils. They should also face consequences in this world, regardless of their professed repentance. It is also very Christian to care for victims. It seems—and this is a critical point—that Satan is keenly aware of this compassionate impulse, which he is presently co-opting by pointing to patriarchy (and not the sinful failures of patriarchs) as the abusive system that caused the pain.

If you doubt this, let’s return to the Church of England: The Archbishop of York believes that the “Our Father” of the Lord’s Prayer is problematic for those who have suffered under—wait for it—an “oppressively patriarchal grip on life.”¹⁰ Bishop Cottrell and I, from vastly differing perspectives, have noticed a nexus of ideas being pressed together: Fatherhood and oppression. Fatherhood is abusive. Patriarchy is bad.

Satan’s false flag operation is fueling misgivings about Biblical teaching concerning gender differences, fatherhood and motherhood, roles in marriage and male leadership in the church. (The church’s government notably has as its head a man, the man Christ Jesus, who set it up, who shed his blood for sinners in love and appoints men to shepherd the flock he loves.) ¹¹ Satan’s operation is a deceitful emotional appeal that can be summarized by a short and familiar formula: “God is evil, isn’t he?”¹²

But the truth is the opposite. The Fatherless realm—the dark kingdom—is the abusive source of abortion, human trafficking, sexual molestation, torture, the self-hatred of homosexuality, transgender mutilation and death. “Patriarchy is evil” is a tragic bait and switch, where Satan disguised as an angel of light promises relief while leading the world ever deeper into dark chambers of Fatherless horrors.¹³

Remember: Reality was designed a good patriarchy, ruled by the Triune God. Patriarchy is not a bad word.

In Defense of Godly Fatherhood

If you are a father, you carry the mantle of patriarchy. You rule your home. To make this a pretext for abuse is vile. Your rule is to be a sweet echo of the eternal love of God made known in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son. It is to be lived in daily prayer for the Spirit of God to pour more of the love of God into your heart in order that you might cheerfully exercise sacrificial leadership and care. Biblical fatherhood is strong, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and forgiveness, and holy.

We have from the Lord an eight-month-old baby in our home—the happiest kind of surprise. What strikes me anew is the vulnerability and wonder of a little child. I pray that I, with renewed repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, by the help of the Holy Spirit, would protect and love her together with all our children as long as I am able. “Father in heaven, please make me a husband and father that in some small way might reflect your glory and goodness to my family. Please forgive my many failures. Grant me the help of your generous Spirit. In Jesus name, Amen.”

If you believe in Jesus Christ, in Him you have come to the Father. You now trust a good and kind heavenly Father. You and I are under Fatherly rule, mediated by the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. You are under fatherly and husbandly protection and safety. This is very good news for undeserving sinners, and for believing victims of delinquent fathers.

And if you chafe under God’s design—it may simply be that you’ve never submitted to His rule. Listen to this description from the prophet Isaiah of what Jesus came to be and to do, and submit to the Gospel of God’s good and gracious fatherly rule in and by and with His Son:

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this. (Is 9:6–7, NKJV)

Here is the fatherly redeeming work of the Triune God: by the Father who sent the Son, in the power of the Spirit, His kingdom rules over all—state, church and family—for His glory.

Our confused times call not for retreat from or the obfuscation of clear Biblical truths, but instead a renewed embrace of patriarchy, while praying exactly like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…for Jesus sake, Amen.”

Peter VanDoodewaard is the Pastor of Covenant Community Presbyterian Church in Taylors, South Carolina.

The post In Defense of Patriarchy appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

‘The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.’ Proverbs 14:1

The mainline Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian) are discussing homosexuality with a view to transforming their bodies into more ‘tolerant’, more ‘diverse’, and more ‘inclusive’ organizations. This, any way, is how the advocates of the gay agenda present their programme for change in the churches.

What is the central issue? Simply this: shall homosexuality be normalized? Shall sexual relations between members of the same sex be viewed by the churches as legitimate, acceptable, even as desirable, in the same sense as are sexual relations between married people of the opposite sex? The full implementing of this principle of normalization would mean that homosexual acts would no longer be considered sinful, and practicing homosexuals would be granted full ecclesiastical equality, including the right to serve as ministers and church leaders. Further, children in the church’s educational program would not and could not be taught to prefer one “orientation” or “lifestyle” over another. Little Johnny and Suzie would be taught simply that Heather Has Two Mommies, as a proposed New York City elementary schoolbook famously and nonjudgmentally explained. Enlightened churches would define Christian virtue as loving and accepting those who are different. Conversely sin would be defined as the opposite: judging, condemning, or rejecting alternate lifestyles.

It is silly to argue that Scripture can be reconciled with these views. It can’t. The laws of God (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13) and the laws of nature (Romans 1:24ff), the Old Testament moral code and the New Testament law of love (1 Corinthians 6:9) unambiguously condemn homosexual acts as unnatural, corrupt, and perverse. Common sense, the design of nature, and scriptural teaching agree that the defining acts of homosexuality can never be considered moral or normal. For a man to desire to sodomize or be sodomized by another man is both bizarre and evil. The same can be said for all other forms of sexual contact between members of the same sex.

We know that erotic desire can be misplaced and corrupted. There are names for these various forms of perversion that are too awful to contemplate: bestiality, necrophilia, paedophilia, to name a few. Homosexuality is another example of the same. It is misplaced and therefore perverted erotic desire. Certain forms of sexual expression are inherently evil. The Christian church has always known and taught this, and preached a gospel that calls for repentance and promises deliverance from the power of sin: “and such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Normalizing the perverse has never been an option, partly because one cannot be delivered from that which is not considered deviant. Yet the pressure of our cultural movement toward inclusion and acceptance is so powerful that the denominations seem disinclined to draw any moral line anywhere. It appears that there no longer remains any behaviour which mainline Protestants are willing to call sexually perverse. It seems that the category of sin in sexual relations has disappeared altogether.

The great old American Protestant establishment, the once wise mother church of most American Protestants, is pursuing a course of self-destruction. In Savannah respected churches with evangelical traditions are allowing practicing homosexuals to participate in leadership and even to teach in Sunday School and lead Bible studies.

If the mainline denominations persist and re-classify homosexuality as moral and acceptable and normalize homosexual acts, they will apostatize or de-church themselves, and ecclesiastical calamity will ensue. Right now the proverbial “man in the pew” is scratching his head wondering what his denominational leaders and bureaucrats can possibly be thinking!? The laity is shocked! Shocked! They shouldn’t be. The denominational seminaries abandoned biblical authority fifty years ago or more. The strategy of their graduates in the pulpit has been to lay low, to keep their skepticism to themselves. But the issue of homosexuality is “outing” unbelieving clergy, exposing the rotting core of the old mainline that no longer takes the Bible seriously. American Protestantism has become the foolish woman, tearing down its house with its own hands. Let us pray that God mercifully will call it back from the brink of ecclesiastical suicide.

Terry Johnson is the pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia, (www.ipcsav.org) and is the author of the Banner of Truth book The Case for Traditional Protestantism.

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Early in their married life, Elizabeth and her husband, George suffered the loss of two of their six children. Eddie died aged five and Bessie died when just a few weeks old. In addition, Elizabeth experienced ongoing ill-health and insomnia through much of her life.  In 1857, George temporarily resigned his pastorate of a large New York church due to a health breakdown brought on by overwork. Shortly after he and Elizabeth resumed their pastoral duties in 1860, the Civil War commenced (1862-5) with all the accompanying heartbreak and suffering.

Elizabeth was a prolific writer of letters, stories, poems, hymns, novels and children’s books, but the impulse behind all of her writing was pastoral. She believed that there are resources in Christ to meet every challenge and comfort every grief. She discovered in her own experience that the deeper the heartbreak, the deeper one can be drawn into experience of the love of God. The greater the challenge, the more one can grow in confidence in the still greater goodness of God. She wanted to point others to those never-failing resources of grace.

She could testify that it is when we surrender to the will of God, and trust his sovereign wisdom in every circumstance, that the worst trials can be transformed into the richest times of fellowship with God. She wrote:

God never places us in any position in which we can not grow. We may fancy that He does. We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward. Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.

As a busy mother and pastor’s wife, Elizabeth found that the busyness and interruptions and difficulties of everyday life are the ‘school of Christ’, where we learn to react with patience and good humour. At times she felt as if her family life was falling to pieces as she didn’t have the physical resources or energy she longed for to make a peaceful and well organised home. But in the midst of all of it she was well known for her warm welcome, her generous hospitality, her sense of humour and her artistic gifts.

I have been inspired by Elizabeth Prentiss as one of the most ‘real’ role models of practical holiness I have ever come across. She discovered that the harsh realities of everyday life, far from hindering our growth in grace, can be the means by which we grow. I wrote this biography in the hope that others could be encouraged by getting to know her as well.

The theme of her life is summed up in these words:

To love Christ more –  this is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul.  Down in the bowling ally, and out in the woods, and on my bed, and out driving, when I am happy and busy, and when I am sad and idle, the whisper keeps going up for more love, more love, more love!

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By ‘posture’ I do not refer to the alignment of one’s body when standing. Good posture, of course, is advisable, for one breathes better, projects his voice better and shows respect for the uprightness and symmetry with which God created his image-bearers. No better instruction on this feature of pulpit address can be found than that offered by Spurgeon in his Lectures to my Students. In his brief apology for this two-lecture series, Spurgeon summarized the intent by assuming that

No minister would willingly cultivate a habit which would blunt his arrows, or drift them aside from the mark; and, therefore, since these minor matters of movement, posture, and gesture may have that effect, you will give them your immediate attention.¹

But I refer to one’s mental and spiritual posture. In what position does a person place his mind and heart as he approaches the time of pulpit proclamation? Within what framework does the preacher of the gospel align his thoughts as he prepares to stand before the people of God to deliver the message of God from the book of God?

My experience in considering this issue does not come from a long history of week-by-week preparation to give soul care to one group of people over several years of pastoral labour. My preaching has been occasional in churches where I served as an assistant to the pastor, in conferences, a few interims, or one Sunday at a time in different churches. I have heard many sermons, however, as a church member and as a regular attendee at chapel through eight years of seminary life as a student and thirty-three years as a professor. And, as is true in virtually every Christian’s relationships, many friends who attend church talk about sermons and preachers and the impact that certain styles of pulpit address have on them.

Content trumps everything. The reconciling work of Christ must be central to the message and omnipresent in the sermon portfolio of every pastor. By reconciling work I mean the incarnation of the Son of God, his life of tested and perfected righteousness, his substitutionary death submitting to a wrath not his due but ours, his resurrection by the glory of the Father, his appearances and post-resurrection commissions and instructions, his ascension, his sending of the Spirit, his present work of intercession, and the hope of his coming again. By omnipresent I mean that each and every sermon must make some conscious and conscientious connection to the Messiah-driven nature of divine revelation. A sermon is not a Christian sermon unless it leads us to Christ; a text is not a biblical text unless it is seen in its connection to Christ. None of the promises are ours apart from Christ but ‘as many as may be the promises of God, in him [Christ] they are yes’ and only in him do we find the assured and final affirmation that we may indeed live to the glory of God (2 Cor. 1:20). Every law was given by him to drive us to him, every deliverer of Israel pictures what only Christ does. Every Psalm gives praise to the King of kings, every proverb shows us that wisdom is bound up in the cross of Christ, every prophet lets us know that in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son. Christ himself taught us this when he called two disciples ‘foolish men and slow of heart’ because they failed to ‘believe in all that the prophets have spoken.’ Had they perceived correctly the prophetic message, they would have known that it was ‘necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory’ (Luke 24:25, 26). He instructed them, therefore, ‘beginning with Moses and with all the prophets’ and ‘explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures’ (v. 27) Without Christ in his suffering and glory all sermon content is trivial humanism.

Next to content, however, no listener can ignore the impression made by delivery. Delivery is affected, moreover, not only by the disciplined use of body and vocal inflection, but by the state of mind a preacher has prior to his taking his assigned place of instruction and admonition before the people of God. So infused are matter and manner that one’s posture of presentation may allow the content to glow with magnetic fervour or bleach it into pale, insipid, even obnoxious hues by its impact on the existential credibility of the messenger. A serious message on the cross may wither from the flippant humour and ill-placed jocularity of the messenger. A message about the humiliation of Christ and the consequent necessity of humility on the part of his followers may crumble under the weight of the cavalier and detached carriage of the messenger. A message on the love of God may sag into mere amusement by the amateurish histrionics of the messenger. In short the most glorious and compelling message possible may lose credibility by any number of ways in which a lack of earnestness becomes prominent.

Jonathan Edwards, in his Thoughts on the New England Revival, observed,

I think an exceeding affectionate way of preaching about the great things of religion, has in itself no tendency to beget false apprehensions of them; but on the contrary a much greater tendency to beget true apprehensions of them, than a moderate, dull, indifferent way of speaking of them.²

He argued that great earnestness did as much to settle the judgment in favour of truth as great learning and concluded, ‘Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched.’³ We, however, need a heavy portion of both. The truths of divine revelation, flowing like hot lava from heart and lips burning with intense passion for God and souls, make truth not only heard but felt. Spurgeon added,

One of the excuses most soporific to the conscience of an ungodly generation is that of half-heartedness in the preacher. If the sinner finds the preacher nodding while he talks of judgment to come, he concludes that the judgment is a thing which the preacher is dreaming about, and he resolves to regard it all as mere fiction.⁴

While Edwards specifically wrote to defend the exuberance of preachers in the first Great Awakening and to deflect the severe criticism they received in an attempt to discredit the revival, his argument that manner, the emotional and spiritual overtones, of delivery colours the content is widely applicable. Given our great tendency to sin and self-centredness, certain particular steps should be taken consciously to give the best opportunity for an earnest manner commensurate with the glory of the message.

First, we should consider who we are – sinners prone to have our tongues corrupt the whole course of nature and defile our entire body because it is set on fire by hell. We preachers will be judged harshly for the wrong use of our tongues. On this we should meditate at several points during the week; we should recall those times that words spoken too quickly or with too little thought have hurt relationships and dishonoured God. How much more will a word unfitly spoken, even the right word unfitly spoken, be a dishonour to God if we stand as his messenger and fail to mortify the flesh in our style of delivery. The immediate suggestions to the mind of light anecdotes or ex tempore comments about oneself or the congregation hardly ever advance the cause of the gospel in a message and usually lighten the mood so that seriousness due the proclamation can not be regained.

Second we should consider who the people are – the sheep of God who need a shepherd that is not a mere hireling. The shepherd may protect the sheep by steering them clear of pitfalls, brambles and sheep-eating carnivores. Calls to repentance, therefore, based on biblical admonition, mandate and law should run liberally through the messages that we preach if we earnestly care for the souls of those that hear. Aside remarks, however, that draw more attention to the feelings of the speaker than the glory of the message hardly ever edify or endear one to the call of Christ. Self-conscious efforts to evoke a periodic ‘Amen’ from the congregation may interrupt meaningful reflection on the part of the more serious listeners and could indicate that the minister is more interested in an immediate affirmation of a series of one-liners than a prolonged engagement with a biblical argument. Worse than that is the attempt to insult the congregation into response by clever, or not so clever, manipulations to shame: ‘Are you people awake yet?’ ‘Are you thinking about beating the Methodists to the cafeteria?’ or ‘Hello?!’ after a failed attempt to create a chuckle.

When they hear our voice, will they indeed hear the voice of the Shepherd that gave his life for them? Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.’ This periodic consideration of who the people are, how Christ has died for them, how the Spirit has called us to them and hopefully written them on our hearts as persons to be cared for will make our public messages to them filled with transparency, earnestness, godliness and joy with the intent of edifying them by setting Christ before them. Instead of evoking a laugh from them, the point of our message should bring weeping from us and them for the reality of the eternity that looms before us mortals, the eternity in which we face the flaming eyes of the righteous judge whose vision will burn away every refuge except the cover of Christ’s obedience.

Third, meditate seriously and purposefully on the glory of Christ. The apostle Peter indicates that this action occupied the prophets prior to Christ’s coming. They ‘inquired carefully’ as to what type of person or time might be required to fulfill the Spirit’s predictions concerning ‘the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories’ (1 Pet. 1:10, 11 ESV). They laboured over the revelation that they had with such intense interest that the Spirit made a separate revelation to them that the answers would not come in their lifetime. These vital and compelling aspects of divine intervention were reserved for a subsequent age and could only be understood in light of the appearance of the person himself. Only through Christ is the veil taken away, and, then, only ‘when one turns to the Lord’ (2 Cor. 3:14-16). Their turning to the Lord, moreover, was the result of hearing the ‘word of Christ’ preached (Rom. 10:17). After Christ’s ascension, the revelation was made in its fullness to the apostles and prophets (Eph. 3:5) even as they preached ‘the good news . . . by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven’ (1 Pet. 1:12). The good news consisted of issues of redemptive truth that even the angels did not fully grasp and which they evidently learned through the preaching of the apostolic generation. As a result of the impact of this preaching, in which the sufferings of Christ and his subsequent glory were highlighted, Peter could admonish the churches to ‘set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ’ (l Pet. 1:13). Every admonition, every word of encouragement, every bit of instruction that Peter wrote relates immediately to the sufferings and glory of Christ. Their ground of acceptance is in his sufferings and their hope for the future is in his glorification (1:2; 2:24; 3:18; 4:1,2; 5:1,10). Their reason for patience in all their trials is the suffering and glory of Christ (1:3-9; 3:14-18; 4:12-14). Their impetus for holiness is in the sufferings and glory of Christ (1:13-21; 2:18-23; 4:3-6). The energy and example for loving the brethren comes from the gospel of Christ’s suffering and glory preached to them (1:22-25; 3:8, 9; 4:7-11). If a preacher would understand a text and be inspired to preach all that it contains, he must spend time during the week reflecting on the glory of Christ in his cross, his resurrection, his intercession and his coming.

Fourth, be saturated with the sermon text and bear it consciously in mind throughout the sermon. In addition to thorough preparation in all the relevant helps available to him, meditation on the text should heighten its importance in the preacher’s mind so that he grasps the potency of the eternal blessings of grace flowing from it and can think of nothing more worthy of his allotted time than the display of Christ through its truth. Be determined that those that hear this sermon will know this text and how its parts radiate from Christ and his sufficiency as Saviour and Lord and bend back upon him, reflecting his glory from a unique facet on the jewel of Scripture. Keep reminding the hearers that ‘Our text tells us so.’ We would never want to do away with the massive variety of helps available today to expedite exegesis and give critical clarity to the meaning of a text. But we must also recognize that Scripture is its own best interpreter. A personal knowledge of the text, its surrounding context, and an intimate acquaintance with the whole Bible makes meditation on a particular text an edifying experience personally and lends power to one’s preaching. A. T. Robertson had broad acquaintance with large numbers of preachers that in truth were men of one book. He observed:

This was literally true in some instances, for some of the early Baptist ministers were too poor to possess even a modest library. In some cases the old preacher would own Cruden’s Concordance or Matthew Henry’s Commentary. But the preacher who had only a copy of the English Bible often made such diligent use of it that he literally knew it. He could quote chapter and verse for his positions and expound Scripture by Scripture; a method not to be despised by the modern interpreter. Sermons out of the Concordance may be fearfully and wonderfully made, but sermons made out of the Bible which one has at his fingers’ ends may be charged with power and can certainly claim the promise of God to bless his Word in a sense not true of some modern disquisitions and essays. If some of the interpretations were at times crude and lacking in historical perspective, they at least reflected the light of truth. They were loyal to Christ and preached the reality of sin, the need of a Saviour, and the power of Christ to save sinners of the deepest dye. The pioneer preacher believed his gospel with all his heart and had no doubts about it, for he had put it to the test in too many instances. He was a man of power largely because he was mighty in the Scriptures and was full of faith in God.⁵

Fifth, be single minded in staying with the text and aware of the presence of Christ during the time of delivery. Many clever asides and easily-permitted digressions would remain in the realm of the unspoken where they should be joined by many others were the preacher to cultivate a deep-consciousness of Christ’s presence with his people during the time of the ministry of the Word. The clutter of superfluous comments could be swept away entirely if we kept in mind that the demands of the text should determine the contour and intent of every sentence. Such concentration on text and Christ would defy the insertion of jokes. Free-standing fabrications of incongruity or implied ridicule simply for the sake of a laugh will not contribute to but will interrupt both the cogency of thought and the pertinent pathos necessary for penetrating a heart with truth and love. Late night talk shows may thrive on this material, but Christian pulpits will wilt right along with the souls that are periodically injected with the virus of insincerity. Jokes have nothing to do with the biblical text and the attempt at teasing relevance out of them is so strained that the congregation usually sees through the charade, and gospel seriousness flies away to find refuge somewhere else. If you seek such jokes in the sermons of Calvin, Luther, Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley, Owen, Howe, Bunyan, Gill, Andrew Fuller, Richard Fuller, Robert Hall, John A. Broadus, James P. Boyce or Charles Spurgeon you will come up empty. They give no advice about it nor example of it. I doubt if the consideration of such a communicative device ever occurred to them, for their view of the task before them did not admit of it. Spurgeon sometimes employed humour, but it was always in the flow of thought – an epigram, a pithy proverb, an arresting image, an astute observation about human nature in its relation to divine things, a statement of irony – that sealed, rather than concealed or nullified, the truth being discussed. Boyce’s sermons so overflow with earnest solicitude for the spiritual health of his hearers that one can almost feel the warmth generated by his devotional energy. Edwards’ intensity for the truth of his doctrine and the salvation of his hearer, concerns intertwined at every phase of his sermon, reverberate with palpable power even from the printed page. Richard Fuller’s saturation with the applicability of his doctrinal and textual theme left no space in his mental apparatus for a jocular spirit to shoulder its way into his thinking.

One should not infer from any of these suggestions that a minister of the gospel must be less, or more, than human. He should, however, recognize the sinful tendency that humans have to trivialize the sacred and mortify that urge. He should recognize the sinful tendency to use the tongue as an instrument of hell, and fear the outcome. As one called to a transcendent task, he must not create a subterranean climate. As one given specific instructions about the chief function of his calling, he must avoid adding his own bright ideas about what would make it more compelling. ‘Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching . . . But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry’ (2 Tim. 4:2, 5). Hold fast the faithful Word that by sound doctrine you can exhort and convince those that contradict it; and show yourself to be a model of good works. In your teaching show integrity, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned (Titus 1:9; 2:7, 8 paraphrased).

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WE may as well confess at the outset that there is no such thing as a modern theory of the Atonement, in the sense in which there is a modern theory, say, of the Incarnation – the kenosis theory to wit, which is a brand-new conception, never dreamed of until the nineteenth century was well on its course, and likely, we may hope, to pass out of notice with that century. All the theories of the Atonement now current readily arrange themselves under the old categories, and have their prototypes running back more or less remotely into the depths of Church history.

The fact is, the views men take of the atonement are largely determined by their fundamental feelings of need – by what men most long to be saved from. And from the beginning three well-marked types of thought on this subject have been traceable, corresponding to three fundamental needs of human nature as it unfolds itself in this world of limitation. Men are oppressed by the ignorance, or by the misery, or by the sin in which they feel themselves sunk; and, looking to Christ to deliver them from the evil under which they particularly labor, they are apt to conceive His work as consisting predominantly in revelation of divine knowledge, or in the inauguration of a reign of happiness, or in deliverance from the curse of sin.

In the early Church, the intellectualistic tendency allied itself with the class of phenomena which we call Gnosticism. The longing for peace and happiness that was the natural result of the crying social evils of the time, found its most remarkable expression in what we know as Chiliasm. That no such party-name suggests itself to describe the manifestation given to the longing to be delivered from the curse of sin, does not mean that this longing was less prominent or less poignant: but precisely the contrary. The other views were sloughed off as heresies, and each received its appropriate designation as such: this was the fundamental point of sight of the Church itself, and as such found expression in numberless ways, some of which, no doubt, were sufficiently bizarre – as, for example, the somewhat widespread representation of the atonement as centering in the surrender of Jesus as a ransom to Satan.

Our modern Church, you will not need me to tell you, is very much like the early Church in all this. All three of these tendencies find as full representation in present-day thought as in any age of the Church’s life. Perhaps at no other period was Christ so frequently or so passionately set forth as merely a social Saviour. Certainly at no other period has His work been so prevalently summed up in mere revelation. While now, as ever, the hope of Christians at large continues to be set upon Him specifically as the Redeemer from sin.

The forms in which these fundamental types of thinking are clothed in our modern days, differ, as a matter of course, greatly from those they assumed in the first age. This difference is largely the result of the history of thought through the intervening centuries. The assimilation of the doctrines of revelation by the Church was a gradual process; and it was also an orderly process – the several doctrines emerging in the Christian consciousness for formal discussion and scientific statement in a natural sequence. In this process the doctrine of the atonement did not come up for formulation until the eleventh century, when Anselm gave it its first really fruitful treatment, and laid down for all time the general lines on which the atonement must be conceived, if it is thought of as a work of deliverance from the penalty of sin. The influence of Anselm’s discussion is not only traceable, but has been determining in all subsequent thought down to to-day. The doctrine of satisfaction set forth by him has not been permitted, however, to make its way unopposed. Its extreme opposite –the general conception that the atoning work of Christ finds its essence in revelation and had its prime effect, therefore, in deliverance from error–was advocated in Anselm’s own day by perhaps the acutest reasoner of all the schoolmen, Peter Abelard. The intermediate view which was apparently invented five centuries later by the great Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, loves to think of itself as running back, in germ at least, to nearly as early a date. In the thousand years of conflict which has raged among these generic conceptions each has taken on protean shapes, and a multitude of mixed or mediating hypotheses have been constructed. But, broadly speaking, the theories that have divided the suffrages of men easily take places under one or other of these three types.

There is a fourth general conception, to be sure, which would need to be brought into view were we studying exhaustive enumeration. This is the mystical idea which looks upon the work of Christ as summed up in the incarnation; and upon the saving process as consisting in an unobserved leavening of mankind by the inworking of a vital germ then planted in the mass. But though there never was an age in which this idea failed entirely of representation, it bears a certain aristocratic character which has commended it ordinarily only to the few, however fit: and it probably never was very widely held except during the brief period when the immense genius of Schleiermacher so overshadowed the Church that it could hardly think at all save in the formulas taught by him. Broadly speaking, the field has been held practically by the three theories which are commonly designated by the names of Anselm, Grotius, and Abelard; and age has differed from age only in the changing expression given these theories and the relative dominance of one or another of them.

The Reformers, it goes without saying, were enthusiastic preachers of the Anselmic conception – of course as corrected, developed, and enriched by their own deeper thought and truer insight. Their successors adjusted, expounded, and defended its details, until it stood forth in the seventeenth century dogmatics in practical completeness. During this whole period this conception held the field; the numerous controversies that arose about it were rather joined with the Socinian or the mystic than internal to the circle of recognized Church teachers. It was not until the rise of Rationalism that a widely spread defection became observable. Under this blight men could no longer believe in the substitutive expiation which is the heart of the Anselmic doctrine, and a blood-bought redemption went much out of fashion. The dainty Supranaturalists attained the height only of the Grotian view, and allowed only a “demonstrative” as distinguished from an “ontological” necessity for an atonement, and an “executive” as distinguished from a” judicial” effect to it. The great evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, swept away all that. It is probable that a half century ago the doctrine of penal satisfaction had so strong a hold on the churches that not more than an academic interest attached to rival theories.

About that time a great change began to set in. I need only to mention such names as those of Horace Bushnell, McLeod Campbell, Frederick Dennison Maurice, Albrecht Ritschl, to suggest the strength of the assault that was suddenly delivered against the central ideas of an expiatory atonement. The immediate effect was to call out an equally powerful defense. Our best treatises on the atonement come from this period; and Presbyterians in particular may well be proud of the part played by them in the crisis. But this defense only stemmed the tide: it did not succeed in rolling it back. The ultimate result has been that the revolt from the conceptions of satisfaction, propitiation, expiation, sacrifice, reinforced continually by tendencies adverse to evangelical doctrine peculiar to our times, has grown steadily more and more widespread, and in some quarters more and more extreme, until it has issued in an immense confusion on this central doctrine of the gospel. Voices are raised all about us proclaiming a “theory” of the atonement impossible, while many of those that essay a “theory” seem to be feeling their tortuous way very much in the dark. That, if I mistake not, is the real state of affairs in the modern Church.

I am not meaning to imply that the doctrine of substitutive atonement–which is, after all, the very heart of the gospel–has been lost from the consciousness of the Church. It has not been lost from the hearts of the Christian community. It is in its terms that the humble Christian everywhere still expresses the grounds of his hope of salvation. It is in its terms that the earnest evangelist everywhere still presses the claims of Christ upon the awakened hearer. It has not even been lost from the forum of theological discussion. It still commands powerful advocates wherever a vital Christianity enters academical circles: and, as a rule, the more profound the thinker, the more clear is the note he strikes in its proclamation and defense. But if we were to judge only by the popular literature of the day– a procedure happily not possible –the doctrine of a substitutive atonement has retired well into the background. Probably the majority of those who hold the public ear, whether as academical or as popular religious guides, have definitely broken with it, and are commending to their audiences something other and, as they no doubt believe, something very much better. A tone of speech has even grown up regarding it which is not only scornful but positively abusive. There are no epithets too harsh to be applied to it, no invectives too intense to be poured out on it. An honored bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church tells us that “the whole theory of substitutional punishment as a ground either of conditional or unconditional pardon is unethical, contradictory, and self-subversive.”¹ He may rightly claim to be speaking in this sweeping sentence with marked discretion and unwonted charity. To do justice to the hateful theme requires, it seems, the tumid turmoil and rushing rant of Dr. Farrar’s rhetoric. Surely if hard words broke bones, the doctrine of the substitutional sacrifice of the Son of God for the sin of man would long ago have been ground to powder.

What, then, are we offered instead of it? We have already intimated that it is confusion which reigns here: and in any event we cannot go into details. We may try, however, to set down in few words the general impression that the most recent literature of the subject makes.

To obtain a just view of the situation, I think we ought to note, first of all, the wide prevalence among the sounder thinkers of the Grotian or Rectoral theory of the atonement–the theory, that is, that conceives the work of Christ not as supplying the ground on which God forgives sin, but only as supplying the ground on which He may safely forgive sins on the sole ground of His compassion. The theory of hypothetical universalism, according to which Christ died as the proper substitute for all men on the condition, namely, that they should believe–whether in its Remonstrant or in its Amyraldian form–has in the conflict of theories long since been crushed out of existence–as, indeed, it well deserved to be. This having been shoved out of the way, the Grotian theory has come to be the orthodox Arminian view and is taught as such by the leading exponents of modern Arminian thought whether in Britain or America; and he who will read the powerful argumentation to that effect by the late Dr. John Miley, say, for example, will be compelled to agree that it is, indeed, the highest form of atonement-doctrine conformable to the Arminian system. But not only is it thus practically universal among the Wesleyan Arminians. It has become also, under the influence of such teachers as Drs. Wardlaw and Dale and Dr. Park, the mark also of orthodox Nonconformity in Great Britain and of orthodox Congregationalism in America. Nor has it failed to take a strong hold also of Scottish Presbyterianism: it is specifically advocated by such men of mark and leading as, for example, Dr. Marcus Dods. On the Continent of Europe it is equally widespread among the saner teachers; one notes without surprise, for example, that it was taught by the late Dr. Frederic Godet, though one notes with satisfaction that it was considerably modified upward by Dr. Godet, and that his colleague, Dr. Gretillat, was careful to correct it. In a word, wherever men have been unwilling to drop all semblance of an “objective” atonement, as the word now goes, they have taken refuge in this half-way house which Grotius has builded for them. I do not myself look upon this as a particularly healthful sign of the times. I do not myself think that, at bottom, there is in principle much to choose between the Grotian and the so-called “subjective” theories. It seems to me only an illusion to suppose that it preserves an “objective” atonement at all. But meanwhile it is adopted by many because they deem it “objective,” and it so far bears witness to a remanent desire to preserve an “objective” atonement.

We are getting more closely down to the real characteristic of modern theories of the atonement when we note that there is a strong tendency observable all around us to rest the forgiveness of sins solely on repentance as its ground. In its last analysis, the Grotian theory itself reduces to this. The demonstration of God’s righteousness, which is held by it to be the heart of Christ’s work and particularly of His death, is supposed to have no other effect on God than to render it safe for Him to forgive sin. And this it does not as affecting Him, but as affecting men–namely, by awaking in them such a poignant sense of the evil of sin as to cause them to hate it soundly and to turn decisively away from it. This is just Repentance. We could desire no better illustration of this feature of the theory than is afforded by the statement of it by one of its most distinguished living advocates, Dr. Marcus Dods². The necessity of atonement, he tells us, lies in the “need of some such demonstration of God’s righteousness as will make it possible and safe for Him to forgive the unrighteous” (p. 181). Whatever begets in the sinner true penitence and impels him toward the practice of righteousness will render it safe to forgive him. Hence Dr. Dods asserts that it is inconceivable that God should not forgive the penitent sinner, and that Christ’s work is summed up in such an exhibition of God’s righteousness and love as produces, on its apprehension, adequate repentance. “By being the source, then, of true and fruitful penitence, the death of Christ removes the radical subjective obstacle in the way of forgiveness” (p. 184). “The death of Christ, then, has made forgiveness possible, because it enables man to repent with an adequate penitence, and because it manifests righteousness and binds men to God” (p. 187). There is no hint here that man needs anything more to enable him to repent than the presentation of motives calculated powerfully to induce him to repent. That is to say, there is no hint here of an adequate appreciation of the subjective effects of sin on the human heart, deadening it to the appeal of motives to right action however powerful, and requiring therefore an internal action of the Spirit of God upon it before it can repent: or of the purchase of such a gift of the Spirit by the sacrifice of Christ. As little is there any hint here of the existence of any sense of justice in God, forbidding Him to account the guilty righteous without satisfaction of guilt. All God requires for forgiveness is repentance: all the sinner needs for repentance is a moving inducement. It is all very simple; but we are afraid it does not go to the root of matters as presented either in Scripture or in the throes of our awakened heart.

The widespread tendency to represent repentance as the atoning fact might seem, then, to be accountable from the extensive acceptance which has been given to the Rectoral theory of the atonement. Nevertheless much of it has had a very different origin and may be traced back rather to some such teaching as that, say, of Dr. McLeod Campbell. Dr. Campbell did not himself find the atoning fact in man’s own repentance, but rather in our Lord’s sympathetic repentance for man. He replaced the evangelical doctrine of substitution by a theory of sympathetic identification, and the evangelical doctrine of expiatory penalty-paying by a theory of sympa­thetic repentance. Christ so fully enters sympathetically into our case, was his idea, that He is able to offer to God an adequate repentance for our sins, and the Father says, It is enough! Man here is still held to need a Saviour, and Christ is presented as that Saviour, and is looked upon as performing for man what man cannot do for himself. But the gravitation of this theory is distinctly downward, and it has ever tended to find its lower level. There are, therefore, numerous transition theories prevalent–some of them very complicated, some of them very subtle–which connect it by a series of insensible stages with the proclamation of human repentance as the sole atonement required. As typical of these we may take the elaborate theory (which, like man himself, may be said to be fearfully and wonderfully made) set forth by the modern Andover divines. This finds the atoning fact in a combination ‘Of Christ’s sympathetic repentance for man and man’s own repentance under the impression made upon him by Christ’s work on his behalf – not in the one without the other, but in the two in unison. A similar combination of the revolutionary repentance of man induced by Christ and the sympathetic repentance of Christ for man meets us also in recent German theorizing, as, for example, in the teaching of Häring. It is sometimes clothed in “sacrificial ” language and made to bear an appearance even of “substitution.” It is just the repentance of Christ, however, which is misleadingly called His “sacrifice,” and our sympathetic repentance with Him that is called our participation in His “sacrifice”; and it is carefully explained that though there was “a substitution on Calvary,” it was not the substitution of a sinless Christ for a sinful race, but the substitution of humanity plus Christ for humanity minus Christ. All of which seems but a confusing way of saying that the atoning fact consists in the revolutionary repentance of man induced by the spectacle of Christ’s sympathetic repentance for man.

The essential emphasis in all these transition theories falls obviously on man’s own repentance rather than on Christ’s. Accordingly the latter falls away easily and leaves us with human repentance only as the sole atoning fact–the entire reparation which God asks or can ask for sin. Nor do men hesitate to-day to proclaim this openly and boldly. Scores of voices are raised about us declaring it not only with clearness but with passion. Even those who still feel bound to attribute the reconciling of God somehow to the work of Christ are often careful to explain that they mean this ultimately only, and only because they attribute in one way or other to the work of Christ the arousing of the repentance in man which is the immediate ground of forgiveness. Thus Dean Fremantle tells us that it is “repentance and faith” that “change for us the face of God.” And then he adds, doubtless as a concession to ingrained, though outgrown, habits of thought: “If, then, the death of Christ, viewed as the culminating point of His life of love, is the destined means of repentance for the whole world, we may say, also, that it is the means of securing the  mercy and favour of God, of procuring the forgiveness of sins.”‘³ And Dr. (now Principal) Forsyth, whose fervid address on the atonement at a great Congregationalist gathering a few years ago quite took captive the hearts of the whole land, seems really to teach little more than this. Christ sympathetically enters into our condition, he tells us, and gives expression to an adequate sense of sin. We, perceiving the effect of this, His entrance into our sinful atmosphere, are smitten with horror of the judgment our sin has thus brought on Him. This horror begets in us an adequate repentance of sin: God accepts this repentance as enough; and forgives our sin. Thus forgiveness rests proximately only on our repentance as its ground: but our repentance is produced only by Christ’s sufferings: and hence, Dr. Forsyth tells us, Christ’s sufferings may be called the ultimate ground of forgiveness.⁴

It is sufficiently plain that the function served by the sufferings and death of Christ in this construction is somewhat remote. Accordingly they quite readily fall away altogether. It seems quite natural that they should do so with those whose doctrinal inheritance comes from Horace Bushnell, say, or from the Socinian theorizing of the school of Ritschl. We feel no surprise to learn, for example, that with Harnack the sufferings and death of Christ play no appreciable part. With him the whole atoning act seems to consist in the removal of a false conception of God from the minds of men. Men, because sinners, are prone to look upon God as a wrathful judge. He is, on the contrary, just Love. How can the sinner’s misjudgment be corrected? By the impression made upon him by the life of Jesus, keyed to the conception of the Divine Fatherhood. With all this we are familiar enough. But we are hardly prepared for the extremities of language which some permit themselves in giving expression to it. “The whole difficulty,” a recent writer of this class declares, “is not in inducing or enabling God to pardon, but in moving men to abhor sin and to want pardon.” Even this difficulty, however, we are assured is removable: and what is needed for its removal is only proper instruction. “Christianity,” cries our writer, “was a revelation, not a creation.” Even this false antithesis does not, however, satisfy him. He rises beyond it to the acme of his passion. “Would there have been no Gospel,” he rhetorically demands–as if none could venture to say him nay–”would there have been no Gospel had not Christ died?”⁵ Thus “the blood of Christ” on which the Scriptures hang the whole atoning fact is thought no longer to be needed: the gospel of Paul, which consisted not in Christ simpliciter but specifically in “Christ as crucified,” is scouted. We are able to get along now without these things.

To such a pass have we been brought by the prevailing gospel of the indiscriminate love of God. For it is here that we place our finger on the root of the whole modern assault upon the doctrine of an expiatory atonement. In the attempt to give effect to the conception of indiscriminate and undiscriminating love as the basal fact of religion, the entire Biblical teaching as to atonement has been ruthlessly torn up. If God is love and nothing but love, what possible need can there be of an atonement? Certainly such a God cannot need propitiating. Is not He the All-Father? Is He not yearning for His children with an unconditioned and unconditioning eagerness which excludes all thought of “obstacles to forgiveness”? What does He want but–just His children? Our modern theorizers are never weary of ringing the changes on this single fundamental idea. God does not require to be moved to forgiveness; or to be enabled to pardon; or even to be enabled to pardon safely. He raises no question of whether He can pardon, or whether it would be safe for Him to pardon. Such is not the way of love. Love is bold enough to sweep all such chilling questions impatiently out of its path. The whole difficulty is to induce men to permit themselves to be pardoned. God is continually reaching longing arms out of heaven toward men: oh, if men would only let themselves be gathered unto the Father’s eager heart! It is absurd, we are told–nay, wicked–blasphemous with awful blasphemy–to speak of propitiating such a God as this, of reconciling Him, of making satisfaction to Him. Love needs no satisfying, reconciling, propitiating; nay, will have nothing to do with such things. Of its very nature it flows out unbought, unpropitiated, instinctively and unconditionally, to its object. And God is Love!

Well, certainly, God is Love. And we praise Him that we have better authority for telling our souls this glorious truth than the passionate assertion of these somewhat crass theorizers. God is Love! But it does not in the least follow that He is nothing but love. God is Love: but Love is not God and the formula “Love” must therefore ever be inadequate to express God. It may well be–to us sinners, lost in our sin and misery but for it, it must be–the crowning revelation of Christianity that God is love. But it is not from the Christian revelation that we have learned to think of God as nothing but love. That God is the Father of all men in a true and important sense, we should not doubt. But this term “All-Father” – it is not from the lips of Hebrew prophet or Christian apostle that we have caught it. And the indiscriminate benevolencism which has taken captive so much of the religious thinking of our time is a conception not native to Christianity, but of distinctly heathen quality. As one reads the pages of popular religious literature, teeming as it is with ill-considered assertions of the general Fatherhood of God, he has an odd feeling of transportation back into the atmosphere of, say, the decadent heathenism of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the gods were dying, and there was left to those who would fain cling to the old ways little beyond a somewhat saddened sense of the benignitas numinis. The benignitas numinis! How studded the pages of those genial old heathen are with the expression; how suffused their repressed life is with the conviction that the kind Deity that dwells above will surely not be hard on men toiling here below! How shocked they are at the stern righteousness of the Christian’s God, who loomed before their startled eyes as He looms before those of the modern poet in no other light than as “the hard God that dwelt in Jerusalem”! Surely the Great Divinity is too broadly good to mark the peccadillos of poor puny man; surely they are the objects of His compassionate amusement rather than of His fierce reprobation. Like Omar Khayyam’s pot, they were convinced, before all things, of their Maker that “He’s a good fellow and ’twill all be well.”

The query cannot help rising to the surface of our minds whether our modern indiscriminate benevolencism goes much  deeper than this. Does all this one-sided proclamation of the universal Fatherhood of God import much more than the heathen benignitas numinis? When we take those blessed words, “God is Love,” upon our lips, are we sure we mean to express much more than that we do not wish to believe that God will hold man to any real account for his sin? Are we, in a word, in these modern days, so much soaring upward toward a more adequate apprehension of the transcendent truth that God is love, as passionately protesting against being ourselves branded and dealt with as wrath-deserving sinners? Assuredly it is impossible to put anything like their real content into these great words, “God is Love,” save as they are thrown out against the background of those other conceptions of equal loftiness, “God is Light,” “God is Righteousness,” “God is Holiness,” ” God is a consuming fire.” The love of God cannot be apprehended in its length and breadth and height and depth–all of which pass knowledge–save as it is apprehended as the love of a God who turns from the sight of sin with inexpressible abhorrence, and burns against it with unquenchable indignation. The infinitude of His love would be illustrated not by His lavishing of His favor on sinners without requiring an expiation of sin, but by His–through such holiness and through such righteousness as cannot but cry out with infinite abhorrence and indignation–still loving sinners so greatly that He provides a satisfaction for their sin adequate to these tremendous demands. It is the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity, after all, not that it preaches a God of love, but that it preaches a God of conscience.  A somewhat flippant critic, contemplating the religion of Israel, has told us, as expressive of his admiration for what he found there, that “an honest God is the noblest work of man.”⁶ There is a profound truth lurking in the remark. Only it appears that the work were too noble for man; and probably man has never compassed it. A benevolent God, yes: men have framed a benevolent God for themselves. But a thoroughly honest God, perhaps never. That has been left for the revelation of God Himself to give us. And this is the really distinguishing characteristic of the God of revelation: He is  thoroughly honest, a thoroughly conscientious God–a God who deals honestly with Himself and us, who deals conscientiously with Himself and us. And a thoroughly conscientious God, we may be sure, is not a God who can deal with sinners as if they were not sinners. In this fact lies, perhaps, the deepest ground of the necessity of an expiatory atonement. And it is in this fact also that there lies the deepest ground of the increasing failure of the modern world to appreciate the necessity of an expiatory atonement. Conscientiousness commends itself only to awakened conscience; and in much of recent theologizing conscience does not seem especially active. Nothing, indeed, is more startling in the structure of recent theories of atonement, than the apparently vanishing sense of sin that underlies them. Surely, it is only where the sense of guilt of sin has grown grievously faint, that men can suppose repentance to be all that is needed to purge it. Surely it is only where the sense of the power of sin has profoundly decayed, that men can fancy that they can at will cast it off from them in a “revolutionary repentance.” Surely it is only where the sense of the heinousness of sin has practically passed away, that man can imagine that the holy and just God can deal with it lightly. If we have not much to be saved from, why, certainly, a very little atonement will suffice for our needs. It is, after all, only the sinner that requires a Saviour. But if we are sinners, and in proportion as we know ourselves to be sinners, and appreciate what it means to be sinners, we will cry out for that Saviour who only after He was perfected by suffering could become the Author of eternal salvation.

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Observations upon my Sufferings.

(1.) That such as will live godly in the world must and will suffer persecution, for the trial and exercise of their faith and patience, purging away of their dross, and for weaning their hearts from a present world, and for confirmation of the truth, 2 Tim. 3:12; 1 Pet. 4:12; John 15:3.

(2.) Although at some times there be more or less of persecution, yet there is no time in which the saints shall be without daily crosses; for a wicked world will persecute with the tongue, even in Abraham’s family, where piety did obtain, Gal. 4:28, 29; Gen. 21:9. Even when religion was favoured, I found persecution by reproach, and contempt of wicked men.

(3.) There are some special days of persecution, when hell breaks loose, and when great trials come, which are called “the hour of tentation,” and “the evil day, the hour and power of darkness,” Revelation 3:10; Ephesians 6:13; Luke 8:13, 22, 25.

(4.) The Lord “stayeth his rough wind in the day of his east wind,” Isaiah 27:8. He many times puts an end to the extremities of his people’s personal trials ere [ed. ‘before] he exercises with public sufferings; he “lays not on men more than is meet,” and therefore suffers not a multitude of evils to lie upon his poor people at once, 1 Corinthians 10:10.

(5.) God first (I find) ordinarily exercises with personal afflictions, ere he call them to sufferings on account of Christ, that, being exercised with the one, they may better bear the other.

(6.) I find that the Lord doth many times affright us with troubles which never come upon us, as he did to Nineveh; and we are made to fear that which the mercy of God never suffers to touch us, Jonah 1:3.

(7.) But seldom or never doth a great personal or public stroke come upon the Lord’s people, but he gives them some warning, and notice of it before-hand, that we be not surprised, but prepared for it, Zephaniah 2:1-4².

(8.) Obstinacy in sin and impenitency, and the removing of God’s precious people, with security under this, have had greatest influence upon my fears of a day of desolation, Isaiah 57:12; Ezekiel 11:3, 4; Isaiah 9:4, 5.

(9.) Our fears, unbeliefs, and discouragements, with our confusions, are our greatest troubles in a day of trouble; it is a prison within a prison, Psalm 142:7, “O bring my soul out of trouble.” Our galled sore backs make our burdens more grievous to us–sin and unbelief are bad ballast in a storm.

(10.) The cross of Christ, when we once engage with it, is nothing so terrible, is nothing so heavy as at a distance in apprehension it is. How dreadful did a prison and appearing before synagogues appear to me! But, when I did encounter therewith, I found it nothing so terrible to me.

(11.) I was never in that trouble yet upon the account of Christ, but I was delivered out of it by the Lord, and that when it seemed very desperate to look for salvation, Psalm 34:19, “The troubles of the righteous are many, but the Lord delivereth out of them all.” We are to believe deliverance from all our troubles, though we cannot tell when or how.

(12.) Nothing contributes more to a Christian carriage under trouble, than faith of God’s support in and deliverance out of trouble, James 5:7, 8. Unbelief sinks the heart.

(13.) It is matter of great humiliation to us, that our troubles and afflictions do us but little good sometimes, that we are so unfruitful under the rod: and especially I observe, that small troubles have but small influence; every physic doth not work with strong constitutions. My lighter troubles, whether upon a personal or more public account, I found but little good by them. It was a deep heart-reaching stroke that did me good: and in times of greatest fears, sharpest afflictions, it was ever still best with me; and at first afflictions do not so much good, it is afterwards that they reap “the peaceable fruits of righteousness,” Hebrews 12:11. And, even when the Lord blesses them to do good, the fruit, alas! is but small; we are not so good under them as we ought to be or might.

(14.) I have observed, the more the Lord’s people are affiicted and persecuted, the more they grow; and the gospel never thrives better than when it is persecuted, Exodus 1:12; Phil. 1:12. Such things as happened to me have been “for the furtherance of the gospel.” All the malice of men could never have broken us, if we had not undone ourselves; they “plowed with our heifer” for the spreading of the gospel was the effect of a long time of their greatest severities.

(15.) Persecutors are ungodly, are cruel, are deceitful; and this did I see evidently, all persecutors have these three properties: and therefore let us beware of such persons, and keep at the utmost distance with them, and expect no good from them; let us not lean on them who smite us; let us suspect all their favours, for “the kisses of an enemy are deceitful; but let “our eyes be only to the Lord.”

(16.) Too great love, respect to, intimacy and communion with wicked men, and not standing at due distance with them, provokes the Lord to give his people into the hands of the wicked. The Israelites’ wicked confederacy with the Canaanites made them “briers and thorns in their sides;” had we carried to the ungodly as we ought to have done, we should not have smarted as we do this day.

(17.) It is a very great comfort to a godly person, that his persecutors and enemies are God’s enemies, and wicked persons: “Let my enemies be as the wicked,” saith Job. We may expect good hearing from God against them. It doth much likewise to determine us in our duties, that what they are for must be ill, and what they are against must be good: and, notwithstanding of the confidence of some compliers, it is strange that in almost six thousand years one instance from Scripture or authentic history cannot be given.

(18.) Under public sufferings we are mostly called to submission and patience, both in reference to God and men: “In patience possess your souls;” and to Christian cheerfulness. Oh, what a comely thing is it to see a meek sufferer, like the Master, “not opening his mouth,” but “dumb as a sheep is before the shearer!” And how ordinarily do men fall in this great sin of impatience? And cheerfulness under the cross of Christ is no less beautiful; and therefore how frequent such precepts and examples, to “glory, rejoice in tribulation?” for this gives a good report of Christ, his cause and cross to others.

(19.) Sufferings on public accounts are not only our duty, but our great privilege; to suffer for Christ is one of Christ’s love-gifts, Philippians 1:29, “It is given you to suffer for the name of Christ.” To give testimony for Christ and his truth is our greatest honour. A sufferer and witness for Christ is the most honourable person and officer in the kingdom of Christ; it is Christ’s highest and honourablest employment, Acts 5:41, “They rejoiced they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ.”

(20.) Reproach and shame, and ill-will of men, is the heaviest of Christ’s crosses to bear: “Reproach hath broken my heart,” saith David.

(21.) It is the great guilt of professors this day, that they not only shun the ways of God, but are ashamed of them, and of the cross of Christ, yea, and of the truths of Christ; of such will Christ be ashamed.

(22.) It is a very hard matter to get our sufferings stated upon Christ’s account, but yet it is very necessary we get it done; for many objections doth a poor suffering soul meet with in this case, as possibly not so clear to many as the matter of the sufferings of Christians under heathens, and of Protestants under Papists. Nor is the call to such a thing clear at such a time; some sinful accession of our own (through want of consideration or mistake) to our trouble, sense of guilt and unworthiness, doth render our cause dark to us many times. That as it was said of these, “Ye did not fast to me,” so may it be said of us, Ye suffer not to me, nor for me, but for your sins and yourselves.

(23.) Outward trouble from the hands of persecutors may be both a rod and correction for sin, and a testimony for Christ and his truth. The Lord Jesus may by one rod design both the correction and chastisement of his Church and people, and likewise design a confirmation and witness to his truth, cause, and work. Heb. 12:10, the public sufferings of the believing Hebrews were “chastisements for our profit.”

(24.) We by our sins therefore may provoke the Lord to deliver us into the hands of men, and by our weakness we may have some sinful hand and occasion thereto, and great failings attending our sufferings; and yet Christ accept of our sufferings, so maimed, as a testimony for him.

(25.) ‘Whatever pretext wicked persecutors make of afflicting God’s people, and that they be schismatic, scandalous, seditious, that they walk disorderly; yet the true ground of their quarrel is because of their enmity to God and godliness; and therefore we may be assured we suffer for Christ and for his cause: “All these things will they do unto you, because the love of the Father is not in them.” And David saith, that all his enemies’ quarrel with him was, “because he followed after that which was good.” It is the enmity that is between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, Genesis 3:15 ; Matthew 23:33; John 15:19, 21.

(26.) I observe, that the Lord doth accept of the faithful ends and endeavours, and honest intention and zeal of his people, when the methods and particular means and courses they take for witnessing for Christ are sometimes not altogether justifiable; as he who scruples through want of light an oath in itself lawful, out of zeal for the glory of God which he fears by taking this oath he wrongs, and thereupon suffers, this man’s sufferings are accepted of Christ as a testimony for him.

(27.) The controversy this day is as manifestly stated betwixt Christ and the devil, sin and godliness, whether the world should be Christ’s subjects, or the devil’s and sin’s subjects, as ever it was. The smaller differences, though in themselves of no great consequence, yet centre in this great gulf of rebellion against God. To touch any thing belonging to this wicked generation, Christ’s stated enemies, or to have ought ado with them, is dangerous, Numbers 16:26; and they are the emissaries of Satan, and doing his work, who plead for union and compliance with them.

(28.) Yet ought not the miscarriages of superiors dissolve the civil or natural bonds of relation to them, Matthew 23:1, 2. We are to do, and be submissive to, the commands of superiors, though we be not to imitate their practice.

(29.) Man’s wrath, and all persecution, shall tend and work to the praise of God and the good of saints, Psalm 76:10 ; Isaiah 31:9, and this is a marvellous consolation.

(30.) Many a time may we, in a public stroke of persecution, see our sin and guilt clearly and legibly written, as in Adonibezek, Judges 1; Genesis 19; Such as burned with unnatural lust to one another are justly consumed with fire from heaven: and it is just that lovers, whom we preferred to Christ, be the instruments of our greatest trouble.

(31.) Many times do the people of God find great favour and kindness at the hands of natural men, yea, and more sometimes than from the truly godly: the earth helped the woman many times. I found some professors of religion stood at greater distance with me, than did mere natural and graceless persons.

(32.) The preservation of some, of a remnant in a day of straits, is exceeding wonderful and marvellous sometimes.

(33.) “The wicked are snared in the  work of their own hands,” Psalm 9, and Hamans hanged on their own gallows. The Lord makes the weapons of the wicked recoil on themselves; every mean for a good while they take in hand doth but weaken them, and increase the other party.

(34.) It is the people of God that only can undo and harm themselves; and it is by division that it is done: while we stood in one spirit, we could not be overcome or prevailed against; but false brethren crept in amongst us, divided and broke us through the subtilty of adversaries, and did draw us to rash enterprises.

(35.) The greatest consolations do attend the greatest tribulations, 2 Corinthians 1:5, 6.

(36.) The first brunt of the cross is saddest and sharpest: “No affliction for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous.”

(37.) Great outward troubles, whether personal or on public accounts, quicken and revive our apprehensions of eternity.

(38.) And always do us good; though not alike good to all, nor so sensibly, yet no cross but we get some good of it.

(39.) I found it very hard to appear before councils, and carry rightly. We seek rather to save ourselves in any lawful way, than to honour and give testimony for Christ; and there is not boldness and dependence on Christ for assistance.

(40.) There is not so much of the “Spirit of glory resting upon” sufferers as hath been formerly: which I think flows from these three; 1. That our testimony for Christ is not so glorious; 2. That a sadder shock is coming; and, lastly, That our sufferings are so moderate.

(41.) Yet, blessed be the Lord, for my part I have found the Lord in a special way with me in all my sufferings, and I never repent of any thing I have suffered for Christ.

(42.) Though the Lord can sanctify and bless any lot to his people, yet, to speak absolutely, an afflicted condition in the world is best for God’s people.

(43.) The infinite condescendence of God, and his gracious and tender nature, is that only which can be a bottom to our faith; to believe we suffer for Christ, and as such to be accepted and looked upon by him.

(44.) There is a large allowance for sufferers for righteousness; but many live not upon their allowance, and therefore look so ill upon it.³

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

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What, however, if I turn from the past to the future? I can think and write about something that happened seven hundred years ago. What if I project my mind seven hundred years into the future? Can I tell you anything that about the year 2723? No! Remarkable as the gifts are that we humans possess the power to penetrate the future and speak of it as authoritatively as we do of the past is not one of them. We can try and guess. But that’s as far as it goes.

Let me introduce you to a man in the Bible who forms an exception. His name is Isaiah and in the book of the Bible that is named after him and which came from his pen he tells us about something that would (and did) take place seven hundred years on from when he lived. Here are his words: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdoms, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this” (Ch.9.6-7).

Most readers will know of whom Isaiah is speaking. If not you can probably guess, given that this is a Christmas message. Isaiah is speaking about Jesus. And amazingly, he is doing so seven hundred years before his birth in Bethlehem.

There is only one explanation for this that does justice to all the facts and it is this: Isaiah was God’s prophet. His calling in life was to declare to people whatever message God gave to him. Often it had to do with how things were in Isaiah’s own day. But God also had things for Isaiah to announce in advance; things that God was going to do at some future day. The prophecy above is an example. God is not subject to our limitations. He knows the future. He has it all planned out. And this was part of it. Seven hundred years on from Isaiah a very special child would be born – Jesus.

It’s only on one part of the prophecy that I want to touch, namely, the part that speaks about peace. The child to be born would be called Prince of Peace. It is said that “of the increase of his government and of peace” there would be no end. Jesus would be a ruler. And one of the blessings of his rule would be peace.

It’s one of these claims about Jesus that evokes a variety of negative responses – the raised eyebrow, the curled lip, the mirthless laugh, the dismissive shake of the head. And you understand why. We’re two thousand years on now from Jesus’ birth. Where’s the peace? Not in Ukraine. Not in Israel and Gaza. Not in lots of other places. Angels sang of “peace on earth” the very night that Jesus was born. “Aren’t we having to wait rather a long time for it?” someone asks.

Three comments.

The first is that there is no reconciling, peace-making force on earth to compare with the message of Jesus. It is true that his message divides. People take sides over it. But it also unites, as no other message does. When it truly takes hold of us it changes our hearts. Under its influence old hatreds die. We are able to forgive. We begin to love. Those whom once we loathed and would happily have killed are family now, our Christian brothers and sisters. And it hasn’t just happened with a few. Millions upon millions can bear testimony to the gospel’s healing power.

But there is a second comment that needs to be made. Strife among ourselves is not our biggest problem as human beings. Our biggest problem is our broken relationship with God. He has ever so many things against us on account of our innumerable sins. And we for our part don’t care for him at all. In fact we hate him. Jesus, the peace-maker, is the answer to that breakdown in relations too. Through his atoning death our sins can be justly forgiven. We can have what the Bible describes as peace with God. His controversy with us on account of our guilt can be settled once and for all. And at the same time Jesus can so powerfully work in our hearts that we begin to love God and count him our dearest friend.

A third comment to complete the picture. It has to do with the future; with another of the things that God has said will one day happen. Jesus is coming again. We don’t know when (for we haven’t been given a date) but it’s on God’s calendar. And what an event it will be! Jesus will make everything new. The longed-for peace will come. Isaiah’s vision will be fully realised. Jesus, Prince of Peace, will reign over our entire world. And the peace of his reign will be perfect, universal, righteous, and eternal.

But first things first. You must accept Jesus’ message. You must accept him. You must welcome him unconditionally as your peacemaker. Ask him to come and put you right with God by forgiving every sin God has against you. Ask him to give you a loving heart for God and for your fellow humans too. Ask him to make you a citizen of that peace-filled world of which he will one day be the lord. His promise is that you will not seek him in vain.

This piece first appeared on the blog of North Preston Evangelical Church, and is used here with permission.

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Over the years, the Trust has published several books by Dr R. B. Kuiper. However, there are many readers throughout the world who are more familiar with the titles of Kuiper’s books than with the man himself. It is close on twenty-five years since Kuiper passed away. [Kuiper died on 22 April 1966 – Ed.]. He was a man of high spirituality and impeccable orthodoxy. It is appropriate, therefore, that a brief mention should be made of the outline of his varied, scholarly and fruitful life.

R. B. Kuiper (his real Christian names, being Dutch, were seldom used and ‘R.B.’ was the customary mode of addressing him) was born on January 31, 1886 in the province of Groningen in the North of Holland. He was one of a family of eight children born to the Rev. and Mrs Dominie Klaas Kuiper. The father was a minister of the Reformed Church and a man of staunch orthodoxy. Young Kuiper spent only the first five years of his life in Holland. In 1891 he sailed for New York. Dominie Kuiper, now 50 years old, had served three Christian Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. His future ministry was to be in the United States and young Kuiper grew up in the state of Michigan.

Kuiper took after his father in being gifted with a sharp intellect. He proved an excellent scholar at school and entered the University of Chicago in 1903. In 1908 he entered Theological School in Grand Rapids in order to prepare for the ministry of the Christian Reformed Church, at that time a denomination characterised by strong attachment to classical Calvinism. Here Kuiper proved a student of notable excellence. Intent on pursuing theological study he toyed with the idea of crossing to Scotland in order to study at the Free Church of Scotland College. Here he would have sat under Professors James Orr and James Denney. In the event, however, he opted to go to Princeton Seminary and here he became one of the distinguished students under B. B. Warfield and C. W. Hodge, Jnr. as well as of Geerhardus Vos. Warfield was at a later date to mention Kuiper’s intellectual talents to J. Gresham Machen at a critical time in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.

In 1911 he married a lady of Dutch background, Marie Janssen, who proved to be a worthy helpmeet to him in the work of the gospel throughout his long and serviceable ministry. There is a warm human touch in the anecdote which informs us that when a little girl was born to the Kuipers, Dr and Mrs B. B. Warfield sent a gift to the newborn child, and along with it a note which read as follows: ‘Dr and Mrs Warfield present their compliments to little Miss Kuiper, and beg to congratulate her on being born, and to thank her for being born in Princeton. Will she kindly accept these little pins as a souvenir of her birthplace April 9, 1912:

Kuiper was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1912 and was soon recognised by the churches as an outstanding preacher. He served several congregations of the Christian Reformed Church in Michigan. Perhaps a little surprisingly, he left the denomination for a time to become minister of the Reformed Church in America in its congregation at Kalamazoo. That was in the year 1923. However, he returned in 1925 to the Christian Reformed Church. This was the period of the ‘common grace controversy’.

R. B. Kuiper was to be Principal of three colleges during his lifetime. In 1930 he was invited to be President of Calvin College in Grand Rapids. This position he held until 1933. Great changes were taking place, however, at Princeton and in the Presbyterian church in the United States in these momentous years. The outstanding theologian and leader of the period was Dr J. Gresham Machen who, along with other conservative colleagues, left the declining Princeton Seminary in order to set up a thoroughly Reformed institution which would continue the old Princeton tradition. Thus it was that in 1929 Westminster Theological Society came into being in Philadelphia, Pennysylvania. Machen called Kuiper to serve in the Chair of Systematic Theology in the new Westminster Seminary and Kuiper agreed to come for one year. Fifty students enrolled at the Westminster Seminary in the September of 1929. There was a faculty of outstanding scholars attached to the new Seminary from the start: Robert Dick Wilson, Machen himself and O. T. Allis. These men were to be joined soon after by Paul Woolley and John Murray. In 1933 Kuiper returned to Westminster in order to become Professor of Practical Theology.

The sudden and unexpected death of Machen in 1937 came as a great shock to the Reformed world of the day. The loss of Machen was also felt in the numbers of students enrolling in the new institution of Westminster. In 1937 there were 30 men in training. By 1946 the number had gone down to five and in 1949 it reached an all-time low with only three men in training. However, after that year the numbers steadily increased so that by 1984 the number had risen to 109.

As Professor of Practical Theology it fell to Kuiper to instruct the young preachers under his charge. It is typical of his attitude that he could advise the students as follows: ‘Preach so simply that a child can understand you, and then the chances are the older people will understand you too.’ This was no call to superficiality or carelessness but took account of the fatal tendency of young men to preach in an academic style and in a way which is above the heads, of ordinary church members. One piece of advice that R. B. Kuiper was apt to give to students is worth recalling here: ‘a sermon on an Old Testament text must be a New Testament sermon’. The preacher, he believed, must do justice in handling his text to history, doctrine and ethics. Only in this way is he preaching the full gospel. Many a student had to unlearn his previous bad preaching habits and habits of preparation. One student, new to the Seminary practice of careful study of a text beforehand, gave himself away on one occasion with these words, ‘These commentaries sure do help, don’t they?’ Clearly he had not been in the habit of using them in the past.

In 1936 a new church came into being with the name of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The circumstances which gave rise to the formation of this new church are well known. Compromise and liberal thought had greatly weakened the Northern Presbyterian Church. Kuiper’s attitude to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s formation was ‘they had to do it. It was their solemn duty.’ He could see no alternative to the setting up of the new church separate from the now compromised older Presbyterian denomination. Kuiper did not hesitate to join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. This was the third denomination of which he was to be a minister.

Kuiper remained at Westminster Theological Seminary until 1952 when he left to return to Grand Rapids. Shortly after he left also the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in order to return once again to the Christian Reformed Church in which he had been reared. In that same year he was appointed by the C.R.C. to teach Practical Theology in the Calvin Seminary. He was further honoured by being installed as the President of that institution, a position he held until his retirement in 1956. R. B. Kuiper goes on to record as stating that a seminary professor must be both godly and learned. Both are essential to an efficient professor’s ministry as he prepares younger men for the work of the gospel ministry. It saddened Kuiper in his declining years to see his beloved church, the Christian Reformed Church, increasingly departing from the standards of classical Calvinism through the absorption of modern and more liberal thought.

Kuiper passed to his eternal rest in the early morning hours of April 22,1966. His daughter and son were at his side. He left a legacy of fine Christian books behind him. Some of these have been recently published by the Trust. The Bible Tells Us So was Kuiper’s last literary work and it was not completed, although the portion he did finish before his death is a worthy and helpful contribution. God-centered Evangelism appeared in 1961 and came out in a British edition in 1966. It is regarded as one of the most comprehensive and helpful works on all aspects of evangelism. However, it was Professor John Murray’s belief that Kuiper’s ‘masterpiece’ was his book The Glorious Body of Christ. All who have read that volume will know what a mine of practical thought it represents on all aspects of the Christian Church’s life and witness.

The biography of R. B. Kuiper, written by his son-in-law, Edward Heerema, was published in 1986 under the title R. B.: A Prophet in the Land¹. Kuiper’s life and ministry spans the critical period from orthodoxy at the beginning of this century, through the period of turmoil and theological decline in the ’20s and ’30s and up to the period of the Reformed reconstruction in America in the more recent years of this century. So eminent a servant of Christ must not be forgotten and we trust that the semi-jubilee of his death in April of this year will be suitably remembered by a fresh study of his biography and of his printed writings.

Featured Photo by Dan Gomer on Unsplash

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Jesus Christ said that He was the Messiah the Jews had awaited for over 700 years.

John 4:25–26: ‘The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”’

He said that He existed before the creation of the universe.

John 17:5: ‘And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.’

John 8:58–59: ‘Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.’

He said that He came down from heaven.

John 6:38: ‘For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.’

He taught that He was the only person in the world with a true knowledge of God.

Luke 10:22: ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”’

He taught that He had the power to give men eternal life.

John 10:27–28: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Luke 23:43: ‘And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”’

He directed men to Himself as the answer for all their soul’s needs.

John 6:35: ‘Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”‘

John 8:12: ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’

John 11:25–26: ‘Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.’

He claimed absolute devotion for Himself.

Matthew 10:37: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

He taught that He was the only way to God.

John 14:6: ‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”‘

He taught that He had the power to forgive sins.

Luke 5:20–21: ‘And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”’

He taught that He Himself was sinless and absolutely perfect.

John 8:29: ‘And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.”’

John 14:8–9: ‘Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”‘

He said that He was God.

John 10:33: ‘The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”’

John 5:18: ‘This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.’

He accepted worship from other men.

Matthew 14:33: ‘And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”’

John 20:28: ‘Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”’

He taught that one day He was going to raise every dead person in the world from their graves, just by speaking a word to them.

John 5:28–29: ‘Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.’

He said that He would return at the end of the world to determine the eternal destinies of all men who have ever lived.

Matthew 25:31–32: ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.’

C.S. Lewis said, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”¹

Featured Photo by Chris Gallimore on Unsplash

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Near the end of his life, Augustine of Hippo meticulously reviewed everything he had ever published. He wrote an entire catalogue of his own works, a painstakingly annotated bibliography with hundreds of revisions and amendments to correct flaws he saw in his own earlier material. The book, titled Retractationes, is powerful evidence of Augustine’s humility and zeal for truth. Not one of his earlier publications escaped the more mature theologian’s scrutiny. And Augustine was as bold in recanting the errors he perceived in his own work as he had been in refuting the heresies of his theological adversaries. Because he reviewed his works in chronological order, Retractationes is a wonderful memoir of Augustine’s relentless, lifelong pursuit of spiritual maturity and theological precision. His forthrightness in addressing his own shortcomings is a good example of why Augustine is esteemed as a rare model of both godliness and scholarship.

I’ve often wished for the opportunity to review and amend all my own published material, but I doubt I’ll ever have the time or the energy to undertake the task. In this day of electronic recordings, my ‘published’ material includes not just the books I have written but also nearly every sermon I have ever preached-about 3,000 of them so far. It’s far too much material to be able to critique exhaustively the way I wish I could.

Not that I would make sweeping or wholesale revisions. Throughout my ministry, my theological perspective has remained fundamentally unchanged. The basic doctrinal statement I subscribe to today is the same one I affirmed when I was ordained to the ministry almost 40 years ago. I am not someone whose convictions are easily malleable. I trust I am not a reed shaken in the wind, or the kind of person who is naively tossed about by various winds of doctrine.

But at the same time, I do not want to be resistant to growth and correction, especially when my comprehension of Scripture can be sharpened. If more precise understanding on an important point of doctrine demands a change in my thinking–even if it means amending or correcting already-published material–I want to be willing to make the necessary changes.

I have made many such revisions over the years, often taking measures to delete erroneous or confusing statements from my own tapes, and sometimes even preaching again through portions of Scripture with a better understanding of the text. Whenever I have changed my opinion on any significant doctrinal issue, I have sought to make my change of opinion, and the reasons for it, as clear as possible. To that end, I want to state publicly that I have abandoned the doctrine of ‘incarnational sonship.’ Careful study and reflection have brought me to understand that Scripture does indeed present the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son as an eternal Father-Son relationship. I no longer regard Christ’s sonship as a role he assumed in his incarnation.

My earlier position arose out of my study of Hebrews 1:5, which appears to speak of the Father’s begetting the Son as an event that takes place at a point in time: ‘This day have I begotten thee’; ‘I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son.’

That verse presents some very difficult concepts. ‘Begetting’ normally speaks of a person’s origin. Moreover, sons are generally subordinate to their fathers. I therefore found it difficult to see how an eternal Father-Son relationship could be compatible with perfect equality and eternality among the Persons of the Trinity. ‘Sonship,’ I concluded, bespeaks the place of voluntary submission to which Christ condescended at his incarnation (cf. Phil. 2:5-8; John 5:19).

My aim was to defend, not in any way to undermine, Christ’s absolute deity and eternality. And I endeavored from the beginning to make that as clear as possible.

Nonetheless, when I first published my views on the subject (in my 1983 commentary on Hebrews), a few outspoken critics accused me of attacking the deity of Christ or questioning his eternality. In 1989 I responded to those charges in a plenary session of the annual convention of the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (the denomination that ordained me). Shortly after that session, to explain my views further, I wrote an article titled ‘The Sonship of Christ’ (published in 1991 in booklet form).

In both instances I re-emphasized my unqualified and unequivocal commitment to the biblical truth that Jesus is eternally God. The ‘incarnational sonship’ view, while admittedly a minority opinion, is by no means rank heresy. The heart of my defense of the view consisted of statements that affirmed as clearly as possible my absolute commitment to the evangelical essentials of Christ’s deity and eternality.

Still, controversy continued to swirl around my views on ‘incarnational sonship,’ prompting me to re-examine and rethink the pertinent biblical texts. Through that study I have gained a new appreciation for the significance and the complexity of this issue. More important, my views on the matter have changed. Here are two major reasons for my change of opinion:

1. I am now convinced that the title ‘Son of God’ when applied to Christ in Scripture always speaks of his essential deity and absolute equality with God, not his voluntary subordination. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time understood this perfectly. John 5:18 says they sought the death penalty against Jesus, charging him with blasphemy ‘because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.’

In that culture, a dignitary’s adult son was deemed equal in stature and privilege with his father. The same deference demanded by a king was afforded to his adult son. The son was, after all, of the very same essence as his father, heir to all the father’s rights and privileges-and therefore equal in every significant regard. So when Jesus was called “Son of God,” it was understood categorically by all as a title of deity, making Him equal with God and (more significantly) of the same essence as the Father. That is precisely why the Jewish leaders regarded the title “Son of God” as high blasphemy.

If Jesus’ sonship signifies his deity and utter equality with the Father, it cannot be a title that pertains only to his incarnation. In fact, the main gist of what is meant by ‘sonship’ (and certainly this would include Jesus’ divine essence) must pertain to the eternal attributes of Christ, not merely the humanity he assumed.

2. It is now my conviction that the begetting spoken of in Psalm 2 and Hebrews 1 is not an event that takes place in time. Even though at first glance Scripture seems to employ terminology with temporal overtones (‘this day have I begotten thee’), the context of Psalm 2:7 seems clearly to be a reference to the eternal decree of God. It is reasonable to conclude that the begetting spoken of there is also something that pertains to eternity rather than a point in time. The temporal language should therefore be understood as figurative, not literal.

Most theologians recognize this, and when dealing with the sonship of Christ, they employ the term ‘eternal generation.’ I’m not fond of the expression. In Spurgeon’s words, it is ‘a term that does not convey to us any great meaning; it simply covers up our ignorance.’ And yet the concept itself, I am now convinced, is biblical. Scripture refers to Christ as ‘the only begotten of the Father’ (John 1:14; cf. v. 18; 3:16, 18; Heb. 11:17). The Greek word translated ‘only begotten’ is monogenes. The thrust of its meaning has to do with Christ’s utter uniqueness. Literally, it may be rendered ‘one of a kind’ — and yet it also clearly signifies that he is of the very same essence as the Father. This, I believe, is the very heart of what is meant by the expression ‘only begotten.’

To say that Christ is ‘begotten’ is itself a difficult concept. Within the realm of creation, the term ‘begotten’ speaks of the origin of one’s offspring. The begetting of a son denotes his conception — the point at which he comes into being. Some thus assume that ‘only begotten’ refers to the conception of the human Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary. Yet Matthew 1:20 attributes the conception of the incarnate Christ to the Holy Spirit, not to God the Father. The begetting referred to in Psalm 2 and John 1:14 clearly seems to be something more than the conception of Christ’s humanity in Mary’s womb.

And indeed, there is another, more vital, significance to the idea of ‘begetting’ than merely the origin of one’s offspring. In the design of God, each creature begets offspring ‘after his kind’ (Gen. 1:11-12; 21-25). The offspring bear the exact likeness of the parent. The fact that a son is generated by the father guarantees that the son shares the same essence as the father.

I believe this is the sense Scripture aims to convey when it speaks of the begetting of Christ by the Father. Christ is not a created being (John 1:1-3). He had no beginning but is as timeless as God himself. Therefore, the ‘begetting’ mentioned in Psalm 2 and its cross-references has nothing to do with his origin.

But it has everything to do with the fact that he is of the same essence as the Father. Expressions like ‘eternal generation,’ ‘only begotten Son,’ and others pertaining to the filiation of Christ must all be understood in this sense: Scripture employs them to underscore the absolute oneness of essence between Father and Son. In other words, such expressions aren’t intended to evoke the idea of procreation; they are meant to convey the truth about the essential oneness shared by the Members of the Trinity.

My previous view was that Scripture employed Father-Son terminology anthropomorphically — accommodating unfathomable heavenly truths to our finite minds by casting them in human terms. Now I am inclined to think that the opposite is true: Human father-son relationships are merely earthly pictures of an infinitely greater heavenly reality. The one true, archetypical Father-Son relationship exists eternally within the Trinity. All others are merely earthly replicas, imperfect because they are bound up in our finiteness, yet illustrating a vital eternal reality.

If Christ’s sonship is all about his deity, someone will wonder why this applies to the Second Member of the Trinity alone, and not to the Third. After all, we don’t refer to the Holy Spirit as God’s Son, do we? Yet isn’t he also of the same essence as the Father?

Of course he is. The full, undiluted, undivided essence of God belongs alike to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is but one essence; yet he exists in three Persons. The three Persons are co-equal, but they are still distinct Persons. And the chief characteristics that distinguish between the Persons are wrapped up in the properties suggested by the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Theologians have labeled these properties paternity, filiation, and spiration. That such distinctions are vital to our understanding of the Trinity is clear from Scripture. How to explain them fully remains something of a mystery.

In fact, many aspects of these truths may remain forever inscrutable, but this basic understanding of the eternal relationships within the Trinity nonetheless represents the best consensus of Christian understanding over many centuries of Church history. I therefore affirm the doctrine of Christ’s eternal sonship while acknowledging it as a mystery into which we should not expect to pry too deeply.

Featured Photo: a detail from a photo of Annaba, Algeria, close to the ruins of Hippo Regius, where Augustine ministered, by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash.

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‘I am no expert on Rutherford, and I have been selective in what I have chosen to share about him. How are we to glory in a man who viewed himself as a ‘sad piece of clay’? If we are to understand how he walked with God we will need to remember that. That assessment of himself is not a glimpse of Rutherford’s low self esteem, but of a man who had come to know God and who walked with God. That attitude is what we are all to attain, weak and fragile sinners saved by the grace of God, easily broken, but very favoured men too, in whom the power of God is being shown. What are the pulse beats of Rutherford’s walk with God – especially in the light of his letters? Richard Baxter thought his letters ‘almost inspired’ – and Baxter was no lover of Presbyterianism.

1 – The life lived for God is a life of Christo-centrism.

His longing was to lift the Lord Jesus high in the nation of Scotland. The majesty and loveliness of Christ was the outstanding theme of his life, and his letters show this. This is quintessential Calvinism. It is experimental divinity. Others have made much of religious experience. We Calvinists are charismatic Christians because we love the Lord Christ who first loved us. The most eminent Reformed men through the ages are those who have esteemed Christ highly. Jesus Christ is the glory of his church.

2– A life lived for God puts truth before consequence.

Rutherford lived in a day when the established church had moved far from its moorings. His opposition to every betrayal of Christ brought him into troubles, some of which was caused by his own excess. There is no quarrel more honest than to suffer for the truth. God is able to set tables in the wilderness for his own people. It is better to be there with God than anywhere without him.

3 – A life lived with God shares in his deep concern for God’s people.

Rutherford had vast learning, and yet he knew the need for shepherds to care for the Christ’s sheep. It is one of the most moving features that in spite of all their massive learning and theological controversy they laboured night and day for the souls of their flocks. The people we minister to are the flock of God

4 – A life lived for God cultivates a deep sense of the sinfulness of sin.

He was conscious of his ‘abominable vileness.’ It is only a deep Spirit-generated awareness of his own heart that can make us aware of other hearts’ needs. Rutherford was a man of like passions as ourselves. When you read John Owen you realise that that Puritan knows our hearts. We have tried so hard to be relevant to our culture that we have lost the biblical view of sin. If you would know what sin is then go to Mount Calvary, exhorted Thomas Goodwin. Rutherford never sought to escape from that view of his abominable vileness. That is one of the distinguishing marks of gospel Christianity.

5 – A life lived for God ministers Christ’s compassion to Christ’s storm-tossed saints.

You see this in so many of his letters as Rutherford seeks to comfort and strengthen his people. ‘It is hard to keep sight of Christ in a storm,” he wrote. I sometimes look at the books that men have recently written, and I think, “This has all come from the study.” But Rutherford’s books came from his heart and his ministry to others.

6 – A life lived for God is a life of manifold and increasing temptations.

The greatest temptation out of hell is to live without temptations, he wrote. Grace withers without adversity. Jesus Christ from his birth to his death was assailed with temptations. If we are walking with God we will be pressed even beyond measure. If our Saviour knew what it was to experience constant temptation should we experience anything less? We have allowed the world to imagine that an evangelical is a professing Christian with a perpetual grin on his face. “Hast thou no scars,” wrote Amy Carmichael in her most well-known poem as she searches us about our lack of suffering for Christ. Rutherford could not escape the cost of following Jesus Christ.

7– A life lived for God submits uncomplainingly to God’s providence.

Rutherford knew the loss of both his children, accepted this, and comforted others in the same trial.

8 – A life lived for God has an eagerness for heaven.

The centre of Rutherford’s life was Jesus Christ; his goal was to be with Christ, the dawning of the marriage day, the Lord finally coming over the mountains to us. He described himself as often borne down and hungry for the wedding feast above. They were heavenly-minded men and women. Their lives were full of longings for Christ and his glory. Rutherford and his colleagues engaged with their world, and they sought to reclaim it for Christ, but their great goal was to be with Christ.

Rutherford was a man of extremes. So was Samson. Consider the book of Judges being put in the canon of Scripture. Rutherford was extraordinarily generous-spirited, but also a bitter controversialist. He opposed godly David Dickson bitterly. In Rutherford’s day many men could not see further than their own convictions, and yet he also expressed a better spirit too, longing for a better day.

If you are a Christian at all you will read Rutherford’s writings, especially his letters, and your heart will be quickened by it. Rutherford was a brilliant all-round Christian. In his dying words he said, “My Lord and Master is chief of ten thousand of thousands. None is comparable to him in heaven or in earth. Dear brethren, do all for him. Pray for Christ. Preach for Christ. Do all for Christ. Beware of men-pleasing.”

I hope we have been reminded of these above points which are the distinguishing marks of those who call themselves ‘reformed’ The heart of biblical religion is love for Christ, and while that love has got us in its grip, though we may never be a Rutherford, we will be assured that Christ in love pitied us when we were damnable and he saved us.

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The Value of the Gospel

No men in the world want help like them that want the Gospel. A man may want liberty, and yet be happy, as Joseph was; a man may want peace, and yet be happy, as David was; a man may want children, and yet be blessed, as Job was; a man may want plenty, and yet be full of comfort, as Micaiah was; but he that wants the Gospel, wants every thing that should do him good. A throne without the Gospel is but the devil’s dungeon. Wealth without the Gospel is fuel for hell. Advancement without the Gospel is but a going high to have the greater fall.

Austin refused to delight in Cicero’s ‘Hortensius,’ because there was not in it the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is all, and in all; and where he is wanting there can be no good. Hunger cannot truly be satisfied without manna, the bread of life, which is Jesus Christ; and what shall a hungry man do that hath no bread? Thirst cannot be quenched without that water or living spring, which is Jesus Christ; and what shall a thirsty soul do without water? A captive, as we are all, cannot be delivered without redemption, which is Jesus Christ; and what shall the prisoner do without his ransom? Fools, as we are all, cannot be instructed without wisdom, which is Jesus Christ; without him we perish in our folly. All building without him is on the sand, which will surely fall. All working without him is in the fire, where it will be consumed. All riches without him have wings, and will away. ‘Mallem ruere cum Christo, quam regnare cum Caesare,’ said Luther. A dungeon with Christ, is a throne; and a throne without Christ, a hell. Nothing so ill, but Christ will compensate. The greatest evil in the world is sin, and the greatest sin was the first; and yet Gregory feared not to cry, ‘O felix culpa, quae talem meruit redemptorem!’ ‘O happy fault, which found such a Redeemer!’ All mercies without Christ are bitter; and every cup is sweet that is seasoned with a drop of his blood; he truly is ‘amor et deliciae humani generis,’ – the love and delight of the sons of men, without whom they must perish eternally; for there is no other name given unto them, whereby they may be saved [Acts 4.12]. He is the way; men without him are Cains, wanderers, vagabonds. He is the truth; men without him are liars, like the devil, who was so of old. He is the life; without him men are dead, dead in trespasses and sins. He is the light; without him men are in darkness, and go they know not whither. He is the vine; those that are not grafted in him are withered branches, prepared for the fire. He is the rock; men not built on him are carried away with a flood. He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the author and the ender, the founder and the finisher of our salvation. He that hath not him, hath neither beginning of good, nor shall have end of misery. O blessed Jesus! how much better were it not to be, than to be without thee! – never to be born, than not to die in thee! A thousand hells come short of this, eternally to want Jesus Christ, as men do that want the Gospel.

From ‘A Vision of Unchangeable, Free Mercy’, preached before the House of Commons, 1646.

Decayed Churches and the Responsibility of the Ministry

Let us not pretend that the repentance and reformation called for respect the public enormous sins of the nation, in atheism, profaneness, sensuality, luxury, pride, oppression, hatred of the truth, contempt of the ministry of the Gospel, and the like. They do so, indeed, but not only; they respect also the decays in faith, love, zeal, with love of the world, conformity unto it, lukewarmness, that are found amongst the most eminent professors of religion. This is our present wound; here lies our weakness, namely, in the want of a quick, active, zealous ministry, to call and stir up magistrates and people to effectual repentance, and turning to God. Unless this be given unto us, I fear we cannot be saved. If it be otherwise, if we have a ministry that really do attend unto their duty in this matter, I beg their pardon for other apprehensions: but then I shall think it the most pregnant sign of approaching destruction; seeing it is apparent unto all that their endeavours have neither fruit nor success . . .

Ministers have the principal means of repentance and reformation committed to their management. From them is the beginning and carrying on of this work expected and required. Hereof, as unto their sincerity and diligence, they must give an account at the last day. And if this spring be stopped, whence should the refreshing waters of repentance and reformation arise? But yet herein the principal difficulty of the whole work doth consist. For,

One, some there are, pretending unto this office, in whom lies no small part of the evil that is to be reformed; persons who labour among the most forward to fill up the measure of the iniquities of this nation; such as whose ignorance, negligence, profaneness, and debauchery, are, in all their effects, transfused and communicated unto all that are about them. Shall we expect that such persons will be instrumental in the reforming of others, who hate to be reformed themselves? [Jer. 23.15]. It was so of old. But,

Two, there are very few of this sort of persons who will be at the charge of carrying on this work. They may quickly find what it will cost them; for unless they are exemplary in it themselves, it is vain once to attempt the pressing of it upon others. They cannot go about it without great retrenchings of that which they have esteemed their liberty in the course of their conversations. All compliance with unreformed persons, for secular ends; all conformity unto the course of the world, in jollities and pride of life; all ostentation of riches, wealth, and power; all self-seeking and self-pleasing; all lightness and carnal confidences, must utterly be cast away. And not only so, but unless, by incessant prayers and supplications, with earnestness and perseverance, they labour for fresh anointings with the Spirit of grace in their own souls, that faith, and love, and zeal for God, and compassion for the souls of men, and readiness for the cross, may revive and flourish in them, they will not be useful, nor instrumental in this work. And is it any wonder that the most of them think it better to suffer things to go on at the present rate, than to venture at that which will cost them so dear in its pursuit? The truth is, I know very few, if any, who are meet and fit to engage in this work in a visible eminent manner; those who have the best, almost the only, opportunities for it, seem to be asleep.

Three, besides the charge they must be at themselves, they perceive the opposition they shall meet withal from others. They find that they shall not only disoblige and provoke all sorts of persons, and lose many of their useful friends, but also expose themselves unto obloquy, scorn, contempt, and reproach of all sorts. He is a lost man in this world, who, without respect of persons, will engage seriously in this work; every day he shall find one or other displeased, if not provoked. This neither they nor their families can well bear withal. Indeed, the hardest and most difficult service that ever God called any of his ministers unto, excepting only Jesus Christ and his apostles, hath been in the endeavouring the reformation of backsliding or spiritually-decayed churches. These are the two witnesses which, in all ages, have prophesied in sack-cloth. Such was the ministry of Elijah, which brought him unto that conclusion, and an earnest longing to be delivered by death from his work and ministry [1 Kings 19.4]. So was that of Jeremiah, in the like season, whereof he so complains [Chap.15.10]. John the Baptist, in the same work, lost first his liberty, then his life. And, in after ages, Chrysostom, for the same cause, was hated by the clergy, persecuted by the court, and at length driven into banishment, where he died. Most men care not how little a share they have in such a work as this, whose reward will reach them according to the proportion of their engagement in it. All churches, all persons almost, would willingly be let alone in the condition wherein they are; they that would press them unto due reformation, ever were, and ever will be, looked on as their troublers.

Hence, then, it is that our wound is incurable. Few of this sort are convinced of the present necessity of this duty; they hope things are indifferently well with them and their flocks, that they may endure their time well enough. Few are willing to undergo the charge and trouble of it, to put all their present circumstances into disorder. Few have received an anointing for the work; many are able to dispute against any attempts of it; and not a few have expectations of strange deliverances without it.

From ‘The Design Of Impendent Judgements’, 1681.

Faith in the Holy Spirit

Faith will also mind the soul that God hath yet the fullness and residue of the Spirit, and can pour it out when he pleases to recover us from this woeful state and condition, and to renew us to holy obedience unto himself. There are more promises of God’s giving supplies of his Spirit to deliver us from inward decays, than there are for putting forth the acts of his power to deliver us from our outward enemies. And God is as able to do the inward work, to revive and renew a spirit of faith, love, and holiness, of meekness, humility, self-denial, and readiness for the cross: he is able, with one word and act of his grace, to renew it; as he is able, by one act of his power, to destroy all his enemies, and make them the footstall of Christ, when he pleases. Live in the faith of this.

The psalmist saith, in Psalm 147: 16, 17, ‘He scattereth the hoarfrost;’ and the issue is, the earth is frozen; he brings a death upon it. But saith he, in Psalm 104: 30, ‘Thou sendest forth thy Spirit; and thou renewest the face of the earth.’ In like manner there is deadness upon all churches and professors, in some measure, at this time; but God, who hath the fullness of the Spirit, can send him forth and renew the face of the soul, can give professors and profession another face; not to trim and trick, as now so often is done; not so high and haughty, not so earthly and worldly, as is now so much seen; but humble, meek, holy, broken-hearted, and self-denying. God can send forth his Spirit when he pleases, and give all our churches and professors a new face, in the verdure and flourishing of his grace in them. When God will do this I know not; but I believe God can do this; he is able to do it, able to renew all his churches, by sending out supplies of the Spirit, whose fullness is with him, to recover them in the due and appointed time. And more; I believe truly that when God hath accomplished some ends upon us, and hath stained the glory of all flesh, he will renew the power and glory of religion among us again, even in this nation.

This, then, is what we are called to, and is required of us, – namely, faith in the faithfulness of Christ, who hath built his church upon the rock, [so] that, be things never so bad, it shall not be prevailed against; faith in the fullness of the Spirit, and his promise to send him to renew the face of the church; faith in apprehending the truth of God, who hath foretold these things; and faith putting us upon those especial duties that God requires at our hands in such a season.

From ‘The Use Of Faith, If Popery Should Return Upon Us’, 1680.

Meditation upon Christ

Observe from the words, ‘I speak of the things which I have made touching the King’ [Ps. 45.1], that it is the duty of believers to be making things concerning Jesus Christ. Now, to be making things concerning Jesus Christ, is to meditate upon him – to have firm and fixed meditations upon Christ, and upon the glory of his excellencies: this is it that here is called, ‘The things I have made,’ composed, framed in my mind.’ He did not make pictures of Christ, or frame such and such images of him; but he meditated upon Christ. It is called, ‘Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,’ in 2 Cor. 3.18. What is the glory of the Lord? Why, it is the glory of his person, the glory of his kingdom, the glory of his love. Where are these to be seen? They are all represented in the glass. What glass? The glass of the Gospel. The Gospel hath a reflection upon it of all these glories of Christ, and makes a representation of them unto us. What is our work and business? Why, it is to behold this glory; that is, to contemplate upon it by faith, to meditate upon it, which is here called making ‘things touching the King.’ This is also called ‘Christ’s dwelling in us,’ [Eph. 3.17] and, ‘The word of Christ dwelling richly in us,’ [Col. 3.16]; which is, when the soul abounds in thoughts of Christ. I have had more advantage by private thoughts of Christ than by any thing in this world; and I think when a soul hath satisfying and exalting thoughts of Christ himself, his person and glory, it is the way whereby Christ dwells in such a soul. If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ’s kingdom, and of his love. A heart that is inclined to converse with Christ as he is represented in the Gospel, is a thriving heart; and if estranged from it and backward to it, it is under deadness and decays.

There is an unconquerable desire implanted in the heart of every believer in the world to be like unto Jesus Christ; because God hath, in the way of an ordinance, appointed him to be our pattern. And we are but trifling Christians, and a dishonour to our profession, if we make not this the design of our souls continually, that we may be in the world as Christ was, that the same mind may be in us that was in him [Phil. 2.5]; the same meekness, humility, self-denial, faith, love, patience, that was in him.

From ‘The Excellency of Christ’, 1674.

Featured Photo by Simon Godfrey on Unsplash

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Moreover, his was an age in which people didn’t pussyfoot (a word that Calvin probably would have liked to use had he known it) about what they had to say. When he took on the Roman Catholic Church in all of its contemporary sinfulness and perfidiousness, he did not hesitate to tell it like it was (a phrase he also would like to have used). What these parenthetical statements indicate is that the way in which Calvin employed words and phrases would drive the school marms crazy, but helped the congregations that flocked from all over Europe to understand the word he preached. And they not only understood, but they carried it back home, having been set on fire by the incendiary proclamation that sounded forth in Geneva.

I have recently been looking at a few of Calvin’s sermons from I Timothy (not all of them) and as I moved along was struck by some of the words and phrases that appear in these messages. I have listed a few samples. I hope reading them and realizing the effect that they had upon the reformation will embolden you to use language people understand, even if it is non-academic, non-politically correct and, at times, somewhat shocking. Here are a few of his colloquialisms:

Blind buzzards, The cart before the horse, Trouble our brains, A player and a juggler, What God shot at, Make no bones about it, Build castles in the air, A very rare seed, He will not stick to, Nothing but the wind, He shall not only be a fluttering calf, but very dumb, A lot of block-headed asses, Who shall bear away the ball, Pass not a pin for it, Belched and vomited out of the stinking mouths of the wicked, As clear as the sun at noonday, Intractable colts, Paul meant to have given them a nipper, Not a pin’s point, All kinds of starting holes, Beat their heads together, Far out of square, Hellhounds, Butt their horns against God, To run the full rein, Was clean changed, Say from the teeth forward, The least jot, Cast up our noses against him, Was over the ears, In a flumber, Go to, So raging and horn mad, Till we break out necks again, Clean spoiled us, Light-headed fellows, Rock ourselves to sleep, Not able to go on one foot, His nose hard to the grindstone, Strike his top-sail, Paul stuck not to name these men, These vermin, As vile goats, They swim between two waters, Such a hotch potch, Scape scot free, All topsie turvie, Every wagging of a straw, So far out of square, Are as dead stocks, Gadding through the mountains, We are over the ears, Miserable creeping worms, Go about the bush, Well, sir, Flintnecked with cankered hearts, Would be checkmate with him, Our ears are beaten daily with his promise, Cast this in his teeth, Stretch out our wings as peacocks, Some little smackering of it, To humble us God must pare our nails, They understand no more than beasts do, The rest is but smoke, That puddle and sins that call themselves the Clergy, A bladder full of wind, They would take the moon between their teeth, His high place will cost him dearly, A brainsick fool, That matters go neck over head, Hatched out filthiness, A miserable and wretched carcass, At six and seven, Sins we have set on foot, Our eyes are hoodwinked, They have greased his fingers, Has that imprinted in his heart that he speaks with his mouth, Chop out of the way, Nothing must glitter but holiness, At every turning of a hand, Come to the pith of it and don’t stay in the bark, These varlets are but vermin, Settle ourselves to hear, He who nests here beneath, Play the rutterkin, Don’t poison the doctrine, Together by the ears, Occasions to bring us out of tune, Some spice of pride, Men must… let up their bristles, Man…is stark naught, Deacons are the hand of God, Crushed in the brains.

I have barely touched upon such material in the sermons. There is much, much more of the same. Some of the expressions you will recognize, others probably not. It really doesn’t matter – you get the point, don’t you? He spoke in the lively common language of the day. Though he was well educated, and one of the smartest men of his time, he didn’t let his education or ability get in the way of his message. He was willing to become a commoner for Christ. Aren’t you tired of reading and hearing the flat, abstract, drivel spouted forth by teachers and preachers who do not know how to talk like human beings? Do you have a time washing out the starch of the schools to which you went? Then, for starters, take a dose of Calvin. Lay hold of his sermons on Timothy and Titus. They’re in old English where you have to turn the seeming F’s into S’s, and contend with words spelled any old way because that way it would fit the size of the line. At first, it’s a bit difficult, but you’ll catch on quickly. Oh yes, look out for those straight lines over a letter that indicate an m or n has been left out; watch out for the use of an n instead of an m in a word used to fit the sentence into the line. Remember, when you find it somewhat difficult, that they had to set type by hand. And, finally, look for the single Y with a small letter above it. It stands for a TH, and the small letter helps you discover whether it’s they, that, those or whatever. It takes a little guessing, but the context helps and it soon becomes fun. Listing these words drove my spell check crazy! By the way, if you know what a ‘rutterkin’ is, please let me know.³ Thanks!

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EVEN though Farewell Sermons had been preached in many parishes on Sunday, August 17, there was a widespread feeling of uncertainty throughout the nation with regard to the direction and character of coming events. Something of this uncertainty can be detected in the words of some of the sermons that were preached on that day. We find, for example, Thomas Watson saying to his people in his morning sermon, “I will not promise that I shall still preach among you, nor will I say that I shall not, I desire to be guided by the silver thread of God’s Word, and of God’s providence.” But, on the other hand, speaking on the same day in another London church, Thomas Lye said, “It is most probable, beloved, whatever others may think, but in my opinion (God may work wonders) neither you nor I shall ever see the faces of, or have a word more to speak to one another till the day of judgment.” The variation between these two statements does not mean that Lye was more resolute than Watson in his decision not to subscribe to the Act of Uniformity, on that point they were both equally firm; but there lies behind the words of the preachers a differing degree of un­certainty whether or not the Act would actually be enforced against them.

They were not without grounds for hopefulness, for although the Act had been passed by Parliament, the King could still exercise his clemency in an Act of Indulgence by which at least some of those who failed to conform might be allowed by the royal prerogative to retain their churches. For Clarendon, the King’s minister, had just promised such a favour to Manton, Bates, Calamy and other Puritans, provided they petitioned the King for it. This news would doubtless be circulated and discussed amongst the London ministers and word of it was carried to the country. The diary of John Angier, the Lancashire Puritan, carries this entry in the week preceding Bartholomew’s Day: “August 20 was a day of general seeking God in reference to the state of the Church; that very day several ministers were before some of the Council and received encouragement to go on in the ministry. A letter read to them from the King to the Bishops that no man should be troubled for Non­conformity at least till his cause was heard before the Council. The news came to Manchester by Saturday post and was that night dispersed by messengers sent to several places. By means hereof many ministers that intended not to preach fell to their work, which caused great joy in many congregations.” Similarly, Henry New­come of Manchester writes in his diary on Bartholomew’s Eve, “I received a letter from Mr. Ashurst which gave us an account that past all expectation there was some indulgence to be hoped for in some cases.”

Clarendon’s promise was not merely a device to ease the tension in the nation till Bartholomew’s Day was passed. [1] He and the King had also grounds for uncertainty. They were not sure what the political repercussions of a wholesale ejection of the Puritans might be; the number of the nonconforming clergy was still unknown, although it was evident they would include some of the most eminent names in the land; and there was the fear lest the powerful Presbyterian party might make common cause with the Indepen­dents and thus, in Clarendon’s words, “give a great shock to the present settlement.” Charles, however, was also busy with other affairs. The previous May he had married Catherine of Braganza, and Saturday, August 23, was the day appointed for her public arrival and welcome at Whitehall. Amidst a brilliant regatta of barges and boats, the King and his Roman Catholic Queen sailed down the river from Hampton Court; “music floated from bands on deck, and thundering peals roared from pieces of ordnance on shore”. “I was spectator,” wrote John Evelyn in his diary, “of the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames.” But there were many in London that day that had no heart for the festivities. Far removed in thought from the colour and pageantry of the Queen’s arrival, a great company of silent and mourning believers was gathered in the parish of St. Austin’s for the burial of Simeon Ashe. Ashe had long been one of the popular Puritan leaders and “he went seasonably to heaven,” says Calamy, “at the very time when he was cast out of the Church. He was bury’d the very even of Bartholomew-Day.” The historian’s grandfather, the veteran Edmund Calamy of St. Mary Aldermanbury, was naturally the preacher on such an occasion, and that day he preached a sermon that was to be spoken of and read over for many years to come. His text was Isaiah 57:1, “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart, and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous are taken away from the evil to come.” The sermon is one of the finest examples of Puritan preach­ing, and though it does not strictly belong to the Farewell Sermons it is not surprising that it was given a place in the volume that was shortly to bear that title. Though Calamy packs his exposition with doctrines, he so blends his teaching with illustration, and his reproofs with exhortations, that he was in no danger of losing the attention of his hearers. Take the following example:

“Many of us deal with our Ministers as we do with a strange sight that is to be seen near our doors. We are not much concerned about seeing it, but a stranger that comes from a far country is curious and very careful to see it immediately. So do we in this city especially; I have had experience of it by being here many years. Strangers that come out of the country, many times got that good by a Minister that his own people do not, because they think their Minister is continually with them. But a stranger knows he is there but for a day and he hears so that he carries Christ home with him, and a great deal of consolation also. Beloved, this is a great fault; I beseech you remember the righteous must be gathered. Let us therefore do with them as we do with books that are borrowed; if a man borrows a book he knows he must keep it but for a day or two and therefore he will be sure to read it over, whereas if the book be a man’s own, he lays it aside because he knows he can read it any time. Remember your Ministers are but lent you, they are not your own, and you know not but God may take your Elijahs from you this night.”

Other restrained passages, similar to this, convey something of Calamy’s feelings on Bartholomew’s Eve. “God doth on purpose,” he says, “take away righteous men that they might not see the evil that is coming on a nation … thus Augustine died a little before Hippo was taken, and Pareus a little before Heidelberg was taken, and Luther a little before the wars in Germany began.” If our means of communication had existed in those times Calamy would also have been able to tell his congregation that on the very day previous to their gathering Edward Bowles, the north-country Puritan leader, had been buried at York. Calamy spent much time that August afternoon showing that the perishing of the righteous man “is nothing but his gathering to God, Christ, and the blessed company of saints and angels.” Behind his desire to emphasize that truth there lay a very practical concern; for he was not sure how soon his hearers might have need of this comfort. We can read between the lines in the following extract and appreciate something of what it meant to those who listened in the stillness of St. Austin’s church: “Whatever befalls a child of God in this life, though he be scattered by wicked men, from England into foreign countries, though he wanders up and down in deserts and wildernesses, though he be scattered from house to prison, yet there shall be a gathering time shortly. There will a time come when all the saints will be gathered to Christ, and to one another, never to part any more …. Comfort yourselves therefore with these words against the fear of death; look upon death as a gathering to Christ. You are here as Daniel in the lions’ den, as Jeremiah in the dungeon, yet there will come a gathering, and if you die in a good cause, you shall not perish but be gathered to Christ, to his saints and angels.”

With such thoughts as these in their hearts, men paid their last tribute to old “Father” Ashe, and while the Palace at Whitehall was to resound with revelry far into the night, in the Puritan homes of London there was the knowledge that Saturday evening, that not only in the parish of St. Austin’s but all over London there would be no sermons on the following day like the one that had been preached that afternoon by the rector of St. Mary Aldermanbury. At mid­night that night the Act of Uniformity came into force. As John Stoughton writes, “The feast of St. Bartholomew became a fast, as in the Valley of Megiddon, so in Puritan England, ‘The land mourned, every family apart’.” The great question in many minds was whether that 24th of August was to be the forerunner of many dark Sundays to come or whether the King would even now honour the promises he had given at Breda and grant the Indulgence of which Clarendon had spoken so confidently. Before another week had passed the uncertainty was to be finally removed.

On Wednesday, August 27, some of the London Presbyterian leaders presented their petition to the King, desiring compassion, “whereby we may be continued in our status to teach the people obedience to God and your Majesty.” The following day the Petition was laid before the Privy Council, Clarendon evidently expecting that the King would have little difficulty in imposing his will and granting the Indulgence. None of the bishops were able to attend the hastily summoned meeting, none save Gilbert Sheldon, the Bishop of London. But Sheldon was not the man to be dismayed by the lack of his fellow bishops to support him and with “a front of iron” he stood against the proposal. He knew the strength of the Puritans in London–the party “in whose jaws” he lived–and he was determined to break it. How could he unless their ministers were silenced? If the Indulgence was published, he threatened, he might choose to obey Parliament rather than the King and enforce the law despite the royal wish. The threat was too much for Charles. He had no wish to face the opposition of Parliament, on whose good-will he depended for so much of the revenue he was to exhaust upon his favourites and mistresses. As a man whose creed was that God would not damn a person for taking a little pleasure, it would be no loss to him to be rid of his Puritan clergy; and though it might have been more agreeable to the “good nature” with which he has been credited to have lessened the severity of the Act, Charles had no intention of suffering any hardship for a principle. Thus the Petition which Clarendon had urged the Puritans to present was thrown out. It only remained to be seen how they would face their defeat.

But it was not in the spirit of a defeat that the Puritans accepted the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity. Out-manoeuvred in a contest in which they claimed no skill, they knew at last where they stood, and with their hopes of relief from an earthly monarch smashed, they looked with surer confidence to Him in Whom “all the promises of God are Yea, and Amen.” The comfort of Baxter was one in which they all knew how to share:

Must I be driven from my books?

From house, and goods, and dearest friends?

One of Thy sweet and gracious looks

For more than this will make amends.

My Lord hath taught me how to want

A place wherein to lay my head;

While He is mine, I’ll be content

To beg, or lack my daily bread.

When the number of ministers who had not conformed to the Act gradually became known it was evident that the solidarity of the Puritan ranks had not broken in the crisis. A few who had been expected to come out had conformed, but the vast majority had never hesitated, and from all the counties of England there came news of the results of the Great Ejection. If we include the names of men who were silenced prior to the enforcement of the Act, the numbers of the ejected in the strongest Puritan areas reads thus:

In London, 76; in Essex, 99; in Kent, 62; in Lancashire, 61; in Norfolk, 60; in Devonshire, 121; in Yorkshire, 110 ; in Suffolk, 79; in Somerset, 62; in Wiltshire, 60; in Sussex, 65. These figures by no means convey a complete impression of the magnitude of the spiritual consequences involved in the Ejection. In Shropshire, for example, where only 36 men were silenced, we read that “almost all the more important towns of the county were left without ministers. From Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Bridgnorth, Wem, Ludlow, Whit­church and Newport the ministers were ejected.” [2]

The traditional figure of the number of ministers who ‘were ejected or silenced by the Act of Uniformity or by local authorities in the months preceding the legal and national enforcement of conformity was generally given as between 2,000 and 2,500. Recent scholarship has shown this estimate to be substantially correct; A. G. Matthews lists 1,760 ejections from churches in England, plus 149 Nonconformists–many of them preachers–from the two Universities and various schools; to this must be added the names of ministers who suffered in the same way in Wales–87 according to Calamy, 106 according to a later writer, Thomas Rees. The total is thus clearly over 2,000. Moreover Matthews’ figure do not include the number of Nonconformists who were not ministering in parish churches but who were nevertheless silenced by the terms of the law. These men belong spiritually to the number of the ejected (though they cannot strictly be given that description), for they belonged to a Puritan group whose considerable spiritual influence the authorities were equally determined to terminate. It included Independent ministers like the late Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, Dr. John Owen, and “working-class” Puritans who were not ministers of congregations but who sometimes possessed preaching gifts of no mean worth. Among the latter was John Bunyan, of whom Owen once declared to Charles II, “could I possess that tinker’s abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my learning.”

None of the ejected ministers attempted to publish a list of their number and it was not until 1702 that Edmund Calamy, the younger (1671-1732), was provoked by the misrepresentations of opponents who took “a liberty strangely to diminish” the number of the ejected, to prove that the number was in fact above 2,000. [3] Even so, Calamy’s concern, as he says in his Preface, was not in numbers–they being of little account “in a case of this nature”­–but in giving a true record of the men of 1662 in answer to writers who had laboured to blacken their memory, “bespattering these worthy men whose names rather deserved embalming.”

Concerning the character and worth of the ejected ministers there has been much written in former days, the evaluation being frequently determined by the viewpoint of the writer. John Walker, the Anglican historian who attempted to answer the publication of Edmund Calamy, regarded not a few of the ejected as “Mechanicks, and Fellows bred to the meanest Occupations”; many of them, he believed, had never been at either of the Universities and had no degrees, “Besides which, some of them had run in with, and vented many of the distinguished Enthusiasms, Errors, Heresies, and other monstrous Opinions (not to say Blasphemies) of the Times.”

John Richard Green, the English secular historian, reached a very different conclusion in his assessment of the ejected. “The rectors and vicars who were driven out,” he writes, “were the most learned and the most active of their order. The bulk of the great livings throughout the country were in their hands. They stood at the head of the London clergy, as the London clergy stood in general repute at the head of their class throughout England. They occupied the higher posts at the two Universities. No English divine, save Jeremy Taylor, rivalled Howe as a preacher. No parson was so renowned a controversialist, or so indefatigable a parish priest, as Baxter. And behind these men stood a fifth of the whole body of the clergy, men whose zeal and labour had diffused through­out the country a greater appearance of piety and religion than it had ever displayed before. But the expulsion of these men was far more to the Church of England than the loss of their individual services. It was the definite expulsion of a great party which from the time of the Reformation had played the most active and popular part in the life of the Church. It was the close of an effort which had been going on ever since Elizabeth’s accession to bring the English Communion into closer relations with the Reformed Communions of the Continent, and into greater harmony with the religious instincts of the nation at large.” [4]

Among Nonconformist writings there is perhaps no better description of the men who went out than that given by Dr. John Taylor. “The Bartholomew divines, or the ministers ejected in the year 1662,” he writes, were “men prepared to lose all, and to suffer martyrdom itself, and who actually resigned their livings, which with most of them were, under God, all that they and their families had to subsist upon, rather than sin against God, and desert the cause of civil and religious liberty; which, together with serious religion, would, I am persuaded, have sunk to a very low ebb in the nation had it not been for the bold and noble stand these worthies made against imposition upon conscience, profaneness, and arbitrary power. They had the best education England could afford; most of them were excellent scholars, judicious divines, pious, faithful, and laborious ministers; of great zeal for God and religion; undaunted and courageous in their Master’s work; keeping close to their people in the worst of times; diligent in their studies; solid, affectionate, powerful, lively, awakening preachers; aiming at the advancement of real vital religion in the hearts and lives of men, which, it cannot be denied, flourished greatly wherever they could influence. Particularly, they were men of great devotion and eminent abilities in prayer, uttered, as God enabled them, from the abundance of their hearts and affections; men of divine eloquence in pleading at the throne of grace, raising and melting the affections of their hearers, and being happily instrumental in transfusing into their souls the same spirit and heavenly gift. And this was the ground of all their other qualifications; they were excellent men, because excellent, instant, and fervent in prayer.”

It was because the Nonconformists of 1662 had commended their cause and persons to God in prayer that they could be so little con­cerned about how their reputations fared in the hands of men. Many of them had left this world before Calamy’s defence had appeared forty years after “Black Bartholomew’s Day.” If a man like Thomas Watson had cared to write an Apologia for the Non­conformists, what a sparkling book we might have had, but Watson, who died while engaged in secret prayer many years after 1662, was content to leave these things unchronicled on earth. Old Richard Sibbes had long since spoken counsel which they were happy to follow: “Let us commit the fame and credit of what we are or do to God. He will take care of that: let us take care to be and to do as we should, and then for noise and report, let it be good or ill as God will send it …. If we seek to be in the mouths of men, to dwell in the talk of men, God will abhor us …. We should be carried with the Spirit of God and with a holy desire to serve God and our brethren, and to do all the good we can, and never care for the speeches of the world …. We shall have glory enough, and be known enough to devils, to angels, and men, ere long. Therefore as Christ lived a hidden life–that is, He was not known what He was, that so He might work our salvation–so let us be content to be hidden ones. There will be a Resurrection of Credits, as well as of bodies. We’ll have glory enough by-and-by.”

Citations

1 John Evelyn’s Diary reflects something of the tension in London. On August 20 he writes, “There were strong guards in the City this day, apprehending some tumults, many of the Presbyterian Ministers not conforming.”

2 T. Gasquoine, who gives an outline of some of the ejected in Salop and Northants in his book John Penry and other Heroes, pp. 113-4⁶.

3 An Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s History of His Life and Times, the sub-title gives a truer idea of the main contents of the book, “With an Account of many others of those Worthy Ministers who were Ejected, after the Restoration of King Charles the Second.” Calamy’s work is much more than an abridgment of Baxter’s Autobiography (Reliquize Baxterianre) which had been published posthumously in 1696. Calamy later revised and enlarged his work; it was reprinted, with modifications and additions, by Samuel Palmer (1741-1813) under the new title The Nonconformist’s Memorial and has reached probably its final form in the carefully edited edition by A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised, 1933. The latter volume is unfortunately out of print, but the valuable Introduction to it was reprinted separately in 1959, Introduction To Calamy Revised.

4 A Short History of the English People, pp. 622-3.

This article first appeared in the June 1962 edition of the Banner of Truth Magazine (Issue 26).

The Banner of Truth is pleased to publish a selection of the ‘Farewell Sermons’ of the Great Ejection divines as a Puritan Paperback.

Photo by Rob Wicks on Unsplash

The post The Passing of Black Bartholomew (3/3) appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

THOUGH many of the Puritan ministers were far removed from the intrigues and disputations going on in London, they were never­theless deeply concerned in their outcome and throughout the land they waited for word from the capital. For many months before the Act of Uniformity was published rumours were circulating, and even amidst the peaceful beauties of far-off Flintshire we can hear their echoes in the diaries of Philip Henry. “Great expectations,” he writes in July 1661, “about a severe Act about imposing the Common prayer and Ceremonies passed both houses of Parliament but not signed by the King.” Again, “News from London of speedy severity intended against the Nonconformists. The Lord can yet, if he will, break the snare. If not, welcome the will of God.”

Although news of an Act of Uniformity had thus been heard of well in advance, it was not, as has already been said, until May 1662 that its terms were made known. Three months only were given the Puritans for deliberation and that in spite of the fact that the revised Prayer Book to which they must give unfeigned assent was not to be ready for publication till August 6–only three weeks before St. Bartholomew’s Day. In an age in which books had to be despatched and circulated in a manner far different from what we are accustomed to today, this meant that in certain parts of the country such as Lancashire, ministers could not obtain copies before August 22, and in some cases not even then. We hear of one ejected minister who was subsequently to complain that he was silenced for not declaring his consent to a Book which he never saw or could see.

The shortness of the interval allowed to the Puritans before the Act was enforced also hindered the assembling of any national Conference to formulate a joint decision. It is true, of course, that much correspondence circulated in these three months of trial and anxiety, and those who could do so met together for mutual con­sultation, but, in general, it was in the quietness of their own homes that they arrived by prayer and thought at the individual decisions they were to make. The diary of Oliver Heywood, the faithful minister of Coley in Yorkshire, gives us a glimpse of what was being felt within men’s hearts all over the land. After noting the threats he had already received from ecclesiastical authorities, Heywood goes on to encourage himself in the thought that he was not alone in these trials: “Hitherto God hath helped: and now I am but in the same predicament with the rest of my brethren in the ministry since the passing of this fatal act of uniformity, which we are waiting for the execution of, which commenceth from the 24^th of August, which if not prevented will strike dead most of the godly ministers in England.” Heywood was in no doubt whether or not he should comply with the Act: “the conditions are too hard to be accepted. Woe be to us, if we preach not the gospel! but a double woe to us, if we enervate the gospel by legal ceremonies …. Our work is dear to us; but God is dearer, and we must not do the least evil to obtain the greatest good. There are worldly advantages enough to sway us to conformity, if conscience did not answer all the pleas of flesh and blood. The bargain will be too hard to provide a livelihood by making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. God can advance his work without our sinful shifts, and rear up monuments to his glory without our complying pre­varications: suffering may benefit the gospel as much as service, when God calls to it.”

But not all who were to arrive at the same decision as Heywood were able to determine their duty so immediately, and there were many reasons that at first inclined some to conform. Heywood’s own brother, Nathaniel, who was vicar of Ormskirk, confesses the struggle he had: “I have a loving, though poor, docible, though ignorant people; they flock in very great numbers to the Ordinances, and I have hopes of doing some good (it may be already begun) amongst them: I had some notion to Conform, but I will not change upon any account whatsoever; let me have your prayers, help me for this poor people which I love as my own child, and long after in the bowels of Christ.” The wife of Joseph Alleine of Taunton relates her husband’s similar experience: “Before the Act of Uniformity came out my husband was very earnest day and night with God, that his way might be made plain to him, and that he might not desist from such advantages of saving souls with any scruple upon his spirit. He seemed so moderate, that both myself and others thought he would have conformed, he often saying that he would not leave his work for small and dubious matters; but, when he saw those clauses of assent and consent, and renouncing the covenant, he was satisfied.” Edmund Calamy, the original historian and biographer of the ejected Puritans, tells us of Joshua Whitton, the rector of Thornhill, in Yorkshire, who being eager to know the contents of the Act of Uniformity, rode with two other ministers to York for that purpose to obtain an early sight of it, “with their cloak-bags full of distinctions, hoping they might get over it and keep their places.” But the reading of the Act silenced them, and “though they were all prudent and learned men, yet they returned with a resolution to quit their places rather than comply.”

Though the spiritual burden of leaving their congregations was generally uppermost in the minds of the Puritans, they were also in many cases tried by the threat of the material hardships to which those who failed to subscribe were to be suddenly exposed along with their families. As the corn ripened and the summer of 1662 wore on there were many spending their last weeks in the homes ­fragrant for their memories of those happier days when, as Philip Henry put it, “godliness was on the face of the nation”–and conscious of the pressing alternative, “we must either conform or leave all this by Bartholomew’s Day.” Moreover the Act of Uni­formity was not only armed with powers to exclude any who did not conform from their churches and parsonages, but also to exclude them in great measure even from a means of livelihood. An occupa­tion in any of the learned professions, whether law, medicine, school-teaching, private chaplaincies or tutorships, was henceforth to be legally confined to conformists. The Act thus threatened not merely to silence ministers and terminate their usefulness but, as Calamy said, to bury them alive. Is it any wonder then, that we find men like Edward Lawrence, vicar of Baschurch, Shropshire, declaring, “I have eleven arguments for conformity,” meaning his wife and ten children, “but Christ hath said, ‘Whoso loveth wife or children more than me, is not worthy of me’.” When asked how he meant to maintain them all he cheerfully replied that his family must live on the 6th of Matthew, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” The Puritans had long been exponents of the doctrine of living by faith, but under the shadow of Bartholomew’s Day some of them began to plunge more deeply into the riches of that truth. When asked how he should provide for his family if he did not subscribe, John Hickes, of Saltash, replied, “Had I as many children as that hen has chickens” -pointing to one with a numerous brood-“I should not question that God will provide for them all.” In the same spirit another said, “God feeds the young ravens and He will feed my children.”

It was not, however, only in the homes of the Puritans that men spent an uneasy summer. Possibly Charles, lounging amongst his lords and mistresses at Hampton Court, was far more uneasy, and Hyde (created Earl of Clarendon in April 1661) felt that events were grave enough to give him no repose from his schemings. As August approached, the reports which agents and informers sent to the government were far from assuring. Sir Edward Nicholas, a Secretary of State, was informed that the coast towns of the south were determined not to allow the reintroduction of the Common Prayer. Another report warned that the people would not submit to the “Act of Conformity.” “The Lancashire ministers,” wrote another, “talk little less than treason, and none intend to conform.” From various parts of the country came rumours of the raising of trained bands and of gunsmiths preparing arms. In July an idea was current that Cromwell’s soldiers–Independents–were waiting to learn what the Presbyterians would do, being themselves ready to take part in a general rising. In London people began to speak of the gravity of the situation. As August 24 drew near, Pepys wrote, “I pray God the issue may be good, for the discontent is great.” De Wiguefort, the Dutch Minister, informed his government that Parliament, “which had been the idol of the nation, was now sinking in popular respect.” The Roman Catholic Signor Giaverina was even more fearful in the warning he sent the Venetian Senate:

“Things are moving exactly as they were when the war began in the time of the late King.” It was in keeping with all these reports that we find the King’s men busy in the summer of 1662 demolishing fortifications at such places as Northampton and Gloucester and circulating instructions to lieutenants of counties to take pre­cautions against rebellion.

In actual fact there was no foundation for the government’s scare.

There was no danger of the King being again sent on his travels. It was an entire misjudgment of the men with whom they were dealing for the government ever to imagine Presbyterian homes as centres of insurrection against the very monarchy which they had done so much to restore. Rather the Puritans were taken up with matters about which Charles II had never dreamt; it was not the politics of England that was the issue around Puritan firesides, but rather the affairs of that realm where, as the dying James Buchanan had once told the King’s grandfather, “few kings or great men ever come.” The days of Puritanism as a political power were over, the genera­tion of Pym and Hampden was in the grave, and the troops “who had dashed Rupert’s chivalry to pieces on Naseby field, who had scattered at Worcester the army of the aliens, who had renewed beyond the sea the glories of Crecy and Agincourt, had mastered Parliament, had brought a King to justice and the block,” [1] were now farmers and traders again with piety enough to recognize in the sad events of the Restoration their need of bowing to the inscrutable will of God, and content henceforth to be “known among their fellow-men by no other sign than their greater soberness and industry.” Cromwell’s Ironsides were never to march again.

Not all the nonconforming Puritans who were to be silenced by the midnight preceding “Black Bartholomew’s Day” terminated their ministry on the same Sunday. Some continued in their pulpits beyond the last hour allowed by law and made Sunday, August 24, their day of farewell. Others either voluntarily or under compulsion from local authorities closed their ministry at an earlier date. Richard Baxter, for example, wishing his brethren to under­stand that he did not mean to conform, preached for the last time on May 25, anxious lest if he “stayed to the last day” some might suppose he meant to submit. Many used the intervening period before the enforcement of the Act to prepare their people for the blow from suitable Scriptures. James Creswick, rector of Fresh­water, Isle of Wight, preached for “some months” beforehand from Hebrews 10:34, “And took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in Heaven a better and an enduring substance.” Being thus armed for suffering, Creswick, who was a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, continued in his pulpit after August 24 until the Bishop of Winchester finally had the church doors shut against him and there was no preaching at all. We read of Thomas Ford of Chesterfield that “he saw the Bar­tholomew storm arising, and therefore gave his people some warm and affecting Sermons on Isaiah 5:6, ‘And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it’.” Similarly we are told of Joseph Alleine that he finished his burning ministry at Taunton with a course of sermons on the words, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

It was one week before the feast of St. Bartholomew that most of the Puritans stood for the last time in their pulpits. The experiences of Sunday, August 17, the “Farewell Sunday” as it became known, were among the darkest which Christians in England have ever had to endure. The memory of it stayed with the ejected all their days and they regarded it as an event which believers in this land should never forget. “The dismal transactions that have befallen the Church of God this day,” declared William Lock of Maidstone in his last words to his congregation, “deserve to be engraved in deep and in indelible characters, on pillars of the blackest marble, that the ages and generations to come may read and weep and bewail England’s loss.” “No Sunday in England,” writes the Church historian John Stoughton, “ever resembled exactly that which fell on the 17th of August, 1662. In after years, Puritan fathers and mothers related to their children the story of assembled crowds, of aisles, standing-places and stairs, filled to suffocation, of people clinging to open windows like swarms of bees, of overflowing throngs in churchyards and streets, of deep silence or stifled sobs, as the flock gazed on the shepherd–’sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more’.” [2].

Happily for us many of the words that were spoken on that Farewell Sunday have been preserved in the two volumes of Farewell Sermons, which in defiance of the King’s attempt to control the press were speedily issued after the event. The brown and worn pages of these now rare volumes bring near the thoughts of three centuries ago and by their help we can almost take our place to listen amidst the throngs that assembled on that distant summer’s day. Let us hear, for a moment, Richard Alleine ending his twenty-one years’ ministry at Batcombe, Somerset:

“The sun is setting upon not a few of the prophets; the shadows of evening are stretched forth upon us; our work seems to be at an end; our pulpits and our places must know us no more. This is the Lord’s doing; let all the earth keep silence before Him. It is not a light thing for me, brethren, to be laid aside from the work, and cast out from the vineyard of the Lord …. Since matters so stand that I must either lose my place or my peace, I cheerfully suffer myself to be thrust off the stage. And now, welcome the cross of Christ; welcome reproach; welcome poverty, scorn, and contempt, or whatever else may befall me on this account. This morning I had a flock, and you a pastor; now, behold a pastor without a flock, a flock without a shepherd: this morning I had a house, but now I have none; this morning I had a living, but now I have none. ‘The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’.”

It would be an interesting study, but beyond the scope of this present work, to examine the texts chosen for the Farewell Sermons and the main emphasis which the ejected ministers wished to leave with their hearers. Daniel Bull and John Cromwell took words of comfort and encouragement from Christ’s own farewell discourse and preached respectively from John 14:6 and John 16:33. Three eminent Puritans preached from Christ’s words to Sardis, Matthew Newcomen and John Whitlock from Revelation 3:3, “Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard and hold fast … ” and Joseph Caryl, a veteran of the Westminster Assembly and Rector of St. Magnus, London, from the verse which follows, “And they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.” Two of the leading London ministers, Lazarus Seaman and William Bates, closed their ministries with an exposition of the glorious Benediction in Hebrews 13:20–21, “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will …. ” Edmund Calamy, who was “reckoned to have the greatest interest in Court, City and Country, of any of the Ministers,” preached his farewell to the vast congregation of St. Mary Aldermanbury–which he had taught since the summer of 1639–from 2 Sam. 24:14, “And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait; let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man.” Few more solemn words were heard in England that day than Calamy’s as he expounded the doctrine that sin “doth bring Nations and Persons into external, internal, and eternal straits.” The man who had refused the diocese of Lichfield and Coventry and who had not spared the King when called to preach before him [3] was certainly not the man to flatter his hearers now; having pressed home the fact that “there is no way to avoid a national desolation but by a national reformation,” he concluded with an application from which we give the following extract:

“You have had the Spirit of God seven and thirty years in the faithful ministry of the Word, knocking at the door of your hearts, but many of you have hardened your hearts. Are there not some of you, I only put the question, that begin to loath the Manna of your souls and to look back towards Egypt again? Are there not some of you having itching ears, and who would fain have preachers that would feed you with dainty phrases, and who begin not to care for a minister that unrips your consciences, speaks to your hearts and souls, and would force you into heaven by frighting you out of your sins? Are there not some of you that by often hearing sermons are become sermon proof, that know how to sleep and scoff away sermons. I would be glad to say there are but few such; but the Lord knoweth there are too many that by long preaching get little good by preaching; insomuch that I have often said it, and say it now again, there is hardly any way to raise the price of the Gospel­ Ministry but by the want of it.”

Several of the Farewell sermons sought to anticipate the danger of the sufferings of the Puritan leaders becoming a discouragement and stumbling block to believers–their afflictions perhaps being held up by the ungodly as marks of God’s disapproval. Thus John Oldfield preached on, “Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake; let not those that seek thee, be confounded for my sake, 0 God of Israel” (Psalm 69:6); the fearless William Jenkyn, later to die in Newgate prison, reminded his congregation at Christ Church, London, of the former sufferings of the Church from the words in Hebrews 11:38, “Of whom the world was not worthy”; and Samuel Shaw preached on the afflictions of believers resulting in the furtherance of the Gospel from Phil. 1:12. The eminent Thomas Manton, Rector of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, sought to strengthen his people for the coming storm by reminding them that they would not be alone in their sufferings; his text was Heb. 12:1, “Wherefore seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses .… ” The burden of not a few sermons was the necessity of adhering to the truth and avoiding the danger of apostasy. Ralph Venning preached on “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith” (Heb. x. 23), John Collins on “Earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 3) and John Cradacott on “The Great Benefit of a Godly Ministry” from Phil. 4:9. Cradacott warns his people of England’s sin in pro­curing the removal of “a conscience-ransacking, conscience ­searching ministry” which had preached close-walking with God and the necessity of getting to Heaven, and he entreats them to beware of the danger of being given over to a worldly ministry which would preach “peace, peace,” and poison the people both by doctrine and example so that, the blind leading the blind, “both may perish together everlastingly.”

As we might have expected, the most common of all the texts taken by the nonconforming ministers was the message in Acts 20 which relates Paul’s farewell to the elders of the Church at Ephesus. There are sermons extant on this passage by Daniel Bull, George Swinnock, William Lock, William Beerman and Matthew New­comen (being his second Farewell Sermon preached on August 20). Nor was it only the sermons that brought to mind the scene on the shore at Miletus; from the few records that survive we can oc­casionally gather the impression of partings hardly less affecting than that of the Ephesians with their apostle. We read of John Flavel, preacher at Dartmouth and Townstall in Devon, that “all his people followed him out of the town, and at Townstall church­yard they took a mournful farewell of each other, when the place might be truly called Bochim, for they were all in tears, as if they had been at his funeral.”

Lest we should have given an impression otherwise, it needs to be said that probably the most striking feature of these Farewell Sermons is the almost complete absence of anything inflammatory or “topical”; there is an obvious desire neither to offend the authorities nor to excite the crowds. Equally evident is a lack of resentment or vindictiveness. There is nowhere an attempt to prejudice the congregations they were to leave against conforming ministers who might fill their places within a few weeks, rather we find exhortations to hear such men provided they preach the GospeL Typical of such exhortations are the words of John Whitlock, vicar of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, who, due to the hostility of local authorities, was compelled to terminate his ministry on July 26, 1662:

“I hope that for those many praying, believing, hungry souls sake that are to be found in this place, God may provide you in His due time with some such Teachers as may give you some whole­some food, and not feed you with stones instead of bread …. If sound truth be powerfully preached, make use of and improve that, though you cannot approve everything the Minister doth. I well know while the best of men are on earth, there is likely to be variety of apprehensions; and some men of sound judgments in the main, and of holy lives, may satisfy themselves in the lawfulness of some things which others judge sinfuL And if God send such to you, though I do not bid you approve their practice, or justify what they do, yet bless God for them and improve their gifts and graces.”

The inoffensive spirit of these words is general throughout the Farewell Sermons which are extant, and it needs to be remembered that what we have in the majority of cases is the verbatim shorthand notes of hearers, not the edited publications of the preachers them­selves. Very few of the preachers take any space at all to justify their nonconformity, not because it was a matter of indifference to them, but because their immediate concern was the spiritual welfare of their hearers. There is indeed a strange atmosphere of calm in the sermons; the sad contemporary circumstances which surround the preacher are hardly in view and the reader is conscious of men who were absorbed with higher cares. It is true there are occasional passages, such as the one already quoted from Richard Alleine, which express the personal feelings of the preachers, but such references are rare and brief. To the last the ejected ministers remained pre-eminently expositors of the Word of God. Many of the sermons contain practically no reference to the Act of Uni­formity at all; and when occasionally the points which made the preachers Nonconformists are mentioned, the reference is only a subsidiary part of the sermon and never the main theme. As far as their own vindication is concerned, if they refer to it at all it is in such brief words as those used by John Barret, Rector of St. Peter’s, Nottingham, “The Lord knows and will manifest to the world one day, whether it was a mere humour, or whether indeed it was not Conscience that would not suffer us to comply with the things now imposed.” Like Paul, it was with them a very small thing that they should be judged of men, yea, they judged not their own selves, and it was both their spur and their comfort to know with the apostle that “He that judgeth me is the Lord” (1 Corinthians 4:3–4).

If any think of the Puritans as men with scrupulous consciences, stumbling over niceties, obsessed with forms of church government, possessing legal hair-splitting intellects, and contentious in their zeal for their party’s progress, they will meet in the pages of the Farewell Sermons men of a very different stamp. They will find, as Samuel Pepys found when he stepped into St. Dunstan’s in the West to hear William Bates deliver his farewell to his people, that instead of getting a rousing harangue they are brought under the power of a careful and convicting exposition of Scripture. Mar­velling at Bates’s seeming unconsciousness of the seething agitation of many Puritan sympathizers in London, Pepys records that the preacher merely pursued his exposition as usual, “Only at the conclusion he told us after this manner:

‘I do believe many of you expect that I should say something to you in reference to the time, this being possibly the last time I may appear here. You know it is not my manner to speak anything in the pulpit that is extraneous to my text and business; yet this I shall say, that it is not my opinion, fashion, or humour, that keeps me from complying with what is required of us; but something, which, after much prayer, discourse, and study, yet remains unsatisfied, and commands me herein. Wherefore, if it is my unhappiness not to receive such an illumination as should direct me to do otherwise, I know no reason why men should not pardon me in this world, and am confident that God will pardon me for it in the next’.”

The Farewell Sermons reveal their authors as men whose supreme concern was the salvation and sanctification of their hearers. They had their convictions and they were strong ones, as we shall later see, but the dimension of eternity kept them from being diverted in the heat of the moment to the matters which were tending to claim the foremost place, with varying degrees of sympathy or hostility, in the minds of many Englishmen in the summer of 1662. The Puritans made their hearers look well beyond August 24; indeed one would not be surprised if those listening to sermons like that preached by Thomas Watson at St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, were made to feel that Eternity was more near and certain than even Black Bartholomew’s Day. “O Eternity, Eternity!” cried Watson, “all of us here are ere long, it may be some of us within a few days or hours, to launch forth into the Ocean of Eternity. Eternity is a sum that can never be numbered, a line that can never be measured; Eternity is a condition of everlasting misery or everlasting happiness. If you are godly, then shall you be for ever happy, you shall be always sunning yourselves in the light of God’s countenance. If you are wicked you shall be always miserable, ever lying in the scalding furnace of the wrath of the Almighty. Eternity to the godly is a day that hath no sun-setting; Eternity to the wicked is a night that hath no sun-rising. O, I beseech you my Brethren, every day spend some time upon the thoughts of Eternity. Oh how fervently would that man pray, that thinks he is praying for Eternity. Oh how accurately and circumspectly would that man live that thinks, upon this moment hangs Eternity. What is the world to him that hath Eternity always in his eye? Did we think seriously and solemnly of Eternity, we should never over-value the comforts of the world, nor over-grieve at the crosses of the world. What are all the sufferings we can undergo in the world to Eternity? Affliction may be lasting, but it is not everlasting. Our sufferings here are not worthy to be compared to an eternal weight of glory.”

Whatever men may think of such words as these, they are a far cry from the caricature we previously mentioned. It was not the external allegiance of men to their party that the Puritans cared for; they earnestly warned their hearers not to judge the state of their souls, nor of the souls of others, by their adherence to forms or opinions of church order. “We need to have more to show for our Christianity,” said Richard Alleine, and he spoke for his fellow Puritans, “than that we are Presbyterians, Independents, Ana­baptists, Episcopals, or Erastians.” “Labour for oneness in love and affection with everyone that is one with Christ,” exhorted Thomas Brooks, “let their forms be what they will; that which wins most upon Christ’s heart, should win most upon ours; and that is His own grace and holiness. The question should be, What of the Father? What of the Son? What of the Spirit shines in this or that person?”

One last quotation and we must leave the contents of these Farewell Sermons; it is taken from the sermon of a comparatively unknown Puritan, Robert Seddon, Rector of Kirk Langley, Derbyshire, and it illustrates the kind of evangelism of which not only London but all England was deprived by the Act of Uni­formity:

“And are we parting? Suffer, I beseech you, this word of Exhortation. ‘In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink,’ John 7:37. The Apostle at Troas ready to depart on the morrow, preached long at his parting; how fervently did he preach and pray! Acts 20. Two of Luther’s wishes were, That he might have seen Christ in the flesh, and have heard Paul preach. But my Brethren, what tongue can express the worth of their Farewell-Sermons! … And am I leaving you? My Beloved and longed-for, how gladly would I leave you all in the arms of Jesus Christ! Shall I leave any of you wedded to your sins and lusts? Shall I leave any of you glued to the world, and not espoused to one Husband, even Jesus Christ? Shall my liberty to preach Christ to you cease before you can all say of Him, ‘My Beloved is mine and I am His?’ Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer for you is that you may be saved. My earnest request and suit to you this day is that you will come to Jesus Christ, and be married to Him for ever. Have pity upon me, o my people, have pity upon your afflicted, grieved, dying pastor. And this is the pity I crave at your hands, that you would none of you rest in a Christless condition, but expect blessings and blessed­ness only through Christ, that whether I come again to you, or be absent, I may hear of your affairs that ye prize and love Christ fervently, that ye obey Him sincerely, constantly, and universally, having respect to all His commandments …. O that this my dying sermon, might shake the rotten pillars on which souls have built their hopes of Heaven short of Christ; that more sins might be mortified, and more souls quickened and converted than ever by any sermon in the course of my ministry; that now at the end of the liberty of my public ministry, you might all be the seals thereof, being pricked to the heart, and feeling the weapons of our warfare mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds …. O that my civil death might minister occasion of your spiritual and eternal life! O that this divorcing day betwixt you and me, might be the day of your espousals to Christ!

“My loving people, I am this day going the way of all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, the way of tribulation. I charge you, keep the Lord’s way; as you expect any blessing and prosperity, look for them only through Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life. I charge you before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge both quick and dead, that ye rest not without interest in Christ; and I leave this sermon (as Joshua did the pillar) as a memorial, that I admonished and besought you to come to Christ and become His servants. O let not the Word I have spoken, to keep myself pure from your blood, condemn you in the day of Christ. You cannot plead, ‘We were not bidden to the Wedding-Feast, we were not called to Christ.’ No, if you will be found out of Christ at that great day, how will it torture you to consider, ‘How have we hated instruction and have not obeyed the voice of our teachers!’ In vain may you wish, O that we had the day of grace once again!”

When the Puritans left their pulpits for the last time on that August afternoon, it was the end of an age. The harvest was past, the summer was ended, and a winter, not of months but of many long years, was to be endured before England again heard the Gospel as it had heard it before Black Bartholomew’s Day, 1662.

Citations

1 John Richard Green, A Short History of The English People, p. 604.

2 Religion In England, vol. III, p. 267.

3 On August 12, 1660, he had preached before Charles II on the text, “To whom much is given, of him much is required.”

This article first appeared in the June 1962 edition of the Banner of Truth Magazine (Issue 26).

The Banner of Truth is pleased to publish a selection of the ‘Farewell Sermons’ of the Great Ejection divines as a Puritan Paperback.

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ON August 30, 1658, Oliver Cromwell, at the age of 59, lay dying in the Palace of Whitehall. Outside a great storm was blowing across the red tiles and ancient spires of London’s roof-tops, such as had not been remembered for a hundred years, but within the soul of the Lord Protector of England there was peace: “The Lord hath filled me,” he murmured, “with as much assurance of His pardon and His love as my soul can hold …. I am more than a conqueror through Christ that strengtheneth me.” Four days later the greatest soldier and statesman of the age had fought his last battle and entered the land “where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.”

Cromwell had embodied in his own person the two great principles which had inspired the nation sixteen years before to rise against the absolutism of the Stuart monarchy–the right of the people to freedom from oppression and the duty of preserving Protestantism from error and spiritual tyranny. As long as Cromwell was alive he struggled for a settlement that would enable these two principles to exist harmoniously together. But if the constitutional difficulties that had arisen since the Civil Wars made the problem too great for Cromwell, it was certainly beyond the abilities of those to whose charge he left the nation. As long as the greater part of a nation remains unregenerate, political freedom may not lead to the advancement of the Gospel, and Cromwell, being forced by the course of events–as he interpreted them–to an unhappy choice between the two, chose the latter. The Protector’s death resulted in a political crisis which made the choice yet more difficult, and the Puritans, as a body, were divided in their reaction to it. The Independents, such as John Owen and Thomas Goodwin who had been closest to Cromwell, believed that the spiritual gains that had been made since the Long Parliament had broken the power with which the Bishops had cramped the nation’s religious life could best be preserved by a Commonwealth. But as the years of Crom­well’s Protectorate had already shown, such a form of government would have to rely, for a time at least, upon the army for its strength, as it would never be chosen by the general consent of the people, and what would then become of the political freedom which the Commons had fought to preserve? It was thus clear to the majority that the country could find no security against anarchy or military dictatorship save in the old constitutional government based upon a Monarchy and a free Parliament. This had, in fact, long been the conviction of the largest of the Puritan parties–the Presbyterians. Though they had resisted the absolutism of Charles I they had never been against monarchy as such, and after the turmoil that followed the death of Cromwell they were more convinced than ever of the political necessity of recalling Charles Stuart to his father’s throne. But if Charles returned what would become of the spiritual freedom which they cherished? They had not forgotten how monarchy and episcopacy had been combined since the Church settlement of Queen Elizabeth against the more thorough­going Protestantism of Puritanism. It is not surprising therefore that while the Presbyterians saw the need of restoring the monarchy they were conscious of the possibility that such a political settlement might lead to a spiritual defeat.

Charles was not ignorant of their fears and of his need to calm them. He knew that the co-operation of the strongest Puritan party, the Presbyterians, would be needed to accomplish a Restoration and that a full disclosure of his aims would be disastrous to his interests. Thus he carefully avoided any suggestions that his return would mean an Anglican triumph; his agents were busy in England creating an impression that the Presbyterians could expect a Church settlement comprehensive enough to satisfy their convictions; testimonies to his loyalty to Protestantism were secured from French Reformed ministers; and by the famous Declaration of Breda in April 1660 he promised “a liberty to tender consciences and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matter of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom.” In such ways a general impression was given to the Presbyterians that Charles’s return would not be spiritually disastrous. The impression was deepened when a delegation of Presbyterian ministers was cordially received by Charles at The Hague and given, says Richard Baxter, “encouraging promises of peace” which “raised some of them to high expectations.”

But there were those whose misgivings were not removed. The Independents, as a body, did not share in the spirit of hopefulness. “The Presbyterian ministers,” writes Daniel Neal, “did not want for cautions from the Independents and others, not to be too forward in trusting their new allies, but they would neither hear, see, or believe, till it was too late.” Amongst some of the Pres­byterians there was also uneasiness. In Parliament, Sir Matthew Hale attempted to prevent an unconditional recall of Charles and proposed that some terms of religious settlement should be agreed upon before his return. General Monk, however, knowing Charles’s anxiety for a Restoration free from conditions, resolutely opposed Hale’s proposition, warning the House of the dangers of possible social or military anarchy if the recall of the King was delayed, and asking, “What need is there of it, when he is to bring neither arms nor treasure along with him?”

After a day of fasting and prayer, upon which Baxter told the House in a sermon that “it was easy for moderate men to come to a fair agreement, and that the late reverend Primate of Ireland and myself had agreed in half an hour,” Parliament unanimously voted the King home, and on May 25, 1660, amidst a thunderous welcome Charles II landed at Dover. A Bible was immediately presented to the King by a Presbyterian minister and warmly received. Surely if “half an hour” was sufficient for Baxter and Archbishop Ussher of Ireland to settle differences, would it not be enough for a monarch who could declare that Scripture “was the thing that he loved above all things in the world”?

Unhappily both Baxter’s words to the Parliament and the King’s at Dover were, as we now know, tragically misleading as far as being a reliable indication of the future course of events is con­cerned, but nevertheless they are worth examining for they do reveal something of the policy that both parties were pursuing at this stage. Baxter and an important section of his Presbyterian brethren for whom he increasingly became the spokesman believed that with the Restoration of Charles the reinstatement of episcopacy was inevitable and that therefore their best hope was to seek for a revised form of episcopacy–not the despotic form that had ham­mered Puritanism before the Civil Wars, but a less powerful and more primitive order such as had been advanced by James Ussher, Primate of Ireland. Behind this policy was, of course, the desire, long since jettisoned by the Independents, of preserving a single national Church of which all Englishmen might be members. Baxter believed that if a tolerant and modified Episcopacy, sufficiently agreeable to many of Presbyterian convictions, were introduced, the majority of the Puritans would be able to continue side by side with those whose views of Church government were more Episcopalian. His hopes were thus pinned to a policy of com­prehension, and, as his words to Parliament indicated, he believed that if moderation was pursued on both sides and the King was willing to grant concessions concerning the Liturgy and the Prayer Book, then there were good hopes of a satisfactory Church settlement.

Even when Charles was safely home on English soil his testimony to the Presbyterian minister at Dover indicates that he had not abandoned the policy which he and his minister, Edward Hyde, had been carrying on across the Channel. He had been on English soil before and had had to leave it very hurriedly in flight from Cromwell’s troops. That same army had not yet been disbanded; the Convention Parliament that sat at Westminster could still command a Puritan majority if the Presbyterians and Independents acted together; and the Royalist reaction in the country at large had still to make itself felt. A crisis with the powerful Presbyterians at this stage might still be disastrous to his interests, and conse­quently many of the King’s words and actions in days following the Restoration were by no means intended as genuine negotiations with the Presbyterians, but simply as sops till his own position was secure. “I had rather trust a Papist rebel than a Presbyterian,” he told the faithful Hyde, but such words at this stage were confined to a very small circle. A member of that circle was Gilbert Sheldon (by profession a divine, by practice a politician), who was to become one of the King’s closest ecclesiastical advisers. The night after Charles left Dover he was at Canterbury and there, as R. S. Bosher writes, “It is not improbable that, in the shadow of the mother Church of England, a discussion took place between Charles, the Lord Chancellor (Hyde), and Sheldon that was to have lasting consequences in the religious history of the nation” [1] Certainly whatever was discussed in secret at Canterbury was not the well­being of the Puritans, and it was no good omen for them when Sheldon was shortly made Bishop of London–their spiritual stronghold.

The royal aim, schemed by Hyde and inspired by the Laudian clergy who were all-powerful at the Court, was to re-establish the old Establishment intact, as it had been before the Long Parliament’s Root and Branch Bill had applied to the hierarchy the Scriptural principle which the English Reformers had not been willing, or perhaps able, to apply in the previous century. But from the moment of the King’s arrival in London on May 29, 1660, the intention was skilfully hidden. Twelve Presbyterian ministers had the honour of walking in the procession-no Episcopalian clergy taking part­ and soon the Merry Monarch had even appointed ten Puritan divines [2] amongst his chaplains, several of whom were invited to preach at Court during the summer without being required to use the Prayer Book. Hyde was likewise busy wooing some of the most influential Presbyterian lay leaders, and by giving them posts in the new government he sought to anticipate the danger of Puritan power in the House of Commons being brought to bear against the new regime.

It was against this well-hidden background of intrigue and duplicity that Baxter and his colleagues hopefully entered into negotiations with the King. In a meeting between leaders of the Presbyterian party and the King in June Baxter urged a union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians, professing that it could easily be procured “by making only things necessary to be the Terms of Union, by the true Exercise of Church Discipline against Sin, and by not casting out the faithful Ministers that must Exercise it, nor obtruding unworthy Men upon the People.” Charles professed his readiness to reach such a union “by abating somewhat on both sides and meeting in the midway,” and the Presbyterians were asked to set out on paper the concessions they were prepared to make. The request was carried out by July, but the Presbyterian ministers soon learned that no Episcopalian representatives had been called on to draw up concessions on their side. There were some that could already see in these events the real direction in which Hyde and the King were going. James Sharp, the Scottish observer of church affairs in London, reported home, “Episcopacy will be settled here to the height. The managing this business by papers will undo them (the Presbyterians); those motions about their putting in writing what they would desire in point of accom­modation are but to gain time, and prevent petitionings (to Parlia­ment), and smooth over matters till the Episcopal men be more strengthened.’

Amongst the English Presbyterians there were not a few eminent ministers who did not share the hopefulness of the group Baxter led, and who viewed the comprehension plan and modified Episcopacy proposal as compromising the old Puritan position. Lazarus Seaman and William Jenkyn were outspoken in their disagreement with the scheme of reconciliation advanced by Baxter, and they appear to have had the backing of such men as Cornelius Burgess, Arthur Jackson, and Giles Firmin. The story that has been handed down of a conversation between Thomas Case, one of the King’s Puritan chaplains, and Daniel Dyke will illustrate the differing outlook amongst the Puritans at this point. Soon after the Restora­tion Dyke voluntarily resigned the living of Hadham-Magna in Hertfordshire. Case attempted to persuade him to continue in it and argued “the hopeful prospect” which the King’s words and behaviour gave them; to this Dyke replied, “that they did but deceive and flatter themselves; that if the King was sincere in his show of piety and great respect for them and their religion, yet, when he came to be settled, the party that had formerly adhered to him, and the creatures that would come over with him, would have the management of public affairs, would circumvent them in all their designs, and in all probability not only turn them out, but take away their liberty too.”

The King’s advisers were, of course, well aware of the divided counsels within the Presbyterian ranks, and there can be little doubt that it was with a view to disrupting them still further that several of the more moderate party were offered preferments in the early autumn of 1660. The see of Hereford was offered to Baxter, Lich­field and Coventry to Calamy, Norwich to Reynolds, Carlisle to Richard Gilpin, and deaneries were offered to Manton, Bates, and Bowles. The offers might appear imposing, but Hyde well knew what would be the effect of “taking off the leading men amongst them by preferring of them.” “If some few,” he wrote, “are separated and divided from the herd . . . they are but so many single men, and have no credit and authority (whatever they have had) with their companions, than if they had never them, rather less.” At the same time as these offers were being made the King was further attempting to lull the suspicions that were being voiced by enumerating the concessions he was willing to make in a Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs. After discussions with the moderate Presbyterians the Declaration was published on October 25 and it contained much that was of encouragement to the Puritans. Liberties were given to them such as had never before been conceded by the national Church, and questions regarding the Prayer Book and ceremonies were to be referred to a future synod of divines “of both persuasions.” The only flaw (and that a fatal one) in the document was covered up with skilful ambiguity, namely, it was not said whether these concessions were to be final or merely temporary. The moderate party, however, received it with “humble and grateful acknowledgement” and in the light of the fair promise it held out for a comprehensive settlement Edward Reynolds accepted the bishopric of Norwich. But he acted alone, and had he waited for a few more months to pass it is highly probable there would not even have been one acceptance of the preferments that were offered.

All the time the King and Hyde were seeking to pacify the Presbyterians with words they were quietly by their actions re­capturing the Establishment for the Laudians. All the vacant bishoprics of importance were given to this party, and even if all four Puritans had accepted bishoprics their weight would have been negligible on the episcopal bench. The royal policy through the autumn only suffered one severe scare, and that was in November when the Presbyterians in Parliament introduced a bill to give the force of law to the concessions contained in the King’s Declaration. “This was undoubtedly,” says Bosher, “the crucial moment in the history of the church settlement.” But the breach of nearly twenty years between the Presbyterians and the Independents had done its sad work; they did not vote unitedly, and by a margin of 26 votes the Anglican party managed to prevent the King’s temporary expedient becoming a stumbling block in the way of the entire re­-establishment of the old system. Soon the King could breathe more freely. In December the Convention Parliament was dissolved and in the following February the army was disbanded. Caricatures of the Puritans, later to become so universal as to colour much English literature right down to the present time, were already popular both on the stage and in pamphlet propaganda. Ballads were coming into fashion which expressed the sentiment that:

A Presbyter is such a monstrous thing

That loves Democracy and hates a King.

With the tide running thus in his direction, and everything going according to plan, Charles was gradually preparing for the final settlement he had long since agreed upon with the Laudians. It was in March 1661 when four royalist candidates for Parliament were outvoted in London and four Puritans returned–this time the Presbyterians and Independents acting together–that his old fears were reawakened. Feeling against the bishops was clearly mounting in London, and fearing that London’s example might be followed by those parts of the country in which the elections were still proceeding, the King immediately proposed to ease the religious tension by fulfilling his promise of five months earlier and calling a synod of divines of both persuasions. Thus on April 15 the famous Savoy Conference began its four months’ deliberations. But the crisis was over before that date; the nation had voted into power a strongly Episcopalian and Royalist Parliament, and though in some cases it was questionable whether the elections were perfectly free, there could be no doubt that the era of Puritanism’s political power was finally at an end.

The tedious and fruitless discussions of the Savoy Conference followed the same pattern as the previous discussions. The Pres­byterians, represented by the moderate party once more, had to state their case on paper and were thus put into the position of suppliants. The only difference was that now their opponents could consider them as the defeated party with much more confidence. By the time the Savoy Conference was in session the recapture of the Establishment was already a fait accompli; there was no longer any question of the representatives of both parties meeting on an equal footing, as had been originally expected, and while the Episcopalians under Sheldon’s leadership may not have entered the Conference with the determination to oppose all concessions, they certainly were not interested in a new liturgy such as Baxter suggested, still less in a modification of Episcopal powers in the direction of Presbyterianism. The Conference was futile and while we may think that Baxter was more gifted as the zealous pastor of Kidderminster than as the spokesman of the Puritans, there is no doubt that even had there been present at the Conference a Pres­byterian leader of the calibre of Alexander Henderson the issue would have been the same, only more speedily reached. It was already too late. Even before the Savoy Conference was over, in Scotland, where events had been moving faster, James Guthrie had died on the scaffold true to the faith which the nation had owned in happier days: “I take God to record upon my soul,” ran his parting testimony, “I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace or mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain.”

With the breakdown at Savoy the Church settlement was left to Parliament and Convocation. The former, “the Cavalier Parlia­ment,” had met on May 6, 1661, and was to continue in power for eighteen years. From the start it was its obvious intent to break the power of Puritanism. By a vote of 228 to 103 the Covenant [3] was ordered to be burned by the common hangman; all members of the House were required to receive the sacrament according to Anglican rites; the bishops were restored to the House of Lords (though they never regained the political importance they had had before the Civil Wars); and by the Corporation Act passed on December 20 all persons desiring to qualify for office in any town corporation must submit to the Episcopalian position. The Act was “a direct and heavy blow at the very heart of Dissent,” for a great part of the strength of the Puritans lay in their hold of corporate towns. It was not merely out of the resources of a fertile imagination that Bunyan relates in his Holy War how Diabolus confined the Lord Mayor to his own house, and how the recorder Conscience gave place to Forget-good, and new aldermen were appointed such as Haughty, Whoring, No-Truth and Drunkenness. It was, at least in part, the work of the Corporation Act that the way was prepared for the future sufferings of the Puritans and also for the social corruption that was to become characteristic of the Restoration Period.

In November 1661 Convocation reassembled, having been held up in its deliberations of the previous summer by the meetings of the Savoy Conference, and now it was left to this packed body to settle the matters which had been originally entrusted to a synod “of both persuasions.” Properly elected Puritan delegates to Convoca­tion, such as Calamy and Baxter, were not admitted. The most pressing task before the assembly was to amend the Prayer Book with a view to making it less objectionable to the Puritans. By December 20 their proposed revision was finally adopted. As far as promoting a reconciliation between the two parties is concerned, it was, as might have been expected, a complete failure. Convocation, complains Baxter, “made the Common Prayer Book more grievous than before.” In view, however, of the strong Laudian element within Convocation it is surprising that a Laudian influence was not more discernible in the revision, but, as Hyde records, “the bishops were not all of one mind” and, despite Baxter’s assertion, there is some evidence that a degree of moderation was exercised and certain small concessions were in fact made, evidently with the hope of retaining some of the Presbyterians within the national church soon to be fully re-established by law.

It now only remained for Parliament to accept the revised Prayer Book and to pass a new Act of Uniformity which would exclude from the national church the body of men to which England had been most indebted for its evangelical witness since the time of the Reformation. The only difficulty the Commons had was to get the Act framed as rigorously as they wished, but by the end of April the proposed bill “had been tightened to a satisfactory pitch of severity” and it was finally passed on May 8, with the date of enforcement given as St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1662. The terms of conformity required by the Act were as follows: Re­ordination for all who had not hitherto been episcopally ordained; a Declaration of “unfeigned assent and consent” to all and every­thing contained and prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer “in these words and no other”, and to the form of making, ordaining and consecrating of bishops, priests and deacons; an oath of canonical obedience; an abjuration of the Solemn League and Covenant and of the lawfulness of taking up arms against the King under any pretence whatsoever. All ministers, chaplains, school­masters, heads of colleges, fellows and tutors, who did not subscribe within the time appointed were to be deprived and “utterly dis­abled,” and the benefices of ministers to be considered void, as if their former occupants were naturally dead.

When the Earl of Manchester complained to Charles that the Act was so rigid that few would conform, Sheldon replied, “I am afraid they will.” As we shall see, Samuel Pepys was a better prophet than the Bishop of London; it will “make mad work among the Presbyterians,” he forecast.

Citations

1 The Making of the Restoration Settlement, Dacre Press, 1957, p. 136. Bosher quotes from Robert Baillie the account later in circulation in Scotland: “When the King was at Breda, it was said he was not averse from establishing the Presbytery; nor was the contrary peremptorily resolved till the Saturday at night, in the cabin council at Canterbury.”

2 Wallis, Baxter, Calamy, Manton, Case, Reynolds, Bates, Ash, Spurstow, and Woodbridge. Henry Newcome of Manchester declined the dubious honour.

3 The Solemn League and Covenant had been drawn up in Scotland at the beginning of the Civil Wars and was intended to form the basis of a spiritual union between the two nations; the oath, which was taken by the English Parlia­ment in 1643, included six points: they included the pledging of the subscribers to seek the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland according to the Word of God and the rooting out of popery, prelacy, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness. Cf. The Covenants and The Covenanters, James Kerr, 1895.

This article first appeared as The Background of the Great Ejection in the June 1662 edition of the Banner of Truth Magazine (Issue 26).

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Heaven means Jesus Christ, that is, being with Jesus. That is the only heaven there is. It is Christ’s home and he is never away from his home for a moment.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was often asked why we are not told more in the New Testament about life beyond the grave. What did he reply? “I have two answers to give. The first is this and I am sure that it is right: We are not told more because there is a sense in which we cannot be told more. Everything in this world is sinful, even our language. I do not hesitate to assert, therefore, that if the New Testament had given us a detailed description of heaven and of being with Christ our language would misrepresent it. Our language is not pure enough, the thing is so wonderful that all the vocabularies of the universe are not adequate to describe it. It is so glorious and wonderful that we need to be qualified and perfected before we can take the description or are capable of understanding it. I am sure that is the first answer.

“The other answer is that we are deliberately not told, in order that we may think of it only as Paul thought of it. Paul only put it in one way . . . The only reason for wanting to go to heaven is that I may be with Christ, that I may see him. That is why the little word ‘and’ is so important – ‘to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ The only man who is really happy about death, the only one who can say confidently, ‘to die is gain’, is the man who has said, ‘to me to live is Christ.’ . . . That is what enabled Paul to say it. Christ was the consummate passion of his life: to know him, to dwell with him, that is the thing, said Paul. that is my life, and therefore to die must be gain; to go home, to be with Christ, is very far better” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “The Life of Joy”: Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1989, p.107).

In the Bible there is not one reference to believers going ‘to heaven’ when they die. Instead they go to be ‘with Christ.’ In other words, heaven wasn’t at all a natural hope. For example, young people have a hope of growing up, and getting married, and working for forty years, and retiring, and enjoying some years living on their pensions. That is their hope for the future. It is completely natural. You don’t need a revelation from heaven to tell you that this lies in the future of many men and women in Europe. All you need is observation and deduction. It can all be explained by biological, political, and economic changes. But the hope of heaven is not like that at all. It cannot be compared to anything in the natural order, like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It is not like going to bed after a long period of working, sweating and toiling. It is not like spring following the winter. I don’t want any of you to think of heaven like that. That is a profound and dangerous error.

Heaven means Jesus Christ, that is, being with Jesus. That is the only heaven there is. It is Christ’s home and he is never away from his home for a moment. What are the implications of that? The first must be that there is no sin in heaven. There is no unbelief there. There is no idolatry there. There are no false prophets there. The Beast is not there. There are no works of Satan there. There is no lying, no lust, no anger, no violence, no theft, no greed, no drunkenness, no pride, no hypocrisy, no gambling, no dishonouring parents, no discontent, no fretting, no self-pity, no frustration. Heaven is an utterly pure and spotless place. “There is a city bright, closed are its gates to sin. Nought that defileth can ever enter in.” It is a hallowed place.

In other words, there is no gradual, imperceptible and inevitable transition that takes all mankind through this life and they all end up in heaven; no universal cosmic conveyer belt to glory! Heaven is the kingdom of Jesus Christ. All unrighteousness is banished from that place. He alone has done what was essential to be done for sinners to join him there. Consider this, that the merest glimpse of heaven’s glory – let its door open a chink for a glance at the tiniest portion of its holiness – and you would know instantly, “I have no right to enter such a place. I am unworthy to pass through those doors and see that sight. I could not exist there.” Sooner an earwig aspire to become a nuclear physicist that a sinner stroll into heaven as his right. Have you seen that you have no entitlement to heaven, that it is closed to you for ever? It will never happen that by hook or by crook you will get there. No! The only heaven that exists is closed and barred to you while you go on without Jesus. He is the one and only way. No man comes to the Father except through him. To taste heaven is the fruit of the blood of God the Son.

“He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good.
That we might go at last to heaven
Saved by his precious blood.” (Cecil Alexander)

It is because Christ all by himself obtained eternal redemption for us that he himself entered into the heavens. It is Christ, and Christ alone, who has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. It is Christ and Christ alone who has gone to prepare a place for us, that those whom the Father has given him may be with him where he is. The dying thief cried to Jesus that he would remember him. “I will certainly never forget you,” the Lord replied, “but more wonderful than that is my grace to sinners. You will be with me in paradise today.” There is no possibility of heaven without Christ getting us there. Heaven is the achievement of his redemption. Entrance and the entitlement to remain there for ever is made possible by him. It is made actual by him; it is the crowning gift of his redeeming grace; it is the ultimate blessing. Christ brings us to heaven, keeps us in heaven, and Christ is our heaven.

Ted Donnelly’s father had a friend named Noble who was a millionaire. “He had not always been a millionaire, for as young men they had both been poor. But after he became wealthy their friendship continued. He regarded my father as his best friend, the one man who did not want anything from him, who liked him simply for himself. On one occasion, however, he persuaded my father to accept a gift. It was a holiday on which he wanted company. In the early 1950s the two men travelled by ocean liner across the Atlantic to the United States, and then throughout that country. It was an unusual journey for those days, the experience of a lifetime. Afterwards when speaking of that trip my father would rarely say, ‘When I went to America.’ It was usually, ‘When I was with Noble’. The trip was so completely his friend’s gift and provision that he couldn’t think of it without remembering the one who made it possible. And we should never think of heaven apart from thinking of Jesus, for we owe it utterly and in every conceivable way to him. In Richard Baxter’s words, ‘Let “DESERVED” be written on the door of hell, but on the door of heaven and life, “THE FREE GIFT.”’ How then is it possible to distinguish between gift and Giver? Christ is central because it is Christ alone who brings us to heaven” (Ted Donnelly, Heaven and Hell, Banner of Truth., p. 84).

Heaven is utterly Christ-centred. The Lamb is in the midst of that throne which itself is at the very heart of heaven. So Christ is the focal point of heaven. He is its centre, its axis, its divine energy, and its illumination. He makes heaven live. He makes it sing in perfect harmony. The Lamb is all the glory in Immanuel’s land. Paul’s desire, as death comes nearer, gets increasingly focused. “This one thing I want!” It is to be where Jesus is, to see him as he is, and to be like him. It is to discover if there might be anything he can do for Christ, to serve him with total love as long as he can. His longing is that his serving the God-man will never come to an end. The Lamb of God is worthy of that, and Paul can’t wait for that moment to begin. “I desire to depart and be with Christ.” That is heaven.

Dr J. I. Packer says useful things about the variety of delights in glory: “There will be different degrees of blessedness and reward in heaven. All will be blessed up to the limit of what they can receive, but capacities will vary just as they do in this world. As for rewards (an area in which present irresponsibility can bring permanent future loss: I Cor. 3:10-15), two points must be grasped. i] The first is that when God rewards our works he is crowning his own gifts, for it was only by grace that those works were done. ii] The second is that essence of the reward in each case will be more of what the Christian desires most, namely a deepening of his or her love-relationship with the Saviour, which is the reality to which all the biblical imagery of honorific crowns and robes and feasts is pointing. The reward is parallel to the reward of courtship, which is the enriching of the love-relationship itself through marriage” (J. I. Packer, “Concise Theology,” Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 1993, p.266).

Samuel Rutherford compares our experience in heaven with a bride’s delight on her wedding day. What delights her the most? Not the service, nor the guests, nor the reception, not the flowers, and not even her beautiful dress, but her dear bridegroom’s face. Rutherford says, “The bride takes not, by a thousand degrees, so much delight in her wedding garment as she does in her bridegroom. So we, in the life to come, howbeit clothed with glory as with a robe, shall not be so much affected with the glory that goeth about us, as with the bridegroom’s joyful face and presence.” “They will see his face,” the book of Revelation says (Rev. 22:4).

That is how it must ever be in heaven. It is a fixed place compared to your place and mine. Here our families may serve other gods, and go from one idol to another. Today our country may lie in utter darkness. Now different false prophets sway the masses in turn, tyrants rise and influence millions, and they fall again. Change and decay in all around I see. But heaven is not at all a place like that. There is nothing transitory there. You don’t graduate from heaven to some other place. There is nowhere else. You enter heaven after the last judgment. There are no more purgings of our sins, no more evaluations and examinations; no more tests to pass; no promotion; there are no more ladders to climb. The moral character of the believer can never decay. There will be growth in every grace of course, and in continual delight in God, and in the new heavens and new earth, but there will be no spiritual declension at all. No one in Jesus’ presence can ever want to sin. Our glorified natures will not tolerate that. We will be so constituted and reconstituted that we cannot sin. We will not even wish to desire to sin. In other words, being with Christ we shall be like him the very moment we see him. Christ was tempted, yet he could not sin; God cannot sin. So we will be in that condition for ever, growing in our knowledge and love of God and of every other creature, working for our Saviour and with him, but without a spot or a wrinkle or any such thing to mar the beauty of the place.

Our joy will stem from the vision of the invisible God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. We will increasingly grow in Christ’s love as he ministers to us. We will fellowship with our loved ones in Christ and with the whole body of the redeemed. There will be continual growth, maturing, learning, enrichment of abilities, and enlargement of powers that God has in store for us. But there will be no unfulfilled desires, and this blessedness will never end. Its eternity is part of its glory. Endlessness is the glory of glory. Hearts on earth say in the course of joyful experience, “I don’t want this ever to end,” but it invariably does. The hearts of those in heaven say, “I want this to go on forever.” And it will. There can be no better news than this.

This is the Great Story going on forever, each chapter being better than the one before. Doesn’t the thought of heaven take your breath away?

“O think!
To step on shore,
And that shore heaven!
To take hold of a Hand,
And that God’s hand!
To breathe a new air,
And feel it celestial air.
To feel invigorated,
And to know it immortality!
O think!
To pass from the storm and the tempest
To one unbroken calm!
To wake up,
And find it GLORY.”

How do you step on that shore? It must be through you and Jesus Christ becoming united. Hand in hand with Jesus. You have to receive the one who said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Now who are you going to believe? The secularists, or the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount? Who is going to influence your life? The one who spoke and the winds and waves obeyed him, or all the despairing muddled men who say that ultimate reality is the coffin and the stinking corpse?

John Bunyan at the conclusion of Pilgrim’s Progress (Banner of Truth) describes Christian and his friend reaching heaven in these words: “I saw in my dream, that these two men went in at the Gate; and lo as they entered they were transfigured, and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There were also those that met them with harps and crowns, and gave them to them, the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my dream, that all the bells in the City rang again for joy; and that it was said unto them, ‘Enter ye into the joy of the Lord.’ I also heard the men themselves, that they sang with a loud voice saying, ‘Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever.’

“Now, just as the Gates opened to let in the men, I looked in after them; and behold, the City shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord.’ And after that, they shut up the Gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself among them.”

We see a boat leaving Aberystwyth harbour and setting sail across the Irish Sea. It is a fine sight in the summer wind as she sails away and becomes a dot on the horizon. “There . . . she is gone,” says my best friend alongside me. Gone where? Gone from our sight, that is all, but at that moment standing on the cliffs of Ireland with a telescope is someone gazing out to sea and he sees that boat which I can no longer see. “Here she comes!” he shouts. Such is dying. Those in glory are there welcoming a new arrival as we see them depart.

Unbelievers, hear! O that God might open the gate of heaven a little tonight, and show you what glories lie before favoured sinners, so that you could start to think, “Would God that I were there! I wish myself among them.” Longings like that are the first encouragements that the grace of God is at work in your life. But you might be thinking, “Would there be room for someone like me there? I have many doubts and have been a real hypocrite.” Hear a distinguished Welsh preacher answer your question: “Friend, heaven is an enormous place: ‘in my Father’s house are many mansions’, said Jesus Christ. God told Abraham how numerous his children would be (that is, his children by faith, the elect that would be in heaven): they would be as numerous as the sand of the sea or the stars of the firmament. [Can’t you be contented to be a little grain of sand on the streets of heaven? Wouldn’t you be happy to be a tiny star twinkling quietly in the new heavens? Wouldn’t you be pleased to be even a bruised reed that was on the banks of the rivers of life that flow from the throne of God and the Lamb? That is salvation!] John in his Revelation saw a multitude that no one could count. It is a big place; do not entertain the thought that heaven is small. God’s grace is never-ending and men and women invited to believe in Christ are welcomed there” (Gwyn Williams, “Heaven”, Bryntirion Press, 2000, p.18).

But you have to entrust yourself to Jesus Christ alone. You have to cry mightily to him until you know that he has given even you the right to heaven. If Christ were just one of many illuminaries of heaven it might be possible to think of reaching heaven without him. But the Lamb is the single Lamp of heaven. No other unoriginated light is found there but Christ. “Can you visualise yourself explaining to God why he should admit you to heaven while you remain an unbeliever? ‘I had no interest in your beloved Son’ you will say. ‘I repudiated him, made little of his death, shut my ears to his invitations, disregarded his warnings. Jesus Christ meant – and means – nothing to me. As far as I am concerned, your sending of your Son to earth was unnecessary, a pointless waste. But in other respects I have tried to be a decent person. For some of the time, I have done my best. So I expect you, O God, to allow me into the heaven of the Christ I despised and refused.’

“Doesn’t the idea of it make you shudder? Can’t you hear how crassly blasphemous such words sound? Yet that is, in essence, the unbeliever’s plea, and nothing could be more foolish. Without Christ there is no hope of heaven. So come to him now. Cry to the Saviour of sinners to change and forgive and receive you. If you ask him with all your heart, he will do it, and heaven will be yours” (ibid., Donnelly, p. 94).

GEOFF THOMAS was pastor of Alfred Place Baptist Church, Aberystwyth, Wales, for over fifty years. Now a member of Amyard Park Chapel, Twickenham, where he preaches occasionally, Geoff continues to write and preach. His autobiography, In the Shadow of the Rock, was published last year by Reformation Heritage Books.

This post first appeared on the Banner website on August 13, 2002.

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In this, my penultimate editorial as Editor of the Magazine, I want to direct your—and my—thoughts upwards.

In his fine exposition of The Excellencies of God, Terry Johnson focuses in one chapter on the Blessedness of God and the Christian’s blessedness in God. He asks this question: ‘What will the blessed realm of heaven begun now and consummated then be like?’ Johnson responds, ‘Thomas Case (1598–1682), in his Treatise of Afflictions, provides a beautiful summary’:

To the weary, it is rest; to the banished, it is home; to the scorned and reproached, it is glory; to the captive, it is liberty; to the conflicting soul, it is conquest; to the conqueror, it is a crowned life; to the hungry, it is hidden manna; to the thirsty, it is the fountain and waters of life and rivers of pleasure; to the grieved soul… it is fullness of joy; to the mourner, it is pleasures forevermore. Heaven is… to be with Christ, which is best of all.*

United to Jesus Christ, every Christian has a ‘living hope’ (1 Pet. 1:3). It is a living hope because it is anchored in and partakes of a living, reigning Saviour. It is not a vague, insubstantial hope, because Jesus is not a vague, insubstantial Saviour. No! He is a risen, death-defeating, sin-conquering, cosmic enthroned Saviour and God has raised us together with him (Eph. 2:5).

It is no doubt true that heaven is a realm, a realm where the infinite, triune God dwells with his redeemed children. It might, however, be truer to say that heaven is where God is. We often say, ‘Home is where the heart is.’ For the Christian, home is where God is. It is God who makes heaven heaven.

The blessedness of heaven is the blessedness of being with the Father who loves us, with the Son who lived, died, rose, ascended and reigns for us, with the Holy Spirit who indwells us to make us partakers of the life of God. It is God himself who will wipe away every tear from our eyes. It is God himself who will be all in all to every one of his children (1 Cor. 15:28).

All this is to say that the blessedness of believers is to be in God’s infinitely glorious presence, the beloved recipients of his unending love. If this is true, and assuredly it is, then ministers of the gospel must preach with this eternal hope pulsing through their expositions of God’s word. Justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, is a foundational gospel truth. It is vital and non-negotiable. However, it is not the gospel in its fullness. God’s ultimate goal for forgiven, justified sinners is to bring us into his nearer presence, to behold his face, to enjoy him forever and enjoy pleasures for evermore. Few things will more inflame a Christian’s downcast spirit than an increasing apprehension of the glory that God has prepared for those who love him.

When Jesus ministered to his distressed and deeply troubled disciples he said, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled… In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?’ (John 14:2). When the apostle John sought to minister to hard-pressed, sorely persecuted Christians, he told them of the coming day when God would make all things new, when he would wipe every tear from their eyes, when they would ‘see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever’ (Rev. 22:4, 5).

It is often said that if we are too spiritually- or heavenly-minded we will be of little earthly use. The truth, however, is that the more biblically heavenly-minded we are, the more earthly use to God and his church and world we will be. One of the striking features of the men and women God has used most significantly throughout the history of the church has been their heavenly-mindedness. Perhaps no one has elevated the grace of heavenly-mindedness more than the English pastor-theologian John Owen. Owen’s works are a rich treasure of gospel truth, none more so than his work on The Grace and Duty of Spiritual-Mindedness.** This work was originally personal meditations that Owen reflected on at a time when he thought he may not have long to live. In his preface, Owen tells us that he was prompted to write this work because he observed ‘the present importunity of the world to impose itself on the minds of men…for the world is at present in a mighty hurry, and being in many places cast off from all foundations of steadfastness, it makes the minds of men giddy with its revolutions, or disorderly in the expectations of them…Hence men walk and talk as if the world were all, when comparatively it is nothing.’ Our day is little different!:

But things are come to that pass amongst us that unless a more than ordinary vigorous exercise of the ministry of the word, with other means appointed unto the same end, be engaged in to recall professors unto that strict mortification, that sincerity of conversation, that separation from the ways of the world, that heavenly-mindedness, that delight in the contemplation of spiritual things, which the gospel and the whole nature of Christian religion do require, we shall lose the glory of our profession, and leave it very uncertain what will be our eternal condition.***

Thomas Chalmers wrote that Owen’s book on Spiritual-Mindedness holds ‘a distinguished rank among the voluminous writings of this celebrated author.’ For him three features made it very special: The force with which it applies truth to the conscience; the way Owen plumbs the depths of Christian experience as a skilful physician of the soul; the uncovering of the secrets of the mind and heart so that the true spiritual state of the reader is discovered (see the introduction to the Banner of Truth Puritan Paperback Spiritual-Mindedness****). A couplet was written about Richard Sibbes, the ‘heavenly doctor,’ after his death that captured both the fragrance and the significant influence of his ministry: ‘Of that good man let this high praise be given: Heaven was in him before he was in heaven.’

In these dark and darkening times, we need more men and women whose lives reflect the heavenly-mindedness of Owen and Sibbes. We should never seek to recreate the past in the present; but we should seek to emulate the gospel-heartedness of Owen and Sibbes that produced the heavenly-mindedness which made their lives and ministries so effective to the glory of God and the good of his church.

Notes

*Quoted in Terry Johnson, The Excellencies of God: Exploring and Enjoying his Attributes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022).

** This can be found in The Works of John Owen, Vol. 7 (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), p. 265.

***John Owen, Works, Vol. 7 (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), p. 265.

**** The Puritan Paperback edition has been abridged and made easy to read by Dr R. J. K. Law.

Ian Hamilton is Associate Minister at Smithton Church, Inverness, and President of Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

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Equally surely, however, we cannot say that justification by faith alone is the fundamental doctrine of the Christian Faith. That honour rightly and surely belongs to the doctrine of the Trinity. God himself is the fundamental truth of the Christian Faith. He is Truth itself. He is the Creator, Sustainer, Initiator and Sovereign Lord of all that is. God does not exist for us, we exist for him. Paul’s declaration in Romans 11:36 wonderfully makes the point: ‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.’

The pre-eminence of God’s Triune being is heralded in a number of ways in the Scriptures. In Genesis l we see the Triune God in creation: God, his Word, and his Spirit, together bringing into being worlds and star systems out of nothing, and creating man and woman in their own image. Who we are is a personal and visual reminder to us every moment of our existence, of the priority of the Triune God. It is surely not without significance, to say no more, that God should disclose the Triunity of his being to us in the Bible’s opening chapter. All that is has its being from, and is a reflection of the Triune God. In the New Testament, we see the Triune God working in harmony to effect the salvation of sinners: The Father purposing, the Son saving and the Spirit applying (though all actively at work at every moment and at every phase of redemption). Our salvation flows from and owes everything to the eternal fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The writer to the Hebrews wonderfully highlights the trinitarian quality and character of Christian salvation when he speaks of Christ offering himself through the eternal Spirit to God (Heb. 9:14). Further, we see our Lord Jesus in John 17:21, praying that his church will be patterned after the harmony and inter-dependent unity of the Trinity. God’s Triunity, his essential harmony and ‘inter-penetratedness’, is what the church is to be modelled on. If nothing else, living more consciously of God’s essential disclosure as Triune, will in some measure (surely!), compel us to ‘make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’ – which is precisely Paul’s argument in Ephesians 4:3-6. We could go on at length, showing how the truth of the Trinity is woven into the very fabric of biblical revelation, of Christian salvation, of the church’s life, and of the individual believer’s growth in grace.

And yet, is it not true that Bible-believing Christians, in general, think so little about the Trinity? Is it not a fact, deeply to be lamented, that our lives are so little framed by this most fundamental of all biblical truths? The opening verses of John’s Gospel introduce to us the unspeakably glorious reality of God’s Triune being, and to its unfathomableness. Before all worlds existed, before anything was, God was! And staggeringly, he was a community, a fellowship: ‘and the Word was with (“face to face with”) God’! The Father was with the Son, and the Son was with the Father. And together they were with the Holy Spirit. ‘In the beginning’, an eternal fellowship of holy love and loving holiness ‘was’. We ‘become’, the Trinity ‘was’. Here, if anywhere, we are on holy ground. We speak, only so that we may not be silent (to quote Augustine)! Here we are quite out of our depth. But yet it is precisely here, that we cultivate that humility of mind that keeps us from becoming insufferably proud in our knowledge of God. Here, if anywhere, we are cut down to size.

John Calvin tells us (Institutes 1.13.17) of a passage in the writings of Gregory Nazianzen that ‘vastly delights me’: ‘No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any one of the Three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me’. Can you relate in any way to Gregory or Calvin? Does the truth of the Holy Trinity ‘vastly delight’ you?

What time do we give to pondering the revealed glory of our Triune, Saviour God? What honour do we ascribe, in our personal and corporate worship as the church, to the Persons, beings and actings of our Triune God? The Christian faith rests upon and centres in the Triune God: ‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.’

Ian Hamilton is Associate Minister at Smithton Church, Inverness, and President of Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

This article first appeared first appeared on this website on May 4th, 2012.

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The republication of this great divine’s writings in their present form appears to demand a few prefatory remarks. What are Manton’s special merits? What claims has a man of the seventeenth century on the attention of 1871? What good thing is there about him that we should buy him and read him? These are reasonable questions, to which I propose to supply an answer in the following brief essay. A calm examination of Manton’s real worth appears a suitable accompaniment to a new edition of Manton’s works.

The inquiry, it must be admitted, is not an easy one. The materials for forming a judgment are singularly few and scanty. Two hundred years have passed away since Manton was laid in the grave. He died in an age when his principles and his party were very unpopular, and few cared to be known as his friends and admirers. Except the long and exhaustive biography of him by Harris, which has been wisely reprinted in this edition, we possess little information about him. All other impressions about him must be based on a patient analysis of his voluminous posthumous works. Considerable familiarity with these works forms my principal claim on the reader’s attention in sending forth this essay.

Let me clear the way by considering an objection which is frequently brought against Manton and other divines of his school. That objection is that he was “a Puritan.” I admit the fact, and do not deny it for a moment. A friend and associate of Baxter, Calamy, Owen, and Bates – a leading man in all the fruitless conferences between Puritans and Churchmen in the early part of Charles II’s reign – ejected from St. Pauls, Covent Garden, by the disgraceful Act of Uniformity – a sufferer even unto bonds on account of his Nonconformist opinions, – if ever there was an English divine who must be classed as a Puritan, that man is Dr. Manton. But what of it if he was a Puritan? It does not prove that he was not a valuable theologian, an admirable writer, and an excellent man. Let me once for all make a few plain statements about the school to which Manton belonged – the school of the English Puritans. It is one of those points in the ecclesiastical history of our country about which the ignorance of most Englishmen is deep and astounding. There are more baseless and false ideas current about them than about any class of men in British history. The impressions of most people are so ridiculously incorrect, that one could laugh if the subject were not so serious. To hear them talk about Puritans is simply ludicrous. They make assertions which prove either that they know nothing at all of what they are talking about, or that they have forgotten the ninth commandment. For Dr. Manton’s sake, and for the honour of a cruelly misrepresented body of men, let me try to explain to the reader what the Puritans really were. He that supposes they were ignorant, fanatical sectaries, haters of the Crown and Church of England – men alike destitute of learning, holiness, or loyalty – has got a great deal to learn. Let him hear some plain facts, which I will venture to copy from a work written by myself in 1868 (“Bishops and Clergy of other Days”).

The Puritans were not enemies to the monarchy.

It is simply false to say that they were. The great majority of them protested strongly against the execution of Charles I, and were active agents in bringing back Charles II to England, and placing the crown on his head after Oliver Cromwell’s death. The base ingratitude with which they were afterwards treated, in 1662, by the very monarch whom they helped to restore, is one of the most shameful pages in the history of the Stuarts.

The Puritans were not enemies to the Church of England.

They would gladly have had her government and ceremonial improved, and more liberty allowed in the conduct of public worship. And they were quite right! The very things which they desired to see, but never saw, are actually recommended at this day as worthy of adoption by Churchmen in every part of the land! The great majority of them were originally ordained by bishops, and had no abstract objection to Episcopacy. The great majority of them had no special dislike to liturgies, but only to certain details in the Book of Common Prayer. Baxter, one of their leaders, expressly testifies that a very few concessions in 1662 would have retained in the Church of England at least sixteen hundred of the two thousand who were driven out by the Act of Uniformity on Bartholomew’s Day.

The Puritans were not unlearned and ignorant men.

The great majority of them were Oxford and Cambridge graduates – many of them fellows of colleges, and some of them heads or principals of the best colleges in the two Universities. In knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in power as preachers, expositors, writers, and critics, the Puritans in their day were second to none. Their works still speak for them on the shelves of every well-furnished theological library. Their commentaries, their expositions, their treatises on practical, casuistical, and experimental divinity, are immeasurably superior to those of their adversaries in the seventeenth century. In short, those who hold up the Puritans to scorn as shallow, illiterate men, are only exposing their own lamentable shallowness, their own ignorance of historical facts, and the extremely superficial character of their own reading.

The Puritans, as a body, have done more to elevate the national character than any class of Englishmen that ever lived.

Ardent lovers of civil liberty, and ready to die in its defence – mighty at the council board, and no less mighty in the battlefield – feared abroad throughout Europe, and invincible at home while united, great with their pens, and no less great with their swords – fearing God very much, and fearing man very little, – they were a generation of men who have never received from their country the honour that they deserve. The body of which Milton, Selden, Blake, Cromwell, Owen, Baxter, and Charnock were members, is a body of which no well-informed Englishman ought ever to speak with disrespect. He may dislike their principles, if he will, but he has no right to despise them. Lord Macaulay, no mean authority in matters of English history, might well say, in his famous essay on Milton, ‘we do not hesitate to pronounce the Puritans a brave, a wise and honest, and a useful body.’ Unhappily, when they passed away, they were followed by a generation of profligates, triflers, and sceptics; and their reputation has suffered accordingly in passing through prejudiced hands. But, ‘judged with righteous judgment,’ they will be found men of whom the world was not worthy. The more they are really known, the more they will be esteemed.”

Such was the school to which Manton undeniably belonged. Such is the truth about the Puritans. That they were not perfect and faultless, I freely admit. They said, did, and wrote many things which cannot be commended. Some of them, no doubt, were violent, fierce, narrow-minded sectarians; some were half-crazy fanatics and enthusiasts. Yet, even then, great allowance ought to be made for the trying circumstances in which they were often placed, and the incessant, irritating persecution to which they were exposed. And where is the great school of religious thought which is not often disgraced by some weaker members? With all their faults, the leaders of the party were great and good men. With all their defects, the Puritans, as a body, were not the men that some authors and writers in the present day are fond of representing them to have been. Those who disparage Manton because he was a Puritan, would do well to reconsider the ground they are taking up. They will find it utterly untenable. Facts, stern facts, are dead against them. They may not admire Puritanism in the abstract, but they will never give any proof that we ought not to admire, value, and study the writings of Puritan divines.

I will now proceed to offer a brief estimate of Manton’s merits. For convenience’s sake, we will examine him in four points of view – as a man, a writer, a theologian, and an expositor of Scripture. Under each of these heads the reader shall have my opinion of the man whose works are at length about to be put within reach of the public in a cheap and accessible form. I ask him to remember that I am no more infallible than the Pope; but I can truly say that my opinion is the result of an acquaintance with Manton’s writings of at least twenty years’ standing.

First, as a man, I am disposed to assign a very high place to the author of these volumes. He strikes me as having been, not merely an ordinary “good” man, but one of singularly great grace and consistency of Christian character. He lived in an age when party spirit ran very high, and the faults of an adversary were carefully noted and relentlessly exposed. None, perhaps, found that out to their cost so thoroughly as the Puritans, after Charles II returned to England, and the Commonwealth was overthrown. To blacken the reputation of a Puritan, and vilify him before the public, was too often the way to get promotion; and woe to the unhappy man whose life had given even a semblance of a handle to his opponents!

In an age like this, Manton occupied for several years a very prominent position. He was not a country parson, living scores of miles from London, and absorbed in unobtrusive pastoral labours among a rural population. On the contrary, he was a standard-bearer in the forefront of the battle -a city set upon a hill that could not be hid -a man who could neither say, nor do, nor write anything without being observed. Did Oliver Cromwell require a minister to offer up prayer at the public ceremony of his undertaking the Protectorship? Manton was the minister. Did the Long Parliament want a special sermon preached before its members on that great public event? Manton was frequently ordered to be the preacher. Did the famous Westminster Assembly want a commendatory preface written to their Confession and Catechisms of worldwide reputation? They commit the execution of it to the pen of Thomas Manton. Was a committee of Triers appointed to examine persons who were to be admitted into the ministry? Or inducted into livings? Manton was a leading member of this committee. Was a movement made by the Presbyterian divines, after Cromwell’s death, to restore the monarchy and bring back Charles II? Manton was a leader in the movement. Was an effort made after the Restoration to bring about a reconciliation between the Episcopal Church and the Nonconformists? Manton was one of the commissioners to act in the matter in the unhappy Savoy Conference. In short, if there was one name which more than another was incessantly before the public for several years about the period of the Restoration, that name was Manton’s. If there was one divine who, willingly or unwillingly, was constantly standing under the full gaze of friends and foes in London, that divine was the Rector of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, Thomas Manton.

Now, remembering all this, I ask the reader to observe that throughout this fiery ordeal Manton preserved a spotless reputation. I am struck with the fact that the most violent writers of that violent day can lay nothing to his charge of the slightest importance. The most foul-mouthed and rancorous assailants of the Puritans seem unable to lay hold on any weak point in his character. No weapon forged against him seems to prosper, and no dirt sticks to his name. Even Antony à Wood, the prejudiced author of “Athenæ Oxonienses,” can find nothing to allege against Manton, and is obliged to content himself with contemptible sneers and insinuations.

Someone may perhaps imagine that Manton was a prudent, “canny” man, who avoided doing anything to give offence, and had a keen eye to his own interests. There is not an atom of foundation for such a theory. When it was first proposed to bring to trial and execute Charles I, Manton was one of fifty-seven divines who signed and published a bold protest against the design. When Christopher Love was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell on a charge of treason, Manton accompanied him to the scaffold, and afterwards preached his funeral sermon at St. Lawrence Jewry, though the soldiers threatened to shoot him. As to minding his own interests, no man perhaps ever thought less of them than Manton. The mere fact that he refused the Deanery of Rochester, when offered to him by Charles II, and afterwards resigned St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, for conscience’s sake, is plain evidence that he never shrank from giving offence if Christ’s truth, in his judgment, seemed to make it necessary.

With all these facts before us, I cannot avoid the conclusion that Manton must have been a man of uncommon graces and singular consistency of character. In no other way can I account for the comparative absence of material faults in his life, even his enemies themselves being judges. A man who went down to the grave at fifty-seven, with so fair a reputation, after spending the prime of his life in London, and mingling incessantly in public affairs, must surely have been no common Christian. It can never be said of him that his lines fell “in pleasant places,” and that his grace was never tried and tested! Few modern divines perhaps ever passed through such a fiery ordeal as he did, and surely few ever came out of such with so untarnished a name. He must have been a rare combination of wisdom, tact, boldness, courtesy, firmness, sound judgment, and charity. As a godly man, I do not hesitate to place him in the foremost rank of Puritan divines; and I ask the student of his writings to remember, as they read them that they are reading the works of one who was eminently a “good man and full of the Holy Spirit.”

Second, as a writer, I consider that Manton holds a somewhat peculiar place among the Puritan divines. He has pre-eminently a style of his own, and a style very unlike that of most of his school. I will try to explain what I mean.

I do not regard him as a writer of striking power and brilliancy, compared to some of his contemporaries. He never carries you by storm, and excites enthusiasm by passages of profound thought expressed in majestic language, such as you will find frequently in Charnock, and occasionally in Howe. He never rouses your inmost feelings, thrills your conscience, or stirs your heart of hearts, like Baxter. Such rhetoric as this was not Manton’s gift, and the reader who expects to find it in his writings will be disappointed.

I do not regard him as a writer of such genial imagination, and such talent for illustration and similitude, as several divines of his day. In this respect he is not to be compared with Brooks, and Watson, and Swinnock, and Adams. The pages of those worthy men are often like picture-galleries, in which the pictures are so thickly hung that you can hardly see the walls. Talent of this sort was certainly not in Manton’s line. He paints his pictures and exhibits them, and they are always well sketched; but their number is comparatively small.

Learning again does not stand out as conspicuously in Manton’s writings as in the works of some of the Puritans. Judging by the list of quotations and references, you would say, that he had not so many authors at his fingers’ end as Owen, or Caryl, or Jenkyns, or Arrowsmith, or Thomas Hall. Yet it is only fair to remember, that nearly all we possess of his works consists of sermons, and that a popular sermon is not the proper vehicle for an exhibition of learning. The great preacher will assimilate and digest the thoughts of other men, and make them his own, without incessantly confusing his hearers by reference to books. My own impression is that this was the case with Manton. I believe he was a great reader, and a very learned man, but that he had few opportunities of exhibiting his store of knowledge. In fact, reason and common sense point out that he could never have held the position he undoubtedly occupied as a London divine, and had such weight attached to his opinions, if he had not been a man of a well-furnished mind.

Manton’s chief excellence as a writer, in my judgment, consists in the ease, perspicuousness, and clearness of his style. He sees his subject clearly, expresses himself clearly, and seldom fails in making you see clearly what he means. He has a happy faculty of simplifying the point he handles. He never worries you with acres of long, ponderous, involved sentences, like Goodwin or Owen. His books, if not striking, are generally easy and pleasant reading, and destitute of anything harsh, cramped, obscure, and requiring a second glance to be understood. For my own part, I find it easier to read fifty pages of Manton’s than ten of some of his brethren’s; and after reading, I feel that I carry more away.

Let no one, moreover, suppose that because Manton’s style is easy, his writings show any lack of matter and thought. Nothing of the kind. The fertility of his mind seems to have been truly astonishing. Every page in his books contains many ideas, and gives you plenty to think about. No one, perhaps, but himself could have written such an immense book as he wrote on the 119th Psalm, and yet repeated himself so little, and preserved a freshness of tone to the end. The words of Dr. Bates, no mean judge, are worth quoting on this point: “I cannot but admire the fecundity and variety of his thoughts; that though the same things so often occur in the verses of this psalm, yet, by a judicious observing the different arguments and motives whereby the Psalmist expresses the same request, or some other circumstance, every sermon contains new conceptions proper to the test.” This witness is true. If Manton never soars so high as some writers, he is, at any rate, never trifling, never shallow, never wearisome, and never dull. It was a striking remark of one of his contemporaries, that “he had heard the greatest men of their day sometimes preach a mean sermon, but he had never heard Dr. Manton do so on any occasion.”

I close this part of my essay by reminding the reader that Manton’s writings, with few exceptions, were originally published under very great disadvantages. Most of them never saw the light till after his death, and were printed without receiving the author’s last touches and corrections. This is a fact which ought not to be forgotten. None but an author knows what a vast difference there is between a work in manuscript and a work in type, and how many emendations and corrections are made in the best of literary productions, when the writer sees them in the shape of proofs. For my own part, when I take up a book of Manton’s, and remind myself that it never received the author’s final corrections, I am amazed that his writings contain so few blunders, and admire him more and more every time that I read him.

Third, as a theologian, I regard Manton as a divine of singularly well-balanced, well-proportioned, and scriptural views. He lived in a day when vague, indistinct, and indefinite statements of doctrine were not tolerated. The Christian Church was not regarded by any school as a kind of Pantheon, in which a man might believe and teach anything, everything, or nothing, so long as he was a clever and earnest man. Such views were reserved for our modern times. In the seventeenth century they were scorned and repudiated by every Church and sect in Christendom. In the seventeenth century, every divine who would achieve a reputation and obtain influence, was obliged to hold distinct and sharply cut opinions. Earnestness alone was not thought sufficient to make a creed. Whether Episcopalian or Presbyterian, whether Conformist or Nonconformist, whether an admirer of Luther, or Calvin, or Arminius, every divine held certain distinct theological views. A vague, colourless, boneless, undogmatic Christianity, supplying no clear comfort in life, and no clear hope in death, was a Christianity which found favour with none.

Now, Manton was a Calvinist in his theology. He held the very doctrine which is so admirably set forth in the seventeenth Article of the Church of England. He held the same views which were held by nine-tenths of the English Reformers, and four-fifths of all the leading divines of the Church of England down to the accession of James I. He maintained and taught personal election, the perseverance of the saints, the absolute necessity of a regeneration evidenced by its fruits, as well as salvation by free grace, justification by faith alone, and the uselessness of ceremonial observances without true and vital religion. In all this, there was nothing remarkable. He was only one among hundreds of good men in England who taught all these truths. But in Manton’s Calvinism there was a curiously happy attention to the proportion of truth. He never exalts one doctrine at the expense of another. He gives to each doctrine that place and rank given to it in Scripture, neither more nor less, with a wisdom and felicity which I miss in some of the Puritan divines.

Manton held strongly the doctrine of election. But that did not prevent him teaching that God loves all, and that His tender mercies are over all His works. He that wishes to see this truth set forth should read his sermon on the words, “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son” (John 3:16), and mark how he speaks of the world.

Manton held strongly the need of preventing and calling grace. But that did not hinder him from inviting all men to repent, believe, and be saved.

Manton held strongly that faith alone lays hold on Christ, and appropriates justification. But that did not prevent him urging upon all the absolute necessity of repentance and turning from sin.

Manton held strongly the perseverance of God’s elect. But that did not hinder him from teaching that holiness is the grand distinguishing mark of God’s people, and that he who talks of “never perishing,” while he continues in wilful sin, is a hypocrite and a self-deceiver.

In all this, I frankly confess, I see much to admire. I admire the scriptural wisdom of a man who, in a day of hard-and-fast systems could dare to be apparently inconsistent, in order to “declare all the counsel of God.” I firmly believe that this is the test of theology, which does good in the Church of Christ. The man who is not tied hand and foot by systems, and does not pretend to reconcile what our imperfect eyesight cannot reconcile in this dispensation, he is the man whom God will bless. Manton was such a man; and because he was such a man, I think his works, like the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” deserve the attention of all true Christians.

Fourth, as an expositor of Scripture, I regard Manton with unmingled admiration. Here, at any rate, he is “facile princeps” among the divines of the Puritan school.

The value of expository preaching is continually pressed on ministers in the present day, and not without reason. The end of all preaching is to bring men under the influence of God’s Word; and nothing seems so likely to make men understand and value the Word as lectures in which the Word is explained. It was so in Chrysostom’s days; it ought to be so again. The idea, no doubt, like every good theory, may be easily ridden to death; and I believe that with ignorant, semi-heathen congregations, a short pithy text does more good than a long passage expounded. But I have no doubt of the immense value of expository preaching, when people will bring their Bibles to the service, and accompany the preacher as he travels on, or go home to their Bibles after the service, and compare what they have heard with the written Word.

The readers of Manton’s works will find in them a very large supply of expository sermons. Few, probably, are aware of the enormous quantity of exposition which his writings contain. They will find full and complete sets of sermons on Psalm 119, on Isaiah 53, on Matthew 25, on John 17, on Romans 6, on Romans 8, and on 2 Corinthians 5; besides regular commentaries on James and Jude. In all these works they will find every verse and every sentence explained, expounded, and enforced, plainly, clearly, and usefully, and far more fully than in most commentaries. Indeed, I defy any one to preach a sermon on any text in the above mentioned chapters, and not to find some useful thoughts in Manton, if he will take the trouble to consult him.

The value of these expository sermons, in my judgment, is very great indeed; and it is much to be regretted that hitherto they have been so little known. Of course they are not all of equal merit. Sometimes our author digresses, and wastes his time in discussing questions not necessarily belonging to the text. But, taking them for all in all, I unhesitatingly say that Manton’s expository sermons are most valuable, and the republication of them in a portable form will prove a great blessing to the Church.

The excellence of Manton’s expository sermons, I think lies in the following points. He generally sticks to the subject of each verse, and does not launch off into everything that may be said about each word. He generally gets over the ground with reasonable brevity, and does not weary the reader with an interminable flow of thought upon each expression. As an instance of what I mean, one single folio volume contains all his sermons on Matthew 25, John 17, Romans 6, Romans 8, and 2 Corinthians 5. In striking contrast with this, Jacomb on Romans 8:1-4, occupies 622 quarto pages; Hildersam on Psalm 51:1-7, fills 720 folio pages with 150 lectures; and Hardy on the 1st and 2d chapters of the 1st Epistle of John, takes up two quarto volumes and 1100 pages! Flesh and blood of ordinary mould cannot stand such lengthy work as this. I hold it to be a prime excellence of Manton’s expository sermons that, while they are very full, they are never too long.

For my own part I am painfully struck with the general neglect with which these expository works of Manton’s have been treated of late. Modern commentators who are very familiar with German commentaries seem hardly to know of the existence of Manton’s expositions. Yet I venture boldly to say, that no student of the chapters I have named will ever fail to find new light thrown on their meaning by Manton. I rejoice to think that now at length these valuable works are about to become accessible to the general public. They have been too long buried, and it is high time they should be brought to light. I value their author most highly as a man, a writer, and a theologian; but if I must speak out all I think, there is no part in which I value him more than as a homiletical expositor of Scripture.

It only remains for me to express my earnest hope that this new edition of Manton’s works may prove acceptable to the public, and meet with many purchasers and readers. If any one wants to buy a good specimen of a Puritan divine, my advice unhesitatingly is, “Let him buy Manton.”

We have fallen upon evil days both for thinking and reading. Sermons which contain thought and matter are increasingly rare. The inexpressible shallownesss, thinness, and superficiality of many popular sermons in this day is something lamentable and appalling. Readers of real books appear to become fewer and fewer every year. Newspapers, and magazines, and periodicals seem to absorb the whole reading powers of the rising generation. What it will all end in God only knows. The prospect before us is sorrowful and humiliating.

In days like these, I am thankful that the publishers of Manton’s Works have boldly come forward to offer some real literary gold to the reading public. I earnestly trust that they will meet with the success which they deserve. If any recommendation of mine can help them in bringing out the writings of this admirable Puritan in a new form, I give it cheerfully and with all my heart.

J. C. Ryle, Vicar of Stradbroke, Suffolk, 29 October 1870.

The Banner of Truth is pleased to publish Manton’s Works in 22 volumes. The Works is now available to buy in nine smaller segments.

The post An Estimate of Manton by J. C. Ryle appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

The Banner’s new edition of Alexander Moody Stuart: A Memoir will hopefully serve as that gardener. It was originally published in 1899, this being the first time it has been re-issued in a new edition in well over a hundred years. Some, especially those not connected to Scotland, may well question the value of reading such a memoir as this, its time and space being perceived as distant and foreign to our own contemporary circumstances. It would be a grave mistake, however, to pass this book by on the basis of such perceptions. Biographies are not just paper and ink, but the preservers and carriers of the ideas and events which shaped the lives of their subjects. Circumstances naturally change, but good ideas, rooted in biblical truth, outlive changing circumstances. The ideas contained in this memoir, about the fundamental character and shape of an enduringly fruitful Christian ministry, have much to say to our contemporary scene. Indeed, the pages that lie before you contain not only an interesting record of a significant yet relatively unknown nineteenth-­century ministry, but serve as a window into the living piety and gospel vision which sustained that ministry through many decades.

This record is ‘partly autobiographical’ in that the earlier chapters consist mostly of Alexander Moody Stuart’s own words, written with the intention of publication, in the hope that ‘they may prove profitable.’ His eldest son Kenneth, himself a minister, served as editor of these early chapters, and author of the subsequent narrative recounting the middle and later years of his father’s life and labours. He does an admirable job—unlike some biographies of a similar vintage which now appear tediously detailed, this one moves at a pace. Indeed, there are places when you will likely wish that the son had lingered a while longer on certain aspects of the father’s life. Nevertheless, the opinion of John Macleod, the erudite and profoundly well-read principal of Edinburgh’s Free Church College during the first half of the twentieth century, is well worth bearing in mind as you begin to read this volume: ‘There are few ministerial biographies that are better worth reading than Moody Stuart’s Life by his son.’

When those words of Principal Macleod first appeared in his Scottish Theology, a certain proportion of his older readers would have possessed a living memory of Moody Stuart’s ministry. That is not the case today. It is likely that those who have come across the name of Alexander Moody Stuart have done so in the form of passing references which appear in the memoirs of his friends Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M‘Cheyne. These relatively few references hide the true extent of the influence of Moody Stuart’s own long ministry amongst his contemporaries, both at home and overseas. In the estimation of his colleagues in the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh, ‘Few were honoured to wield an influence so profound and far-reaching.’

Alexander Moody Stuart’s vision extended far beyond his own congregation, and his own country. The 1830s witnessed a renewed interest in missionary endeavour within the Church of Scotland, and Moody Stuart early became associated with the cause of mission to the Jews. He was in the same circle as Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, who would form part of the party which was sent to Palestine to undertake an enquiry into the possibility of a mission to the Jews—a trip which would lead to the establishment of a mission not in Palestine, but in Hungary. Moody Stuart’s subsequent championing of the cause of mission to the Jewish populations of Europe became a marked feature of his life’s work. Moody Stuart’s long involvement in this mission field was marked by the conviction that it was at heart a spiritual endeavour—it was, in his understanding, part of the divine plan for the conversion of the world to Christ.

The ‘eminently spiritual’ character, as John Macleod described it, of Moody Stuart’s ministry goes some way toward explaining his involvement in two church controversies—the debate which took place between 1863 and 1873 surrounding a proposed union between his own Free Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church, and that which surrounded the ‘Higher Criticism’ movement of the later nineteenth century. In both these debates, and especially in the latter, he perceived that the authority of Scripture was at stake, and so was prepared to take a stand. For Moody Stuart, the Bible and its integrity lay at the heart of the church’s purpose and missionary success. It was, therefore, no wonder, with all his pastoral and missionary interests, that he was prepared to enter into the debate and defend what he considered to be an affront to the evangelical heart of the church. These debates were of their time, yet involved principles which remain at the core of what it is to stay faithful in ministry when the tide of opinion is moving in a contrary direction.

These are just a few of the noteworthy aspects of Alexander Moody Stuart’s long ministry, in which he variously was a missionary, church planter, pastor, and promoter of world mission. Biographies are not their subjects, and to some extent there will always be aspects of Moody Stuart’s life and thought, the warmth of his personal interactions with his family, friends, and congregation, that will remain for us in the shadows of the past. But it is hoped that the republication of his Memoir will go some way to lift Alexander Moody Stuart, as a servant of Christ worthy of imitation, out of relative obscurity—a man who, in his allotted time and circumstances, exercised a deep and penetrating ministry of the word. The character and aroma of that influential ministry, often vividly brought to life in the following pages, contain much to stimulate and inspire those engaged in that same spiritual work in the twenty-­first century.

Alexander Moody Stuart: a Memoir is available now.

Sam Cunnington is on the editorial team at the Banner of Truth Trust. His talk at the 2023 Youth Conference, Alexander Moody Stuart (1809–98): Forgotten Visionary can watched here.

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The story of the Christian church is punctuated by the names of great men and women. We know their names. But often the names of those who influenced them are forgotten. Although it may seem that God has worked in the lives of individuals only, the truth is that when he works in new and fresh ways he characteristically brings together a ‘brotherhood’ of men: In the fourth century Augustine was surrounded by his friends; in the sixteenth century John Calvin formed the closest of bonds with other ministers; in the seventeenth century men were very conscious that they belonged to an entire ‘Puritan brotherhood’; while in the eighteenth century men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield belonged to an entire network of like-minded men, while John Newton, hymnwriter extraordinaire, regularly gathered with his friends in the Eclectic Society. We know these names, while the names of others in these spiritual brotherhoods have been too easily forgotten. So it is also with the remarkable brotherhood that was raised up in Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century. Who can forget Robert Murray M‘Cheyne? Many know of Andrew Bonar only because of his memoir of his friend; thankfully, we still sing Horatius Bonar’s great hymns. But—perhaps partly because the present biography has been too long left to gather dust in the lower shelves of old libraries, the name of Alexander Moody Stuart, whom they all esteemed so much, has been forgotten. Yet it took only one encounter with his preaching for Robert M‘Cheyne to say, ‘I have found the man.’

The best Christian biographies do three things for us: they instruct us; they challenge us; and they inspire within us a desire, not to clone ourselves in the image of the subject, but to follow him in the ways he followed Christ. Alexander Moody Stuart does that for us. It comes from an era when God raised up a wonderful variety of men with diverse personalities and gifts shaped by individualized providences, and gave each of them a spiritual burden to discharge in their lives and ministries, while drawing them together in a fellowship and work they all sensed was larger than themselves. Here is a biography that conveys a sense of what it is like for the hand of God to be on a man’s life, calling him, shaping him, and using him to minister to others. And, like Andrew Bonar’s memoir of their mutual friend Robert M‘Cheyne, there is a touch of heaven about these pages.

There is much in Alexander Moody Stuart that helps to recalibrate our Christian lives. There is much in it that ministers of the gospel will find speaks directly to them. And all this is because there is so much in it that breathes love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is it any wonder it is a ‘must have’ and a ‘must read’?

A new edition of Alexander Moody Stuart: A Memoir is now available.

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Initially the concern of men like Athanasius (300-371) was to establish and defend the deity of Christ against men like Arius who taught that Jesus was a creature. Athanasius understood that if Jesus was not God in the fullest sense, we have no Saviour and we are still in our sins. So at the Council of Nicea in AD 325, the church publicly acknowledged the teaching of God’s word that Jesus was ‘homoousios’, of the same substance or being, as the Father, that is, equally God.

This, however, was only the beginning of the church’s exploration of the Bible’s teaching about God. During the remainder of the fourth century and well into the fifth century, the church came increasingly to acknowledge both the unity and plurality of God’s self-revelation. The climax of these explorations came in the statements of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. In these statements, the biblical doctrine of the Holy Trinity was profoundly and beautifully explained. God is truly One, but he is also truly Three. He is not three gods, but One God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Hopefully you have already come to understand that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not an abstruse, intellectual construct that is fine for a certain kind of Christian to get worked up about, but is too rarified for ‘ordinary’ Christians to expend any energy on. The whole Christian Faith and the entirety of the Christian life rests upon and is inter-penetrated by the God who is Three and One, One and Three. Christian salvation is Trinitarian: the Father chose you, the Son redeemed you, and the Holy Spirit indwells you as the Spirit of Christ. Christian worship is Trinitarian: you come to God the Father, through God the Son, and do so in the grace and power of God the Spirit. Christian service is Trinitarian: in union with God the Son, you serve the Father, enabled by the indwelling God the Spirit.

This foundational biblical truth absolutely separates Christianity from Islam. In Islam, Allah is a solitary being, a monad. Because he is a monad he cannot be love, for who was there for him to love in eternity? But ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:13). In eternity the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. The Son loved the Spirit and the Spirit loved the Son. The Father loved the Spirit and the Spirit loved the Father. God is a communion of love, an eternal, outgoing communion of love.

So far, so good. But what does the doctrine of the Holy Trinity have to do with my everyday life? Throughout the centuries some, even many professing Christians have thought and taught that the truth of God’s Trinity is at best a theological speculation and at worst an irrelevance to daily life. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no truth more vital to a Christian’s life, no truth more calculated to enrich, deepen, and delight a Christian’s heart than the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Much could be said, but note this one thing; our Lord Jesus Christ taught that eternal life is to know God (John 17:3). But God is Triune, he is not a monad. Jesus is teaching us that eternal life is not endless existence but life in fellowship with the Triune God. Knowing God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is eternal life. What could possibly be more exhilarating than that? If you knew, personally and intimately our Queen, you would be deeply honoured and the envy of many. If you had access freely into her presence, you would be, in the truest sense of the word a ‘celebrity’. A Christian has intimate fellowship with the Triune God. A Christian has freedom of access, night and day, into the presence of the One who mode the uncountable myriad of stars. A Christian possesses the unending, unfailing love of the triune God, a love that will never end because it never began (Jer. 32:2). And the astonishing thing about this love is that it is the very love with which the Father loves his Son (John 17:23, 26).

The Christian life is a life of communion with the Father who loved and loves us, with the Son who gave himself for us and who ever lives to protect and bless us, and with the Holy Spirit who brings us into the communion of the Holy Trinity and makes it his special delight to glorify Christ to us (John 16:14). Is there anything in life to rival such astounding privilege? John Owen wrote, ‘Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our privileges’.* How right he was. Your and my greatest privilege in life, this life and the life to come, is to know the Holy Trinity and, even more wonderfully, to be known by the Holy Trinity. May the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, give us all the grace to become more personally acquainted with our privileges.

*See The Works of John Owen, Volume 2: Communion with God (Banner of Truth, 1965), p.32. Owen’s treatise is also available in abridged form as Communion with God, in the Trust’s Puritan Paperbacks series.

Ian Hamilton is Associate Minister at Smithton Church, Inverness, and President of Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

This post was first published as God is Trinity on the Banner of Truth Website in August of 2015.

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The man in the pulpit is much more likely to be ill than the man in the pew. As an ordinary mortal and private Christian he is as susceptible to illness as the next man. But a few minutes’ reflection on his work and calling will reveal that what is a possibility in most people is an ever present probability in the life of the pastor.

This would be true even if I was only talking about his regular contact with disease. Next to doctors and nurses themselves, there is perhaps nobody who is more exposed to infection than the minister of the gospel. He is constantly visiting members of his flock who are in physical affliction, and has almost daily contact with people who are ill. Most of the time, it is true, the only catching complaints that he meets are colds, and children’s diseases. However, a succession of colds, and a week of flu, can be utterly devastating physically, and can leave a man with such low resistance that there is no telling what he may pick up on his travels.

Although this exposure to disease should not be underestimated, in this article I am talking about the probability of the pastor being ill through overwork, anxiety, stress and continued strain. A man may become ill, seriously, just through being worn out. This is the condition from which Jethro’s advice rescued Moses (Exodus 18:13-27). Epaphroditus was not so fortunate, and his hard work in the cause of Christ nearly cost him his life (Philippians 2:25-30). How important it is that a congregation should realise that its minister is exposed to the very same danger! The moment a man enters the ministry, his physical health is in jeopardy.

I

Few church members ever sit down to ponder just what their minister’s life involves. Many a pastor spends as long each week at his desk as the white-collar worker in his church does at his. Faithful prayer, general study and regular sermon preparation is a taxing business. The pastor’s life is one of much study, and this is still a weariness to the flesh. The world considers a forty-hour week to be about normal. Many ministers have done that much before they even walk out of the study door!

But when the sermons have been prepared, they have still to be delivered. Only those who have preached themselves can even begin to understand anything of the physical and nervous energy which is expended in the conducting of a service and the preaching of a sermon. When the faithful pastor descends from the pulpit steps, he has not only given to the congregation the fruits of many hours’ study, but he has given of himself. He has preached part of himself away to each of his hearers. In spending, he has been spent, and stands in dire need of physical and emotional replenishment. Preaching is a joyous work to the called of the Lord, but the treasure is very much in earthen vessels. This ensures that the glory goes to God. But the earthen vessel is conscious of his weakness and frailty, and how easily he can be broken. The treasure is glorious and heavy; but the earthen vessel often wonders how he can carry it any longer. How many ministers retire to bed on the Lord’s Day with a still willing spirit, but exhausted flesh! Their inward man has been strengthened in the work of preaching, but the outward man could do no more, however hard he tried.

But what of the minister’s many other duties? Did you know that the postman never passes your minister’s front door? Each letter requires a prompt but full and thoughtful answer. The wisdom of Solomon is needed, for many folk bring their most intricate and personal problems to the pastor by means of his letter-box.

And then there is his visiting. Have you ever considered what strain is involved in just one afternoon spent in this task? At each home the pastor must speak to a different individual with a different need. He must be unhurried; and yet he knows deep-down how many others could be helped by a visit from him that day. He must be on the giving end the whole time, comforting the sick in one home, strengthening the weak in the next, chiding the careless, rebuking the sinful, and restoring the backslider. And this work, be it remembered, he does not by constraint but willingly. He does it because he cares for his people. He is anxious for them, and their needs are weighty burdens on his heart.

It is for this reason that the pastor also keeps open home. The writer only has a modestly-sized pastorate, but finds that seldom do less than ten people a day call at his home. Each one has come for a reason, and each one has come in the hope of being helped. Some come time and time again, for their problems can only be settled on a long-term basis. Others come with something that can be settled that very day. Many come to scrounge, while many are in genuine need — and great discern­ment is needed to distinguish them. Some come with quite appalling motives, and have to be dealt with firmly; while with others great gentle­ness is needed, lest the bruised reed should be broken. The pastor is never off duty — for problems and Satanic attacks do not come by appointment only. When the sheep are in trouble, it is to the under-shepherd that they naturally turn. Study can be interrupted, plans for a day-off spoiled, sleep disturbed and holidays cut short. Nobody in genuine need of pastoral help can be turned away, and the pastor may literally worry himself sick because he feels that he cannot always give to his wife and children the attention they deserve. And if keeping open home in this manner proves to be a financial burden, the worry may be more than he can take.

And what shall I say about the ‘care of the churches’ of which the apostle speaks? The pastor’s longing is to present every man perfect in Christ. But how slow some appear to be in their spiritual progress! Like Moses, he sometimes tires of his people. Their backbiting and false accusations bite and tear into his innermost soul. Every backslider, immature believer and quarrelling saint weighs on his spirit, and makes his grieving heart heavy all the day long. And do not think that those who are doing well cease to be a care to him, for he watches over them jealously, and prays and earnestly beseeches the Lord to keep them from evil. It is the jealousy of Christ that moves him to yearn in this way, and his spirit sighs to see them edified more and more. All his people are always on his heart, and even at leisure or on holiday they are never for long out of his affectionate memory.

No earthly labour makes such demands on a man’s spirit. Others come home in the evening, their work done for the day. This happy experience is entirely unknown to the minister of the Gospel. His work is a life work, and knows no conclusion except the Judgement Seat of Christ, where he will give his account. Until then he seeks to work, not doing the work of God slackly, not relying on the flesh — but redeeming the time, knowing how evil the days are. Overwork, anxiety, stress and strain are his lifelong companions. Only thoughtlessness will overlook the fact that all this lays him more open to illness than others.

II

‘Prevention is better than cure’, says the old adage. Jethro knew this truth and used it to keep Moses from a serious breakdown. The preventive steps that he took involved support and sharing. Many a minister would be free from illness today if Christian people had copied Jethro’s example, and not just eulogised his wisdom.

The church can support its minister by giving to him the necessary tools to do his job. It is quite immoral to expect a pastor to visit his flock if he has not been provided with a suitable vehicle. Yet many a minister of Christ walks dozens of miles each week, while his congregation wonders why he constantly looks so jaded and tired, and speculates as to why he hasn’t seen Mrs. X for quite some time. But it wasn’t because Mrs. X was forgotten. She was probably on his mind all week. But his concern was frustrated by the fact that to visit her was a physical feat beyond his strength, or that he simply could not afford the appropriate bus fare. The church which makes the small financial sacrifice involved in providing its minister with a car will do much to safeguard his physical health, and its own spiritual health, both at the same time.

Which leads us to the subject of finance. Of course, a true under-­shepherd serves his sheep from a willing spirit and a ready mind, and has no affection for filthy lucre, knowing well that such an affection is the root of all evil. But it does not follow that he should live on a pittance. If a labourer is worthy of his hire, as God himself has declared, countless congregations are robbing God by paying their ministers so little. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself commended the practice of tithing, and if each wage-earner did so, the churches would be free of all financial worry. They would be well able to pay ministers what is their right, as well as being able to meet all other contingencies. No minister should receive less than the average wage of the members of the church. But as it is today, many spend hours each week minutely budgeting their money, and worrying, quite naturally, how they are going to manage. This worry is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And the hours spent considering how each penny is to be spent could be so much better employed.

God’s servants also need holidays. This too is taught in Scripture, but is conveniently overlooked by carnal Christians who seem to be intent on breaking their pastor’s mortal frame in the shortest possible time. They moan that they only get two weeks a year, (how many do?), and that the pastor gets a month. But if they counted the other odd days and Saturdays, they would see that their pastor gets over a month’s holiday less than they do. After several years of consecutive ministry it is my firm conviction that the average pastor needs several breaks a year, when he can get right away. Both pastor and church benefit from such times of genuine refreshment. Churches should encourage their ministers to relax, and should ensure that they are given the wherewithal to do so. Elders should be frank, and should tell the pastor that the holiday is for resting, and should actively discourage him from preaching while he is away. Too many men rely on the honorarium that they get from such preaching to pay for their time away, but we have seen that this should not have to be so.

Support in these three matters of vehicle, finance, and holidays, would have prevented many a man from breaking down. But added to this is the whole concept of sharing. A return to the scriptural practice of having a plurality of elders and deacons would solve most problems in this respect.

No man can teach, rule, guide and discipline the church on his own, ­it is beyond the bounds of all human possibility. But a plurality of elders, a presbytery, can — and it is the will of God that it should. Must the pastor chair every meeting? Must he do all the visiting and interviewing? This is elders’ work, and elders should take as much of it on themselves as they can, leaving the pastor as free as possible to labour in Word and doctrine.

And how many pastors are there who light the boilers, open the doors, put up the hymns, tidy the notice-board and dust the hymn-books? Shame on the minister who despises such work — for all lowly work for Christ should be a pleasure to him. But greater shame on the church which allows a pastor to do such things! God has ordained the office of deacon for tasks which include these. How blessed is the church where the deacons do their work well! There you will find a people well taught in the Scriptures, because the pastor has been able to give his undivided attention to the preparation and the preaching of messages from above. Churches which submit to the Divine Word, and have elders and deacons functioning scripturally, seldom see their pastors broken by burdens too heavy for men to carry.

III

But too often it is too late. The toil of years takes its toll, and the sad announcement of the pastor’s illness is made to a surprised church. By what it does next, a church shows itself in its true colours. Often selfish­ness rules the day, and such questions as these spring to mind at once­: ‘When will he be back?’, ‘What are we going to do without him?’, or ‘Does he expect us to support him, when we are getting nothing out of him?’ Sometimes these questions are cruelly voiced. Often they are just silently pondered. Either way, they betray a carnal and mercenary spirit. A spiritual fellowship of godly people would make this its first question — ‘What can we do for the pastor during his illness?’

First of all they can recognise that the pastor is a man like themselves, and subject to pain, anxiety, and spiritual depression. In the planning of preachers, and the sharing-out of the pastor’s duties, the office-bearers should be quick to remember that at this time they can exercise a valuable spiritual ministry to the man who usually ministers to them. They should plan to visit him regularly; to keep him intimately in touch with news of the people he loves, to read to him from the Scriptures, and to be often at his bedside in prayer. But how rarely this happens! A man may give himself unreservedly for his people, but in the time of his own need be almost entirely neglected by them. This is especially true in this matter of spiritual ministry.

Early in his illness, the office-bearers should give to the pastor and his wife a definite assurance that his ill-health will make no difference to the material support that they receive from the church. Some servants of Christ, losing their health in the service of their flocks, have been materially disowned by them during long illnesses. This explains why many of them have never recovered. To be materially assured early in his illness is a great load off a mortal man’s mind, and thus a real aid to his recovery. It is too easy to say that a minister should be above such anxieties. He isn’t. When the body is weak and tired, such questions loom large. The church must recognise that it is pledged to support the pastor who labours in Word and doctrine, and that this support does not end when his holy labours are interrupted by physical affliction.

Speaking generally, it is probably best if the visiting of the ill pastor is restricted to the office-bearers. If it were not so, the constant stream of church members and friends to his home could well impede his recovery. But this does not mean that the ordinary church member can do nothing. To send a kind letter or card is something that all can do. Verbal enquiries to the pastor’s wife and children are also much appreciated, but it must be realised that by their constancy and repetition they bring their own strain to the pastor’s family. The church secretary would be wise to say a little about the pastor’s condition in the course of the weekly church announcements, and this in itself would keep his needs to the forefront of the church’s prayer ministry.

In most cases, God is usually pleased to restore the pastor to his people, but no church should receive him back to his normal duties until it is plain that his recovery is complete. Often a man comes back too early, and is soon ill again, or limps through his ministry for the rest of his life. A long and thorough holiday would be a charitable present to the recovering man of God, followed by a resumption of duties on a gradual basis. For some time to come, the elders should insist that he takes more than one day off a week, and that he works to a very reduced programme. Now also is the time for the church to see that some duties need not be handed back to the pastor at all, for they are being satisfactorily handled by others. The happiest church of all will be the one that welcomes the pastor back to his ministry of Word and doctrine, and puts no other commitments upon him.

My hope is that these comments will lead some church members to give considered and prayerful thought to the role, duties and welfare of their pastors. There is a shortage of good men in the ministry today. Let us not kill those that we have! Rather, let us do everything within our power to ensure that their ministries are long and effective.

This article was first published in the January 1972 edition of the Banner of Truth magazine.

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Paul has been writing about the ‘coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Thess. 2:1). He assures the church that the Lord had not yet come, and would not come, ‘unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed’ (verse 3). But when this man of lawlessness is revealed, the ‘Lord Jesus will kill him with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming’ (verse 8). On that day, the wicked will be confirmed in their perishing state ‘because they refused to love the truth and so be saved’ (verse 10). It is the word ‘love’ that arrested me.

Almost uniformly Paul uses the word ‘believe’, or its synonyms, when he speaks of the truth. But here it is the word ‘love’ that he uses. Paul is telling us something deeply significant about the faith that alone unites us to the Lord Jesus and the salvation of God that is wrapped up in him. The faith that trusts Jesus alone for justification is not a bare, clinical, mathematically deduced faith. God’s truth concerning his Son is not only true, it is glorious, full of grace, rich in wisdom, profound in execution. In other words, the truth that is unto salvation is found in all its grace in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself ‘the truth’ (John 14:6). So, when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we believe not only with our minds, but no less with our hearts, embracing the Lord Jesus as our perfect Prophet, Priest, and King.

It is this truth that lies embedded in Paul’s words, ‘we preach Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1:23). Paul did not preach mere propositions, though he did preach propositionally. He did not merely preach that justification was by faith alone, in Christ alone—he preached Christ our righteousness, whom we receive by faith alone (Phil. 3:8-9; 2 Cor. 5:21). It is because Jesus is glorious, generous, ‘full of pity joined with power’, that believing the truth can never be a cold, calculating, unaffectional exercise.

As our Prophet, God’s final, best and last word to humanity, Jesus is embraced with thankfulness and delight. As God’s Priest, his final, best Mediator and ultimate sacrifice for sin, Jesus is trusted with no less thankfulness and delight. As God’s King, God’s Son rules and reigns over us with kindness, mercy and tenderness (see Isa. 40:9-11). I am not saying that all this truth is immediately understood by every sinner who casts themselves wholly upon Jesus Christ for salvation. But salvation comes to us in the person of the God-Man, and he is ‘all glorious’. It is Jesus Christ himself who is held out to us in the gospel—indeed, he is the gospel.

Some years ago I was struck by this perhaps surprisingly lyrical passage in the works of John Owen. Owen has been expounding the Christ-centredness of the Song of Songs.  Jesus Christ is, writes Owen,

Lovely in his person,—in the glorious all-sufficiency of his Deity, gracious purity and holiness of his humanity, authority and majesty, love and power.

Lovely in his birth and incarnation; when he was rich, for our sakes becoming poor,—taking part of flesh and blood, because we partook of the same; being made of a woman, that for us he might be made under the law, even for our sakes.

Lovely in the whole course of his life, and the more than angelical holiness and obedience which, in the depth of poverty and persecution, he exercised therein;—doing good, receiving evil; blessing, and being cursed, reviled, reproached, all his days.

Lovely in his death; yea, therein most lovely to sinners;—never more glorious and desirable than when he came broken, dead, from the cross. Then had he carried all our sins into a land of forgetfulness; then had he made peace and reconciliation for us; then had he procured life and immortality for us…

Lovely in all those supplies of grace and consolations, in all the dispensations of his Holy Spirit, whereof his saints are made partakers.

Lovely in all the tender care, power, and wisdom, which he exercises in the protection, safe-guarding, and delivery of his church and people, in the midst of all the oppositions and persecutions whereunto they are exposed…

Lovely in the pardon he hath purchased and doth dispense,—in the reconciliation he hath established,—in the grace he communicates,—in the consolations he doth administer,—in the peace and joy he gives his saints,—in his assured preservation of them unto glory.

What shall I say? There is no end of his excellencies and desirableness;—‘He is altogether lovely.’ This is our beloved, and this is our friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

This indeed is our Beloved. Who would not love the truth that supremely concerns him, even better, that is him! Jesus himself told us that he is ‘the truth’ (John 14:6). Loving the truth means loving him who is the truth. The faith that savingly unites a sinner to the Saviour, is not a mere assent to the Saviour’s power to save. Saving faith embraces Jesus as the Father holds him out to us in the gospel. Not to ‘love the truth’ would expose us as someone who had never truly understood the truth ‘as it is in Jesus’ (Eph. 4:21).

Ian Hamilton is Associate Minister at Smithton Free Church, Inverness, and until the Spring of 2023 served on the board of the Banner of Truth Trust. He is the author of The Gospel-Shaped Life, Salvation: Full and Free in Christ, and Words From the Cross.

This piece first appeared as an editorial in the November 2020 edition of The Banner of Truth Magazine.

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The volume is divided into two main sections. The first contains seven ‘Rules for walking in fellowship with respect to the pastor of the congregation, with explanations of the rules, and motives for keeping them.’ The second contains fifteen ‘Rules for walking in fellowship with respect to other believers, with explanations of the rules, and motives for keeping them.’ While so many exhortations might seem a touch overwhelming, none is more than three or four pages of text. Owen seems here to have studied the virtue of pithiness! Furthermore, the structure for each rule provides a helpful framework for study.

In each case, Owen begins by listing a series of relevant texts drawn from across the Scriptures. From these, he adduces a single rule. For example, the seventh rule in the second section is that ‘Believers must bear with one another’s infirmities, weaknesses, sensitivities and failings, in meekness, patience and pity, and providing help and assistance.’ Once the rule has been identified, Owen explains it in greater detail, drawing together the threads from God’s word, probing and pressing, and then offering motivations and encouragements to the reader. In this version, all this is followed by ‘Questions for consideration/discussion’ supplied by a modern editor.

We study the book in our Bible class, a sort of Sunday school for adults. Our first task was to introduce the volume, considering Owen’s personal circumstances and the distinctive features of his ecclesiology at this point in his pilgrimage. He first published Eshcol in 1647, while serving at Coggeshall, Essex, not long after he had practically embraced Congregationalism. It is a thoroughly pastoral production and seems to be established on the platform and in the context of little more than a local church seeking to be faithful. At the root of the whole is a practical principle of love for God and for one another, and this manifestly and helpfully governs everything Owen says. He consistently anchors all he says in the nature and character of God, as revealed in the Lord Christ, as the Saviour and Lord of the church, the Shepherd whom the sheep follow. The first section, dealing primarily with the relation of the whole church to the pastors of the flock in particular, might need a little more pastoral wisdom in pressing home the applications, lest a man seem self-serving, but if he sticks to the Scripture he can do this safely and well.

Our approach, working through the book section by section, is as follows. We begin with Owen’s Scriptural basis for a particular rule. Recognising that it was typical of Puritans not simply to fling out random proof texts, we glance at each text in its context, seeking to understand what Owen has in mind as he brings in various principles, the immediate relevance of all which may not be evident. This gives us a fairly thorough biblical grounding.

Each rule is brief and punchy, usually a single sentence such as, ‘Prayer and supplications are to be made continually on the pastor’s behalf that he might receive help and success in the work that has been given to him’ (first section, third rule). If the sentence is complex or the language at all tricky, we can break it down.

That done, we turn to the explanation. Now the real work begins! We read through, paragraph by paragraph, turning to any additional texts that Owen might introduce. At appropriate points we pause and consider the attitudes and actions that Owen identifies, positively and negatively, and what form they might take in this particular congregation at this particular time, in our own hearts and lives. We try to trace out the warnings and encouragements. Often this is painful, such as when we find something like this: ‘Let pity, not envy; mercy, not malice; patience, not passion; Christ, not flesh; grace, not nature; pardon, not spite or revenge, be our guides and companions in our fellowship’ (p. 58). Or again, there is much soul-searching prompted by an assertion that ‘A member not affected by the anguish of its companions must be a rotten member’ (p. 61). This is probably the most useful part of our study.

To be honest, we do not use the suggested study questions that much. By the time we reach that point, we have usually considered any issues that they raise, and often gone beyond them in terms of the particular challenges we face or encouragements we draw from Owen’s treatment of the issue.

What should you expect from such a course of study? In my experience, you might expect at least three things. You might expect Satan to rage. The Adversary loves to create division and distance in the church of Christ, and anything which militates against that, and which promotes unity and peace, is utterly obnoxious to him. I do not think it any accident that, as a growing and varied congregation enjoying a measure of blessing in other spheres works through such material, the Opposer does all he can to stir up strife and provoke antagonism among us. At the same time, it is worth noting that—in God’s kindness—we are ingesting the very antidote we need under such circumstances. Perhaps it is simply the right thing at the right time?

Furthermore, you might expect the saints to profit. There have also been a number of personal expressions of appreciation. Then, there is the joy of seeing some of Owen’s exhortations really embraced in the life of the church. Some of the profit is painful: particular sins are exposed, ungodly attitudes identified, careless or crass actions addressed. While there are times when we can be grateful for what, under God, we have attained, we equally find ourselves mourning over how far we fall short of the glory of God in such things.

Again, you might expect the Lord to bless. Our Saviour delights in the health of the body and the love of the family of God. These are matters close to his heart. If we approach such a study with eager humility, a zeal to be informed and formed by such truths, then we can anticipate something of God’s smile upon us. Even asking the right questions is a step in the right direction; if we can arrive at the right answers, and translate them into words and deeds of principled and transparent affection, then this is progress indeed. If we hear and heed these things, in dependence upon the Lord setting out to be both hearers and doers of the word of God, then we can anticipate the growing health, holiness and happiness of the church of Christ. We might even anticipate that some who will not embrace such exhortations will be provoked, rebuked, even exposed, by this teaching. That may be a difficult blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

With all this in mind, I would encourage any church to engage with Owen’s work, and to do so readily and eagerly. Remember Owen’s design, revealed in his original title: this was intended as ‘a cluster of the fruit of Canaan, brought to the borders for the encouragement of the saints travelling thitherward, with their faces toward Zion.’ This is, for Owen, a taste of the Promised Land, designed to stir up appetites for heaven for those heading in that direction, giving them a relish for what still lies ahead by allowing them to taste the fruits to come. If heaven is a world of love, taking Owen’s work to heart and in hand would make any local church a more manifest outpost of the kingdom of God.

This article first appeared in the October 2020 issue of the Banner of Truth magazine.

Jeremy Walker is the Book Reviews Editor of the Banner of Truth magazine, and author of the booklet, Called to Be Holy: The Discipline of the Church. He serves as the pastor of Maidenbower Baptist Church, Crawley, England. You can follow him on Twitter, @peregrinus75.

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John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman who did his best to live an obedient life before God. He had an ardent faith, but without a real relationship with God. He had gone to America to convert the Native Americans, but had failed and only recently had returned home to England.

On the morning of 24 May 1738 he woke up in distress and turmoil of soul and began to read his Bible and pray. This is his story in his own words:

John Wesley’s Conversion, Wednesday, 24 May 1738.

I think it was about five this morning, that I opened my Testament on those words, ‘There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that we should be partakers of the Divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4). Just as I went out, I opened it again on those words, ‘Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God.’ (Matthew 12.34). In the afternoon I was asked to go to St Paul’s. The anthem was, ‘Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. O let Thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand? For there is mercy with Thee; therefore shalt Thou be feared. O Israel, trust in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his sins.’ (Psalm 130).

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading ‘Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans’. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation: and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Consider this remarkable series of Scriptures:

2 Peter 1:3–4 … The wonder of God’s Word:

‘His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.’

The Bible is a book full of exceeding great and precious promises: see John 3:16; John 11:25; all of Jesus’ “I AMs”, to name just a few.

Matthew 12:34 … The encouragement of God’s Word:

‘You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’

The Bible is a Book full of encouraging invitations to turn away from the world, with all its grief, to God and all His blessings. At this point John Wesley was in the position of Agrippa before Paul: ‘Then Agrippa said unto Paul, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian”.’ (Acts 26.28). Philip P. Bliss, himself a Methodist, encapsulated this in his challenging hymn:

Romans 4:18-25 … The trustworthiness of God’s Word:

^‘In hope he [Abraham] believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’

God’s Word-filled way of conversion

This is the Word-filled way in which the Holy Spirit ministered God’s grace to John Wesley. Wednesday, 24 May, 1738 was John Wesley’s ‘Happy Day, that fixed (his) choice on (Christ) (his) Saviour and (his) God’.

Remember that John Wesley was an ordained minister in the Church of England. He held a Master of Arts degree from Oxford University. He had been methodical in prayer, Bible reading and doing good works. His father and grandfather were ministers. His mother had faithfully taught him the truths and duties of his religion. He had gone out as a missionary to the indigenous people of America. He had led a good life. But despite all of this, there was something missing – that personal relationship with Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour by which the burden of his sin was rolled away and he entered into the joy of his Lord; and knowing God, he went on to do great exploits for Him.

These events raise the question as to whether we have been trusting in any merit of our own to make ourselves right with God, or whether we are conscious that God has reached down to us in His amazing grace to fill our lives with faith and enable us to know Him through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us, so that our faith will be in the Lord Jesus, ‘for this is eternal life, that (we) know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.’ The Apostle Paul wrote: ‘if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.’

Footnote:

The climactic event of 24 May 1738 happened at the lower end of Aldersgate Street, at its junction with London Wall and diagonally opposite the present-day Museum of London. On that very spot stands a Church of England building named ‘St Botolph’s’ which is leased to London City Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland. On my several visits to London I have felt very much at home there, and yes, my heart has been strangely warmed under the faithful preaching of the Rev Andy Pearson (now minister of St Peter’s, Dundee) and Rev Andy Longwe. Andy Pearson gave me the privilege of preaching there one Lord’s Day and I couldn’t resist the temptation of preaching on 1 Thessalonians 1:8, ‘For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything’, remembering the work that flowed from Wesley’s conversion and which continues strong today, but under a Presbyterian banner.

At the entrance to the Museum of London stands a huge brass plaque containing a facsimile of the relevant page in John Wesley’s Journal. After church I go over there for an hour or so and linger with the passers-by to engage them in conversation, taking them through the Scriptures Wesley quoted as relevant to salvation by grace through faith for good works.

If you’re ever in London, do go there – and raise a testimony.

– Bob Thomas 

Bob Thomas is a former minister at St Kilda’s and Balaclava Presbyterian Church and past editor of New Life Magazine, Australia.

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He is a portion that gives the soul full satisfaction and content: Psa. 16:5, 6, ‘The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.’ It was well with him as his heart could wish. And so in Psa. 73:25, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee’; or as some render it, ‘I would I were in heaven with you’; or as others read the words, ‘I have sought none in heaven or earth besides you’; or as others, ‘I desire none in heaven or earth besides you,’ or ‘I affect none in heaven, nor none on earth like you; I love none in heaven, nor none on earth, in comparison of you; I esteem you instead of all other treasure, and above all other treasures that are in heaven, or that are on earth.’ The holy prophet had spiritual and sweet communion with Christ to comfort and strengthen him; he had a guard of glorious angels to protect him and secure him, and he had assurance of heaven in his bosom to joy and rejoice him; and yet it was none of these, nay, it was not all these together, that could satisfy him, it was only an infinite good, an infinite God, that could satisfy him. He very well knew that the substantials of all true happiness and blessedness lay in God, and his enjoyment of God, It was not his high dignities nor honours that could satisfy him; it was not the strength, riches, security, prosperity, and outward glory of his kingdom that could satisfy him; it was not his delightful music, nor his noble attendance, nor his well furnished tables, nor his great victories, nor his stately palaces, nor his pleasant gardens, nor his beautiful wife, nor his lovely children, that could satisfy him; all these without God could never satisfy him; but God without all these was enough to quiet him, and satisfy him: John 14:8, ‘Philip said unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.’

A sight of God will satisfy a gracious soul more than all worldly contentments and enjoyments, yea, one sight of God will satisfy a saint more than all the glory of heaven will do. God is the glory of heaven. Heaven alone is not sufficient to content a gracious soul, but God alone is sufficient to content and satisfy a gracious soul. God only is that satisfying good, that is able to fill, quiet, content, and satisfy an immortal soul. Certainly, if there be enough in God to satisfy the spirits of just men made perfect, whose capacities are far greater than ours, Heb. 12:23-25; and if there be enough in God to satisfy the angels, whose capacities are far above theirs; if there be enough in God to satisfy Jesus Christ, whose capacity is unconceivable and inexpressible; yea, if there be enough in God to satisfy himself, then certainly there must needs be in God enough to satisfy the souls of his people. If all fulness, and all goodness and infiniteness will satisfy the soul, then God will. There is nothing beyond God imaginable, nor nothing beyond God desirable, nor nothing beyond God delectable; and therefore the soul that enjoys him, cannot but be satisfied with him.

God is a portion beyond all imagination, all expectation, all apprehension, and all comparison; and therefore he that has him cannot but sit down and say, I have enough, Gen. 33:11; Psa. 63:5, 6, ‘My soul shall be satisfied as with* marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.’ Marrow and fatness cannot so satisfy the appetite, as God can satisfy a gracious soul; yea, one smile from God, one glance of his countenance, one good word from heaven, one report of love and grace, will infinitely more satisfy an immortal soul, than all the fat, and all the marrow, and all the dainties and delicates of this world can satisfy the appetite of any mortal man. ‘My soul shall be satisfied with fatness and fatness’; so the Hebrew has it; that is, my soul shall be topful of comfort, it shall be filled up to the brim with pleasure and delight, in the remembrance and enjoyment of God upon my bed, or upon my beds, in the plural, as the Hebrew has it. David had many a hard bed and many a hard lodging, whilst he was in his wilderness condition. It oftentimes so fell out that he had nothing but the bare ground for his bed, and the stones for his pillows, and the hedges for his curtains, and the heavens for his canopy; yet in this condition God was sweeter than marrow and fatness to him; though his bed was never so hard, yet in God he had full satisfaction and content: Jer. 31:14, ‘My people shall be satisfied with goodness, saith the Lord’; and ‘my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory, by Christ Jesus,’ Phil. 4:19, saith Paul, that great apostle of the Gentiles. The Greek word πληρώσει (plērōsei) signifies to fill up, even as he did the widow’s vessels, 2 Kings 4:4, till they did overflow. God will fill up all, he will make up all, he will supply all the wants and necessities of his people. That water that can fill the sea, can much more fill a cup: and that sun which can fill the world with light, can much more fill my house with light. So that God that fills heaven and earth with his glory, can much more fill my soul with his glory.

To show what a satisfying portion God is, he is set forth by all those things that may satisfy the heart of man, as by bread, water, wine, milk, honours, riches, raiment,** houses, lands, friends, father, mother, sister, brother, health, wealth, light, life, etc. And if these things will not satisfy, what will? It is enough, says old Jacob, that Joseph is alive, Gen. 45:28; so says a gracious soul, It is enough that God is my portion. A pardon cannot more satisfy a condemned man, nor bread a hungry man, nor drink a thirsty man, nor clothes a naked man, nor health a sick man, etc., than God satisfies a gracious man. But, Now worldly portions can never satisfy the souls of men, Eccles. 5:10: ‘He that loveth silver shall never be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This is also vanity.’*** All the world cannot fill the soul, nor all the creatures in the world cannot stock the soul with complete satisfaction. As nothing can be the perfection of the soul but he that made it, so nothing can be the satisfaction of the soul but he that made it. If a man be hungry, silver cannot feed him; if naked, it cannot clothe him; if cold, it cannot warm him; if sick, it cannot recover him; if wounded, it cannot heal him; if weak, it cannot strengthen him; if fallen, it cannot raise him; if wandering, it cannot reduce him; oh how much less able is it then to satisfy him! He that, out of love to silver, seeks after silver, shall love still to seek it, but shall never be satisfied with it. A man shall as soon satisfy the grave, and satisfy hell, and satisfy the stomach with wind, as he shall be able to satisfy his soul with any earthly portion. All earthly portions are dissatisfying portions, they but vex and fret, gall and grieve, tear and torment, the souls of men. The world is a circle, and the heart of man is a triangle, and no triangle can fill a circle.**** Some good or other will be always wanting to that man that has only outward good to live upon. Absalom’s beauty could not satisfy him, nor Haman’s honour could not satisfy him, nor Ahab’s kingdom could not satisfy him, nor Balaam’s gold could not satisfy him, nor Ahithophel’s policy could not satisfy him, nor the scribes and Pharisees’ learning could not satisfy them, nor Dives’ riches could not satisfy him, nor Alexander’s conquests could not satisfy him; for when, as he thought, he had conquered one world, he sits down and wishes for another world to conquer; and Cyrus the Persian king was wont to say, did men but know the cares which he sustained under his imperial crown, he thought no man would stoop to take it up. Gilimex, king of the Vandals, when he was led in triumph by Belisarius, cried out, ‘Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.’ Charles V, emperor of Germany, whom of all men the world judged most happy, cried out with detestation to all his honours, riches, pleasures, trophies, Abite hinc, abite longe, Get you hence, let me hear no more of you. And it has been long since said of our King Henry II,

He whom, alive, the world could scarce suffice,
When dead, in eight-foot earth contented lies.

By all these instances, it is most evident that no earthly portions can satisfy the souls of men. Can a man fill up his chest with air? or can he fill up the huge ocean with a drop of water? or can a few drops of beer quench the thirst of a man in a burning fever? or can the smell of meat, or the reeking fume of a ladle, or dreaming of a banquet, satisfy a hungry stomach? No! no more can any earthly portions fill or satisfy the heart of man. If emptiness can fill the soul, if vanity can satisfy the soul, or if vexation can give content to the soul, then may earthly portions satisfy the soul, but not till then. When a man can gather grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles, and turn day into night, and winter into summer, then shall he find satisfaction in the creatures; but not before. All earthly portions are weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, and they are found to be lighter than the dust of the balance; and this will rather inflame the thirst than quench it. A man that has only the world for his portion, is like Noah’s dove out of the ark, that was in continual motion, but could find no resting place; but a man that has God for his portion is like the dove, returning and resting in the ark, The soul can never be at rest, till it comes to rest and centre in God.***** God himself is the soul’s only home, no good but the chiefest good can suffice an immortal soul. Look, as God never rested till he had made man, so man can never rest till he comes to enjoy God; the soul of man is of a very vast capacity, and nothing can fill it to the brim but he that is fulness itself. It is the breast, and not the baby [‘Doll’ – G.] nor the rattle, that will satisfy the hungry child; and it is God, and not this or that creature, that can satisfy the soul of man.

*Cheleb vade shen, fat and fat; so the Hebrew has it; and hereby is meant satiety of pleasures, etc.

**[That is, clothing.]

***Some read the words thus: He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, and he that loves it in the multitude of it shall not have fruit.

****If the whole world were changed into a globe of gold, it could not fill one heart, it could not satisfy one immortal soul.

*****A reminiscence of Augustine’s memorable saying, ‘Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te‘, [‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’] Confe. i. 1. – G.

The above is excerpted from Thomas Brooks, An Ark for All God’s Noahs in a Gloomy, Stormy Day, originally published in 1666, and by the Trust in 2020. A wonderful resource for meditation on what it is to have God as our portion, the book may be purchased here.

Thumbnail Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

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In Psalm 77, Asaph laments the sense of the absence of the presence of God. He tells us that he is spiritually distraught. He speaks of ‘the day of my trouble.’ He tells us that his soul refused to be comforted. The reason for his heart and soul distress is that he feels that God has turned away from him and ceased to be gracious to him. Read the searing honesty of this believer:

Will the Lord spurn for ever, and never again be favourable? Has

his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all

time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his

compassion? (Psa. 77:7-9).

Perhaps you can identify with the Psalmist. The Christian life for you has been, or is becoming, hard. God seems far off. Life is wearisome. The heavens seem like brass. Every day seems a joyless grind. And, like the Psalmist, you are asking, ‘Lord, where are you?’

Like a number of Psalms, this Psalm does not end with a joyful resolution of Asaph’s complaint. Life in general, and the life of trustful reliance on God and his grace to us in the Lord Jesus Christ in particular, is not always that neat and tidy. Often we have to live with unresolved trials, with debilitating weakness, with the taunts of the enemies of God. Having said that, the Psalmist provides us with ‘a way ahead.’ He does not simply shrug his shoulders and tell us just to grin and bear it. Unsurprisingly Asaph reminds himself of the history of God’s dealings with his people, and of a stunning theological truth.

First, in verses 11-15, God’s troubled servant ponders the past history of the people of God:

‘I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph.’ The word of God truly is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psa. 119:105).

Nothing is more calculated to lift up our weary, distressed souls than pondering, meditating, on the mighty works of God in history. Out of nothing in the space of six days he created all things by his powerful word. He opened a sea to rescue his people. He drowned an army in the same sea. He opened up a river for his people to cross over and then razed the fortified walls of a city to the ground to give them a great victory. He delivered his people from a vast army with 300 men. The Old Testament is full of the ‘mighty deeds’ of the Lord on behalf of his people. No less does the New Testament herald God’s mighty deeds on behalf of his people (ponder and meditate). Towering above them all is the resurrection triumph of our Lord Jesus, his public triumph over sin and death and hell.

In all of our troubles and sense of desertion, we need to be Bible-saturated men and women. Our reading of God’s word needs to be regular, not spasmodic; wide ranging, not narrowly focused; deeply reflective, not superficial.

There is, however, another strand to the Psalmist’s encouragement. We read in verse 19, ‘Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen [Hebrew: unknown]’—‘yet your footprints were unknown.’ Asaph is telling us something theologically profound. God’s presence may not be seen, or felt, when in fact he is powerfully, actively, and graciously present. I have often reflected on these words throughout the course of my Christian life. Too often I have allowed my circumstances to cloud my understanding of the Lord and his covenant-pledged commitment never to leave me or forsake me. These words in Psalm 77 remind me that my perception of things is not what ultimately matters. What matters is the covenant, pledged-in-blood faithfulness of our gracious and good God.

Whether you or I can discern the Lord’s presence with us in the midst of our troubles and trials is actually neither here nor there. I don’t mean we should be content with the absence of the sense of God’s presence. I mean we greatly need to live theologically and not circumstantially.

At a time when God’s ways with his church were deeply perplexing, Isaiah wrote, ‘Truly, you are a God who hides himself’ (Isa. 45:15). Later the Lord reminds his servant, ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’ (Isa. 55:8, 9). We see through a glass darkly; but one day face to face.

The life of faith is uneven and often perplexing. It was for our Saviour. He experienced disappointment and discouragement. He was denied and betrayed by men he had personally chosen. As he hung on the cross as our sin-atoning Saviour, he cried, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matt. 27:46). Sometimes all we have in this life is naked trust; yet living with the assurance that the Lord will never leave us nor forsake us. That when we walk through the waters we have his promise, ‘I will be with you’ (Isa. 43:2), even when we cannot see his footprints.

All of the above is reduced to this: The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is where we cast our anchor (Rom. 8:32). There, as nowhere else, do we see how greatly God loves us.

Ultimately every Christian needs to live the life of faith out of their union with Jesus Christ. This union, forged in eternity, sealed at Calvary, and initiated by faith, is unbreakable. Our dark and desolating experiences cannot nullify or qualify in any degree this unbreakable covenant. When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we have his promise, ‘I will be with you.’

So, the sum of the Psalm is simply this: ‘Have faith in God. Trust who God is. Trust him when you cannot fathom him. Rest the weight of all you are, your troubles, distresses, fears, disappointments, miseries, on the grace and love of the One who spared not his only Son but delivered him up for us all. Have faith in God.’

This article first appeared in the February 2020 issue of the Banner of Truth magazine.

Thumbnail Photo by Mark Eder on Unsplash

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Why are they going to Asbury? It is because, in the last few days, something has taken place in the chapel of Asbury University. If the reports are anything to go by, a regular chapel service on a Wednesday morning has become a sort of rolling worship service. Revival, we are told, is happening at Asbury. Many people are heading to Asbury. A couple of friends asked me, “Should I go to Asbury?”

I think they may have holy FOMO. FOMO, as you may know, is the fear of missing out. It is a fundamentally stressful state of being, involving a sort of constant apprehension—usually fuelled in these days by a stream of online information and a flood of social media—that someone, somewhere, is enjoying something that you want or need, some event or experience that will make your life fundamentally better. It is understandable that genuine Christians, those who have longed for and prayed for the reviving of Christ’s church, should hear of events in a place like Asbury and suffer a little holy FOMO. Notice the qualifying adjective! They are not seeking to be slaves to spectacle or entranced by mere experience, but they are eager for the Lord’s favour. If that favour is being poured out, they have a genuine appetite to be a part of things. It may still be FOMO, but I think we understand it. After all, if the Lord were genuinely reviving his people in a place, say, a hundred miles away, if there were a preacher whose ministry seemed to be attended by showers of heavenly blessing and he were speaking down the road, would you or I not have an appetite to be there, eagerly anticipating God’s mercies toward us?

With regard to Asbury, typical responses seem to involve a lot of naiveté and a lot of cynicism. I have known good men who have refused to condemn, or even to critique, sub-scriptural religious charlatanism because they knew of similar periods or events which produced some good (the 1904-05 revival in Wales is a historical case in point—I know men who, because good things came out of it, were willing to entertain anything which involved something similar to its excesses and weaknesses, just in case; similarly, it should be said, I know some who condemned everything for the opposite reason). For some people, if it is lively and Christian (at least, kind of) and prominent, then surely it is a good thing, and who are we to criticise? Others are inherently negative. They hear of men of bad reputation heading that way and sneer, “Ah, the vultures are gathering!” They look at the theological pedigree of a place or person and assume that the Lord should not, could not, and would not work among such unworthy people (the working assumption of our own worthiness is, of course, woven into that). Perhaps, then, they are bitter that something may have happened elsewhere that has not happened here, to me. Some are quickly dismissive of what they consider to be an inherently empty religious spectacle. That cynicism can be dressed up in clothes that look like garments wisdom might wear: “Let’s just wait and see, shall we?” (The difference between wisdom and cynicism there might lie in the tone—cynicism has already made its mind up that this is a bubble soon to pop.)

So, when friends ask me, “Do you think it is genuine? Do you think I should go?” I have to be careful how I answer. I was recently involved in the production of a documentary called Revival: The Work of God, for Reformation Heritage Books. There were several early drafts of the script for that documentary, offering two different approaches to the material. The one which prevailed for the documentary focused on the histories, the stories of God’s dealings, drawing out lessons along the way. The other approach used the historical details to adorn and illuminate a series of lessons about the theology of revival, the setting of revival, the nature of revival, the agent of revival, the instruments of revival, the effects of revival, the dangers of revival, the pursuit of revival, and the history of revival. All of those issues are addressed in the documentary as it now stands, but the categories themselves are helpful in asking what is taking place in Asbury, and how we ought to respond to it.

Part of the problem is that I am not in Asbury, and do not expect to be there. Whatever is taking place in Asbury is being communicated and filtered by way of media that are not necessarily going to communicate accurately what is taking place, for good or ill, for better or for worse. We see snippets and snapshots, some of which seem to suggest that this phenomenon is taking place entirely apart from any preaching and teaching, and that the revival seems to consist solely in an extended concert (which, in today’s Christianity, is often considered to be synonymous with ‘worship’). Others contain suggestions, if not testimonies, of people repenting of sin and drawing near to God. I have neither the energy nor the opportunity to filter through all these reports, trying to discern and determine what is valid and valuable and what is not.

So what do I say? How should I respond, to them and in my own heart?

Well, I have studied in small measure the history of revival, and know some of the dangers of revivalism. I have been present when some men have preached and I was persuaded that there was an unusual sense of heavenly reality, making my soul humble and hungry. I have also seen some excesses and uglinesses which fill me with grief, and which are no more manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power than a twitching corpse is evidence of real life.

I know that the Lord is sovereign. I know that he works in mercy and in grace. I therefore do not think that we have any right to tell the Lord where and when and whom he must must bless. I cannot restrict the Holy Spirit’s operations, but I can know how he operates. If charlatans or naysayers arrive where God is at work, I know that they might quench the Spirit of God, but I also know that the Lord might be pleased to convince, convict and convert his elect. I know that the devil often sets a kind of religious wildfire alongside or near a genuine work of God in order to dilute or discredit the power of the gospel. I know that the Lord uses weak and foolish instruments to accomplish his purposes, so I do not expect every man whom the Lord uses to be the finished article, either as to doctrine or practice. I know that the primary means he uses to stir and sustain life in his saints and to bring life to the lost is the preaching of the Word of God, and so I wonder how much preaching and teaching is involved here. I am fascinated by Spurgeon’s concern that the genuine revival in Northern Ireland in the 1850s occurred without the obvious instrumentality of the Word of God, to which he attributed some of its weaknesses and its lack of longevity. I know that the work of the Spirit involves a profound and humbling sense of the presence of a holy God, a deep and accurate conviction of sin, a genuine and striking newness of life, a committed pursuit of true godliness, and a sincere appetite for and delight in the worship of God, and I anticipate that these will be the present and lasting fruits of any genuine spiritual renewal. I know that sometimes, in desperation for something to happen, we are ready to excuse, overlook and romanticise something that is deeply flawed or even not genuine. I know that, because we have been disappointed in the past, we are ready to dismiss or deride anything and everything, having already concluded that it cannot or will not happen in our day or our place.

If someone were to say, “Of course this is real revival! To question this is to question God himself!” then I would say, “We are not to deny or to limit God, but we are to test the spirits (1Jn 4:1), and those are not the same thing.” If someone were to say, “Of course this is not real revival! How could it be, given where and when and how and among whom it is happening!” then I would say, “And who does deserve God’s blessing, and which of us ever responds to it with a perfect blend of light and heat? Salvation is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16).”

Should we be hopeful? Why not? The Reformed have no monopoly on God’s grace. Should we be careful? Of course, for a tree is known by its fruits. The mere fact of long meetings for praise, or even prayer, or even preaching, do not a revival make! Are Christians being humbled and stirred before God, are unbelievers repenting and believing and manifesting transformed lives? The great theologian of revival, Jonathan Edwards, makes clear that it can take time to distinguish between a passing religious excitement and a genuine work of grace. The work will not suffer for righteous caution, but an excess of excitement and a mere appetite for experience may prove dangerous, as might a sneering suspicion and ungrounded negativity.

I am wary of chasing the fire and turning events like these into some kind of spectacle. I would be grieved at the thought of the Lord drawing near and not taking an opportunity to draw near to him. So I do not need to live in the stressful state of FOMO, even a holy FOMO. I need not become slave to spectacle or entranced by mere experience. I need to be more eager for the Lord’s glory than for the Lord’s blessing, ready to rejoice if he is pleased to magnify his name, even if he does not magnify it where I might have prayed or hoped. I need to be more earnest in pleading for the Lord’s favour toward me and those whom I serve.

So I will not be going to Asbury because I do not need to go to Asbury. I have a place to be and a work to do and a God to serve. While God is often pleased to limit his operations to particular moments and periods, places and people, and while I long to know his blessing where I am, I do not need to be a Spirit-chaser in the wrong sense. I know that the Lord is not limited in what he can do and where. I know what he has promised, I know what I desire, and I know what he is both willing and able to do. And so, it will be better simply to serve as God has commanded, and to pray, “Lord, work here too!”

Those who want to look at these issues in more depth might try the following volumes:

The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards (see Banner edition here)

Revival and Revivalism by Iain H. Murray

Pentecostal Outpourings: Revival and the Reformed Tradition by Robert D. Smart, Michael A. G. Haykin & Ian H. Clary (eds.) 

Revival: A People Saturated with God, Brian Edwards

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When an eagle judges that its young are ready to fly, it pushes them out of the nest, forcing them to flap their wings and try to fly. If the eaglet isn’t able to do this immediately, it will drop like a stone. But the eagle swoops down underneath and catches its young and bears it up to safety. Then the process is repeated until the young bird learns how to use its wings. It sounds cruel—but it’s for the eaglet’s good. It needs to learn to fly and that will never happen in the security of the nest. But the mother is watchful, strong and swift to come to the rescue if needed.

That’s the Lord’s own description of those two or three months Israel has spent in the wilderness since leaving Egypt. The Lord has been disciplining his people, testing them and training them to trust him. Perhaps at times his methods have seemed harsh, even cruel.

Think of how he led the Israelites in a circle until they were trapped, with the Red Sea behind them and the whole Egyptian army racing towards them. How distressing that must have been for them! How damaging for their mental health! Exodus 14:10 says that they ‘feared greatly’. But the Lord swooped down to catch them, parting the Red Sea and bringing them safely through.

Think of how he led them for three days with no water—right on the brink of what the human body can endure. He brought them to Marah where there was water—only for them to find the water was bitter! The Lord is tossing them out of the nest. Will they flap their wings of faith and fly? Will they trust him? No—so he swoops down to catch them and makes the water sweet.

But Israel won’t learn to trust him if he gives them everything they need instantly, dropping food into their mouths like baby birds in a nest. So once again he pushes them out of the nest, letting them suffer the agony of hunger pangs for weeks. They suffer so much they wish they were dead. Will they trust him? No—they are in free fall, so again he swoops down to catch them in might and grace and rains down bread from heaven.

Again he pushes them out of the nest to teach them to trust him by leaving them without water. Will they flap their wings of faith and fly this time? Surely they know now that the Lord can be trusted? But no—again they grumble and complain. So Lord swoops down and gives them a mighty river of water from the rock.

Time and time again, with great patience, the Lord has caught his plummeting people on his mighty wings and borne them up and carried them to safety.

Can’t you testify to how the Lord has done the same for you, over and over again in your life? This is how he deals with all his people. Haven’t there been times when he has pushed you out of the nest—out of your comfort zone, out into a terrifying, bewildering, painful ordeal. You felt yourself plummeting—it seemed certain you would crash to the ground, that you couldn’t cope. But just in time he caught you and bore you up on his mighty wings.

Can’t you look back and see, at least in part, his wisdom in sending trials of various kinds into your life? Illness, failure, disappointment, setbacks, hardships, chronic pain, weakness, loneliness, grief. It may have seemed cruel at the time; it may have been a deeply traumatic experience; you may have questioned the Lord’s kindness and wisdom: ‘Why would a loving God do this to me?’ His purposes may have been completely hidden from you at the time. But later it became clear—or at least a little clearer—what the Lord was doing. He was teaching you to trust him—to flap the wings of faith, to learn to fly. We can’t stay in the nest all the time, where it’s safe and comfortable and easy, where everything is provided for us. It wouldn’t be good for us, nor would it be kind of the Lord to let us.

Maybe you feel like you’re in free fall today. Something or someone you depended on has been torn away. Everything you thought you knew has been turned upside-down. You feel like a great hand has plucked you out of your nest and thrown you into the air, so that you’re spinning around with no idea of which way is up, with the ground rushing up to meet you.

The Lord is teaching you to fly. To trust him. And if you fail, there is a gracious safety net. Look back and remember ‘what you yourselves have seen’—how the Lord has borne you up on eagles’ wings so many times before. Remember how he did it for Israel, not just here in the wilderness but countless times throughout their history. Talk to your brothers and sisters in your church and listen to their stories of how the Lord has borne them up on eagles’ wings again and again. By his grace, in his strength, flap your wings and learn to trust him more.

Thumbail photo by Richard Lee on Unsplash

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I need to remember this in a variety of settings. I need to remember it when I am preaching, so that I more regularly quote the Scriptures, and—when appropriate and helpful, and probably more often than I do—to turn people to a particular portion or passage, so that they can see it for themselves. I need to remember this in teaching, publicly or more privately, when I may be discoursing on some scriptural theme or principle which I assume is evident to all, but which may be entirely in shadow for someone who has not read or understood that portion of God’s Word, or who has only just come to faith, or who has never been taught these things before. I need to remember it in church members’ meetings, when there are, perhaps, complex or thorny matters of church polity and practice to address, some of which may be alien in principle and in practice to some of the members. I need to remember it in evangelising—not that I can ask open-air listeners to look at their Bibles, or even that I can always put a Bible in front of someone with whom I am speaking more informally, but rather that I can both emphasise that I am speaking from the Bible and encourage them to check.

I need to remember all this not just for unbelievers who may never have been exposed to the Scriptures, but for both new believers and for older Christians as well. Even new believers who have been for years under the sound of the gospel, perhaps under the soundest of ministries, or who were raised by godly parents in a well-ordered home, are likely to be encountering much as if for the first time. The Spirit of Christ has opened their eyes, and they are like people who have never really read their Bibles before! To be sure, we are hoping that the new life they have will vivify the entire framework of truth which they have been taught, but there are lively perceptions and lively connections which they have not yet made, and will not without someone to guide them. And older Christians, too, for various reasons, may be marked by confusion, suspicion, or accusation. I have heard saints of many years standing assure me that the plain teaching of the Bible is wrong, or claim some obscure (or even well-known) verse, poorly interpreted and carelessly handled, as trumping the clear instruction of the more obvious portions of the truth. Some do not so much manhandle as manipulate or even mutilate a text, making it mean what they wish or expect, in danger perhaps of twisting it even to their own destruction. (Now, do I leave that hanging, or do I refer to 2 Peter 3:16, so that people know where I got that language?) Some listen to a preacher or teacher (more often than not, online) with a novel interpretation, or have perhaps come from a religious background marked by ignorance or flawed, if not false, teaching, to which they cling. Some have been bruised by bad teaching in the past. Some just don’t read or engage with their Bibles—some are scared of portions of it, or seem to have spent a lifetime with their eyes going over the page but little truth penetrating the mind. Some are (perhaps natively) marked by suspicion and aggression, quick to accuse and slow to trust, often ready to impute something ugly, perhaps because they have never heard of it or thought of it before. Often people have had little training in basic thinking and learning, or have their own particular limitations.

So perhaps you spend hours with someone almost obsessed with a weird hyper-literalistic interpretation of one verse in Revelation. You try to put it in its context in the book itself, and in the Bible as a whole, and they sit there concentrating, nodding, and then respond as if the conversation as a whole has not been happening—back to square one! Or you have a long discussion with a young believer, tracing out some sweet doctrine and its delightful consequences, only to pick it up again in a week’s time as if the first discussion never happened at all. Or you invest time in bringing the Word of God to bear, explaining and applying particular texts, demonstrating how the Scriptures carry us to certain conclusions, convictions, and actions, only to hear, “Well, I still think that…” Or you get accused of ruling with an iron fist, heavy-shepherding, or cultish behaviour, when you are simply applying the basic principles of church discipline to some open and scandalous sin. Or you find that blood is thicker than water, and everything is so clear, until it comes to my friend, my spouse, my children, my parents—as if all right reason is suspended now that those relationships have come into play, as if my beloved is the exception to every rule. Perhaps some people honestly think or wonder if I am making it all up as I go along! Every overseer of any experience will have their own bewildering stories to tell.

But what else do I have apart from the Word of God in dependence on the Spirit of God? “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2Cor 10:4–5). “A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will” (2Tim 2:24–26). I must preach the word, being ready in season and out of season, to convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching (2Tim 4:2).

When the pastor wants to throw in the towel, when he is ready to give up and walk away, when he is tempted to sinful frustration and despondency, when carnal shortcuts to apparent influence and effectiveness seem so attractive, this is what we must remember. Only the Scriptures bind the conscience. Even if I speak scripturally, or scriptural sense, unless I show that it is from the Word of God there is a danger that people might think that they are persuaded by me, or guided by man’s wisdom, rather than compelled by the truth. Indeed, I cannot compel anyone on my own authority—it must be the truth of God that men hear and obey. So what can I do?

First, I can set out to know my Bible better for myself. Even if my mind is not given to the memorisation of chapter and verse, I need to be able to quote and show from where in the Scriptures I am deriving my principles, precepts, promises, and practices. Even when I am giving the general sense, I need to make sure that I regularly point out, and sometimes explicitly demonstrate, from where in the Bible I am deriving my teaching. Especially when things are knotty and difficult, or especially when I am dealing with people whose character, training, experience, or circumstances are tying them in knots, I need patiently to take time to point out how the Bible is guiding us.

Second, I can encourage people to have their Bibles open in front of them when I preach. Whether that is a real book or a screen, it is good for people to see for themselves what the Bible says. One old pastor said that he liked to see his congregation like the swans drinking, dipping their heads down to take in the water and then raising them to let the water pour down their necks. So with the congregation, who should be dipping their heads to take in what is on the page in front of them, then raising their heads back to the teacher to let the truth pour into their souls.

I need to encourage the saints to read their Bibles. I can do this by equipping them with tools that will help them, individually and in families, to cover the whole of the counsel of God. I can do this by reminding them of the value of knowing the Old and New Testaments. I can do this by my own evident relish for God’s Word. I can do it by regular reading of the Scriptures, so that in the course of a few years all the people have heard the whole Old and New Testament read and explained. This might take the edge of fear off people for whom portions of their Bibles remain perpetually closed books.

But I need to do more here—I need to teach people, as much as possible, to read with understanding. I may not start a course on hermeneutics and exegesis (or, at least, I may not call it that for fear of scaring off people who have been told that they do not or cannot understand big words, or who are suspicious of anything ‘academic’ or ‘doctrinal’, or who use as an excuse that this kind of stuff is for brainiacs). But perhaps I will do that, for those who are willing and able to go a step further. Some of those taught may teach others in their turn. I also to explain the portions that are read publicly. I may need to make clear not just how I read a passage of the Bible, but why I read it that way, to show even as I tell. I need to model good exegesis in my own ministry, not always just offering my conclusions but sometimes showing my working. I need to step people through the process, perhaps in a Bible study or a private conversation, leading them gently from text to text, revealing the connections and letting them see the conclusions for themselves. I need to be ready to send them a couple of relevant passages when they are confused, and give them a couple of days to read them, and then talk to them again. I need to look them in the eye when I am preaching and teaching, and learn to recognise the blank looks that start to grip too many faces when what I thought was clear is evidently not. I must be able to adapt, to explain, to illustrate, to reiterate. I need to spend time with the young saints to help them learn how to love their Bibles like this. I need to sit down with the older believers who may seem never to have seen or heard this before, or to have forgotten it if they did. And, if none of that works, I need to hold fast, and stick to the truth which the church has recognised that God has gifted me to know, to understand, and to teach—even if I get dismissed, ignored, disdained, accused, or derided.

I am not talking here about a wooden proof-texting mentality, in which I can say nothing of substance unless I am ready to “show the verse.” I hope you can hear bits of Bible threaded through this whole article, just allusions and more explicit quotations of phrases, to give the whole the savour of scriptural scents and ideas. I am simply saying this: I am a teacher of the truth, and I cannot wander from that, but must manifest it graciously, clearly, and practically. If I am God’s servant bringing God’s rule to bear in God’s church for God’s glory and the good of his beloved children, if I am a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ for the complete salvation of sinners, if I am a man who knows and trusts the influences and operations of the Holy Spirit bringing to bear the very truth he has made known, I need to be a man of the word, and we need to be a people of the Book.

Jeremy Walker is pastor of Maidenbower Baptist Church. 

Thumbnail Photo by Matthew Wheeler on Unsplash

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Of all the possible places the Messiah could have been born, Bethlehem was the most appropriate. Even its very name was beautifully fitting, for ‘Bethlehem’ means ‘house of bread’ – the perfect place for the ‘Bread of life’ to be born who would save his people from death. Ephrathah means ‘fruitful’; just reflect on the exponential fruitfulness of the Lord Jesus–the countless millions who worship and follow him.

But it’s not the name that is the most important reason for Bethlehem being the birthplace of the Saviour of the world. There are two key reasons: its utter insignificance and its vital significance.

1. Jesus was born in Bethlehem because of its utter insignificance.

Bethlehem in Micah’s day was lowly and obscure. That’s hard for us to imagine because today everyone in the world knows about Bethlehem–billions of people sing songs about it every year. But in Micah’s day it was ‘too little to be among clans of Judah’. It was so unimportant that it required an extra name to identify it: Ephrathah (in district of Ephrathah, as opposed to another Bethlehem in Zebulun). In Joshua 15, 115 towns and cities in Canaan are listed ‘with their villages’ and Bethlehem isn’t among them.

Isn’t this so typical of the Lord’s way of working though? God doesn’t choose according to the world’s system of valuation. ‘But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God’ (1 Cor. 1:27ff). And he was doing that even in the circumstances of Jesus’ birth: born to a poor family among the animals and laid in a manger. Bethlehem is the ideal sort of birthplace for the one who came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

The kingdom of God constantly turns worldly expectations on their head. The kings of royal Jerusalem fail, but the Messiah born in lowly Bethlehem will triumph. Hope for our world won’t be found in the great centres of power and influence, but in churches. Not in London or Washington or Beijing, but in faithful little groups of Christians who love the Lord Jesus and are trying to live by his word. Not in fantastically gifted people but in ordinary people like us.

If you’re ever tempted to get discouraged because of the smallness of your resources and gifts and influence–either personally or as a church–the littleness and insignificance of Bethlehem reminds us that these things don’t matter. In fact, they are an advantage, because that’s how God usually chooses to work–not in the spectacular and impressive, but through the ordinary and everyday, lowly and obscure, so that all the glory is his.

2. Jesus was born in Bethlehem because of its vital significance.

Of course there were many other even more obscure places than Bethlehem where Jesus might have been born. Was there any other reason for God choosing Bethlehem?

Bethlehem did have one claim to fame, and one only: it was the birthplace of David. That’s why the angel in Luke 2:11 called it ‘The City of David.’ This link with David was vital because Jesus is the true and better David who was to come. When the Messiah came he would bring to fulfilment all God’s covenant promises to David, which in Micah’s day looked like they had been forgotten. As Micah 5:1 describes, the nation of Judah in terrible decline and weakness–a far cry from the golden age of David’s reign 300 years before. They were being invaded and besieged by the Assyrian empire and the future looked bleak.

At the heart of God’s covenant with David was the promise of an everlasting throne: (2 Sam. 7:16). It looked like David’s throne was in serious jeopardy. But Micah reassures God’s people that God’s covenant with David will not fail.

Micah sees a day when God will bring a new ruler out of Bethlehem–as if he’s beginning again with a new David–going back to Bethlehem to bring the Messiah in David’s line who will rule forever. That’s why Gabriel tells Mary ‘He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end’ (Lk. 1:32f)

Just as David was chosen from obscurity of Bethlehem to be the ruler of Israel, so the Messiah will come from humble origins in Bethlehem to be exalted as the King of kings.

Micah mentions two things this true and better David will accomplish for Israel

(a) Unity. ‘…then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel’ (Mic. 5:3). On Day of Pentecost there were Jews in Jerusalem from the four points of the compass (listed very deliberately in Acts 2:9-11). They hear the good news about Jesus Christ being preached and they repent and believe. But this kingdom is for Gentiles too, as Paul says in Eph. 3:6: ‘the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.’ Just think how many nations are represented by the readers here! All one in Christ, before whom we bow as our Lord.

(b) Security. ‘And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace’ (Mic. 5:4-5).

How does Jesus give this peace? Micah says that he himself shall be their peace. Paul explains it for us in Eph. 2:14ff: ‘For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… [to] reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.’

Jesus was born in Bethlehem because he was going to make peace between God and sinners. But more than that, he would bring the peace of God as well. Micah describes it as ‘dwelling secure’. Having the peace of mind and heart that comes from being in a right relationship with God. The peace that comes from knowing that he is working all things for your good. Christians can dwell secure even when they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, because their great Shepherd is walking the path with them, shepherding them in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

‘O Little Town of Bethlehem…
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight…
And praises sing to God the King
And Peace to men on earth.’

This article was first published on The Gentle Reformation and has been reproduced with permission.

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It’s easy to feel remote from it all. These shepherds belong to a different age and, for most of us, to a different race. And the message was very much for them too, as Jews. For by “all the people” the angel meant all the people of Israel. God had promised them a Saviour. And now, after a long, long wait he had come. You could be forgiven for asking, “What is there in this for our largely non-Jewish 21st century world? What is there in this for me?” 

The answer is much! The good news this angel announced is God’s good news for us. For you, for me, for all the world. It’s why Christians make so much of the Christmas story. It’s why we sing about it and talk about it. It’s why this article has been written. It’s why I ask you to take a few moments to read it.  

The title is deliberately incomplete: Christmas, a time to be… Let’s fill in the blanks (for there are several!). 

A time to be glad

 The shepherds were afraid. Terrified in fact. An angel of the Lord was a scary being, especially one who came with such heavenly glory that the darkness was dispelled in an instant. But there was no need to be afraid. This was no avenging angel. He had come with “good news of great joy”. A Saviour had been born. It was a time to be glad, not filled with fear.  

The God who sent him wants us to be glad too. And for the very same reason. A Saviour has been born. That was certainly good news for the Jews. It is good news for Jewish people still. But it’s also good news for the rest of us. Why? Because the same Bible that tells us that God sent his Son to be a Saviour to the Jews also tells us that he sent him “to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14). It was because God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son (John 3:16). The promise of eternal life is for whoever believes in him. 

But we need to back up a little. I may be in serious need of medical attention. But unless I know that I am I’m not going to seek it out. So with Jesus. Why is it that the sending of a Saviour from heaven is a matter of sheer indifference to people? It’s because they have no sense of need for a Saviour. They are getting on perfectly fine without one. But the need is real! One day we are going to stand before our Maker, the God who has cared for us, provided for us, helped us, loved us; the God to whom we owe every breath and who is rightfully our lord. And we are going to have to answer for the way in which we have lived our lives in relation to him. For how we have pushed him to the margins of our lives – and beyond. For how we have refused him our service, our love, our worship, our obedience. For all the myriad of ways in which we have wronged both him and our fellow humans. How can we escape his condemnation? Impossible without a Saviour! 

Which is why Christmas is a time to be glad. For in Jesus the God against whom we have sinned has lovingly given us the very thing that we need – a Saviour. 

A time to be confident

We live in a world of under-performing products; of things (and people) that promise but can’t deliver. Can we have confidence in Jesus? Is he up to the task? Part of the answer lies in the title that the angel gave to him, Christ.  

Think about the shepherds. The identifying of this baby as Christ was music to their ears. We can be sure of that. For it was the Christ for whom they had long been waiting; it was the Christ whom God had promised to send. That was how people referred to him; that was what they called him. And now here was an angel from heaven announcing his arrival. 

We can be confident, then, of his identity. But so too of his ability. ‘Christ’ means ‘anointed one’. For the great task that was ahead of him – to save his people from their sins – Jesus was going to be anointed or empowered by the Holy Spirit. God had promised it beforehand. And as we follow the course of Jesus’ life we see how faithfully God kept his word. It was by the help of Holy Spirit that he taught God’s word. It was by the help of Holy Spirit that he performed his miraculous works. And it was by the by the help of the Holy Spirit that he died for us on the cross of Calvary. 

History is littered with false saviours.  People who have turned out to be frauds and failures. Not Jesus! When he was here he was given all the resources he needed to begin, carry on, and successfully complete the work he had been given to do. And by afterwards raising him from the dead and by using him since to transform millions of lives God has put that beyond all doubt. 

So Christmas is a time to be confident. The Saviour we need is the very Saviour whom God has given to us in Jesus. 

A time to be amazed

Here’s a big international company. It’s having to deal with a problem. Who do you think sets-to to sort it out? The CEO himself! That tells you how major a problem it is. And so with regard to our sin. How big a problem is our sin? The answer lies in the one whom God sends to deal with it. Let’s listen again to the angel: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord”. This baby was no mere human, though to look at him that’s what you would suppose. This was the Lord himself, come from heaven to earth, because no one less than he was capable of sorting out the problem created by our sin. 

“Christ the Lord”, says the angel. The Jesus of Bethlehem was a divine person; God the Son sent by God the Father. What an astonishing thing that he should come! And in the way that he did – clothing himself with our nature. And with a work ahead of him that would take him eventually to the suffering and death of the cross. Christmas is a time to be amazed. Amazed at the love of God. Amazed that he should so want to forgive us the wrongs we have done him that he was prepared to do this for us. 

A time to be saved

All around the world, this Christmas season, Christians are doing what I have been doing in this article – telling people the “good news of great joy” that a Saviour has been born. You can guess why. We want people to be saved! It’s what I want for any reader who is not yet right with God. I want you to be freed from your guilt. I want you to be delivered from the wrath to come. I want you to be able to live the life your Creator created you to live. I want you to have the joy of knowing God, the pleasure of his eternal friendship.  

It is through Jesus and Jesus alone that these blessings are to be had. It is to him, therefore, that you must turn. Give up all hope of saving yourself. Confess to Jesus your sin and ask him to be your Saviour. Welcome him, in the greatness of your need, into your heart and life.  Give yourself unreservedly to him and live under his lordship from this day forward.  

Let me appeal to you too to do it without delay. Don’t allow all the other things that are happening at this busy time to crowd it out. It is too important. Two thousand years ago a Saviour was born, Christ the Lord. Let this Christmas be the time when he becomes a Saviour to you. 

David Campbell is a minister at North Preston Evangelical Church, and a trustee of the Banner of Truth Trust. 

Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash

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‘Stand with Christ Jesus in this day of his battle, which shall be short and the victory everlasting! For the Lord himself shall come in our defence with his mighty power; He shall give us the victory when the battle is most strong; and He shall turn our tears into everlasting joy.’ One thing stands out above all else in the life of John Knox. At many different points in his life we have the comment of individuals who saw him, and the testimony most frequently repeated has to do with one point, namely, the power of his preaching. One of the first times we hear of Knox’s ministry is in a letter of Utenhovius, writing from London to Bullinger in Zurich, on October 12, 1552. He reported how a stranger in London has suddenly caught the public attention:

‘Some disputes have arisen within these few days among the bishops, in consequence of a sermon of a pious preacher, chaplain to the duke of Northumberland, preached by him before the King and Council, in which he inveighed with great freedom against kneeling at the Lord’s Supper, which is still retained here by the English. This good man, however, a Scotsman by nation, has so wrought upon the minds of many persons, that we may hope some good to the Church will at length arise from it.’

One other account of such preaching is too memorable to be omitted. As already noted, in July 1571 the Queen’s party had such power in Edinburgh that Knox was forced to stay in St Andrews for thirteen months. A student there at the time was fifteen-year-old James Melville, and he would see Knox walking to church from the old priory, a staff in one hand and held under his other armpit by a friend, with furs wrapped round his neck. It was the year before his death and his strength was gone. Melville wrote in his Autobiography:

‘Of all the benefits I had that year [1571] was the coming of that most notable prophet and apostle of our nation, Mr John Knox, to St Andrews . . . I heard him teach there the prophecy of Daniel that summer and winter following. I had my pen and my little book, and took away such things as I could comprehend. In the opening up of his text he was moderate the space of an half hour; but when he entered to application, he made me so grew [shudder] and tremble, that I could not hold a pen to write.’

Melville says further that Knox had to be lifted up into the pulpit ‘where it behoved him to lean at his first entry; but before he had done with his sermon he was so active and vigorous, that he was like to ding that pulpit in blads and fly out of it!’

What made Knox this kind of preacher? He had natural gifts, of course, but not more than some others who never made such an impression. ‘I am not a good orator in my own cause,’ he once wrote to his mother-in-law. When it came to preaching it was not his own cause. ‘It hath pleased God of his superabundant grace to make me, most wretched of many thousands, a witness, minister and preacher.’ His authority came from the conviction that preaching is God’s work, the message is His word, and he was sure the Holy Spirit would honour it. This was the certainty which possessed him. I do not say there were not moments of doubt, but at the great crises the Holy Spirit so filled him that nothing could deter him and the result was the transformations that occurred even in the most unpromising and hostile circumstances. In the summer of 1559 when he first returned to St Andrews, warning was sent to him by the bishop that if he dared to preach the next Sunday there would be a dozen hand guns discharged in his face. His friends advised delay, but he went ahead and took for his text Christ driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple. The famous painting of the scene by Sir David Wilkie captured something of that day, June 11, 1559, and the effect of it at the time can be seen in the number of priests of the Roman Church who confessed the faith.

It was due to a similar crisis that we have the only sermon Knox ever prepared for publication. The text was Isaiah 26:13-21 and it was preached on August 19, 1565, in St Giles. The previous month Lord Darnley had married Queen Mary and was declared King. Darnley has been described as a man who could be either Catholic or Protestant as it suited him, sometimes he went ‘to mass with the Queen and sometimes attended the reformed sermons’. On this particular Sunday he sat listening on a throne in St Giles and, while he was not directly mentioned in the sermon, it so infuriated him that Knox was instantly summoned before the Privy Council and forbidden to preach while the King and Queen were in town. Part of Knox’s response was to write down the sermon as fully as he could remember it. It is the only Knox sermon that has survived, and in its conclusion he has these memorable sentences:

‘Let us now humble ourselves in the presence of our God, and, from the bottom of our hearts, let us desire him to assist us with the power of his Holy Spirit . . . that albeit we see his Church so diminished, that it shall appear to be brought, as it were, to utter extermination, that yet we may be assured that in our God there is power and will to increase the number of his chosen, even while they be enlarged to the uttermost coasts of the earth.’

Then, at the end of the sermon Knox added this postscript which was also printed:

‘Lord, in thy hands I commend my spirit; for the terrible roaring of guns, and the noise of armour, do so pierce my heart, that my soul thirsts to depart. The last of August 1565, at four at afternoon, written indigestly, but yet truly so far as memory would serve.’

The only true explanation of Knox’s preaching is in words he applied to others of his fellow countrymen, ‘God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance.’ To read Knox is to be convicted of the smallness of our faith in the power of the Word of God. Unbelief has had too much influence upon us. The modern church needs to relearn the words of 2 Corinthians 4:13; ‘We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.’

The history of the church at the time of the Reformation is a singular reminder to us of how God is in history. Christ is in the church and on the throne – directing and governing all persons and all events. Standing where we do in time, we see Knox’s faith in this fact verified, but it was another thing for him to see it in the midst of poverty, when good men were being put to death, and when he endured his twelve years of exile. Yet the truth is that it was the storm of persecution which scattered Christians that was the very means God used to advance his purposes. If Knox had never been a refugee in England he would never have formed the friendships which became so significant in drawing the two long-hostile nations together.

When Knox came back to Scotland in 1559, with his English wife and the English tongue, the world for him was a much bigger place. And it was the exile of Knox and others in Calvin’s city which gave Britain the Geneva Bible, the version that was to be the most used through much of the next hundred years. So by persecution the gospel advanced and it was the means by which God forged an international vision and co-operation among his people. Samuel Rutherford surely stated history accurately when he wrote:

‘Christ hath a great design of free grace to these lands; but his wheels must move over mountains and rocks. He never yet wooed a bride on earth, but in blood, in fire, and in the wilderness.’

This is an extract from a new book by Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (ISBN 085151930X, Banner of Truth, 416 pp., clothbound) and first appeared in article form on this website on July 6, 2006.

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Although the church is the body of Christ, it exists only by grace. She can never take this relationship for granted. The church receives her life and power from her Lord. Hence she must constantly be renewed in him. This is why an occasional change, revival, or reform will not suffice. The church must be constantly renewed and reformed by the Word and the Spirit of Jesus Christ, her head. Only in this way will the church be conformed to her Lord rather than to the spirit and idols of the age. That is said of individuals by the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:2 and Ephesians 4:23, and also applies to the church. The church must be “transformed” continually and “renewed every day” lest she conform to this world.

I – CONTINUALLY REFORMING

This is why we must ever recall that famous slogan which originated in the seventeenth century: “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est” – “A reformed church must always be reforming itself.” We are unfaithful to the spirit of the Reformation – as well as to all that is implied in the word “reformed” – if we ever imagine that the task of reform was finished with Luther, Calvin, Knox, and others in the sixteenth century. Ours is a glorious heritage, but if we only look back and revel in great moments in the past we negate our calling to be continually reforming.

The reform or renewal of the church has several dimensions. Reformation means first of all restoration. There never was a pure church, not even in the New Testament period. But in the New Testament we have a clear picture of what the church is supposed to be. Just as specialists try to restore an old painting to its original beauty or craftsmen try to peel off layers of paint from a fine old piece of furniture in order to restore the original finish, so the church must ever be clearing away those accretions and traditions which mar the beauty of the church and hinder its effectiveness. This is often difficult and painful but only in this way will the body conform more closely to her head, Jesus Christ.

Secondly, reformation means renewal. In the last analysis, this is God’s work, not ours. Note that the biblical injunctions to “be renewed” are in the passive tense. Hence the first step in renewal is not to get busy, change the structures, appoint a new committee or devise some new scheme. It means rather, “Expose yourself to the life-giving Word of God. Pray that he may make the dry bones come to life. Expect great things from him; and get ready to do what he commands” (WA. Visser ‘t Hooft).

Thirdly, reformation means repentance. The first of Luther’s 95 theses runs: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘repent’ (Matt. 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” This also applies to the church. The restoration or purification of the church in biblical history was always conditioned upon true repentance. This may mean a turning away from congregational-centeredness to the larger causes of God’s Kingdom. It may mean breaking away from our secularized self-concern to the needs of a hurting, bleeding world that looks for healing and hope.

Fourth, reformation can mean resurrection. For ultimately renewal is nothing less than God’s miraculous work, a veritable resurrection. This note needs to be sounded in our own denomination in many areas where there is little or no growth and especially in difficult places where the future of certain congregations is bleak. Calvin has some helpful, comforting words in this connection. “The preservation of the church is accompanied by many miracles. So we ought to keep in mind that the life of the church does not exist apart from a resurrection, yea, apart from many resurrections.”

Resurrection, unlike restoration, renewal, and repentance, is not so much a requirement as a promise. It should therefore be a source of great encouragement to us to recall that the history of the church is a story of many resurrections.

II- ACCORDING TO THE WORD

In the phrase, “the church must continually be reforming itself,” nothing is said explicitly about the criterion for this reform; but the assumption is that it is the Word of God. It was stressed above that the church, as the body of Christ, has no life apart from her Lord. But Jesus Christ is only mediated to us by his word and his Spirit. This is expressed simply and beautifully in one of the earliest Swiss Reformed Confessions: The church, “whose only head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, abides in the same, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger” (Article I, The Ten Theses of Bern, 1528).

This may appear to be so self-evident that it need not be reiterated. But it cannot be denied that our churches stand in need of reform and renewal in various aspects of their corporate life. It should also be recalled that every reformation of the church has meant a recovery of the Word. “The power of renewal in the church has been felt again and again where the Bible has spoken to groups of Christians gathered together in openness and expectation”.

Accordingly, if the churches which are ineffectual and unfruitful wish to find new life and recover a sense of purpose and mission, they must begin here. The first thing that is required in any genuine reformation is the willingness to submit to the judgment of God’s Word. From this follows restoration, renewal, repentance, and resurrection.

However, according to James Smart, we are experiencing “a strange silence of the Bible in the church.” In the preface to his book with this title he warns: “I am convinced that this phenomenon constitutes the crisis beneath all other crises that endanger the church’s future. The church that no longer hears the essential message of the Scriptures soon ceases to understand what it is for and is open to be captured by the dominant religious philosophy of the moment, which is usually some blend of cultural nationalism with Christianity.”

It could be argued that within the Reformed Church preaching is generally more exegetical and that we have more adult Bible classes than in most mainline Protestant churches in the United States. Even if this is true to some degree, the signs of the secularization and culturalization of our churches is often far too manifest. From this capitulation to the spirit and fashions of the age we can only be freed by hearing again the Lord of the church as he speaks to us through the Scriptures and renews us by his Spirit.

We, like most Reformation churches, have tended to fossilize the traditions and forms of the past, forgetting that the Spirit moves on and that the church is only true to its Lord when it allows itself to be broken on the anvil of the Word and be reformed again and again. Too often, we must confess, the Word of God is fettered (II Tim. 2:9), despite our protestations that we recognize no other norm or authority. “It is high time we asked again,” writes T. F. Torrance, “whether the Word of God really does have free course among us and whether it is not after all bound and fettered by the traditions of men…. There is scarcely a church that claims to be ‘ecclesia reformata’ (a reformed church) that can truthfully claim to be ‘semper reformanda’ (always reforming).”

This is the challenge that faces us, the Reformed Church, as we once again celebrate the Reformation. We are only truly reformed to the extent that we maintain the spirit and the goals of the Reformation. That means that we keep on reforming so that the glory of Christ may be seen and experienced in his church.

Dr. I. J. Hesselink served as President of the Reformed Church in America’s Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI.

He wrote this article for The Church Herald in 1974.

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There is no doubt about his worship. Everyone knows the object of his worship, because he cannot stop talking about it. Even the way he dresses and behaves declares his commitment to his cause. On a Monday morning he is full of the activity of the previous day, recounting everything that took place in the recent worship.

Actually, his whole week revolves around worship. To be honest, it’s his whole life! His planning is meticulous, his preparation never lacking. Days and even weeks and months ahead he is making things ready to be where he belongs. No time is too early, no requirement is too demanding, no forethought is too extreme. He intends to worship, and he will do whatever it takes to be there. It it clear that worship is his absolute priority, and nothing gets in the way.

He also exhorts and encourages. It is wonderful to see how he is concerned not only for his own worship, but for the worship of others. If zeal is lacking, he is the first to draw alongside. If someone needs help to be at worship, he is quick to offer his. You can often see him rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep—so quick to share the delights of worship, so ready to put an arm around the shoulder of those who are cast down. He is very ready to remind people of glories past, and to point to the hope of future glory. He loves his fellow-worshippers with ardent love; they know that he has got their back. His wife knows what has the first place in his heart, and he’s been bringing his children to worship since they were babes-in-arms. They certainly won’t miss any opportunity to worship, and nothing and no-one is allowed to encroach on their family commitment, either.

And he supports and invests. He is always in his place. You know that if he is not present, it must be a real problem or a real sickness. Otherwise, there would be no excuse. People still laugh about the time he broke his leg and made special arrangements to be present. There is even a rumour that he nearly missed the birth of his first child because he wanted to be worshipping! Even his spending is arranged around his worship: the first portion of his salary is invested in worship. A certain amount is set aside, in addition to which he makes a number of freewill offerings and thank-offerings during the course of the year. And if there were a need, he would always be ready to sacrifice even more.

And when he is in his place, he is fully engaged, entirely invested. Nothing distracts him. His eyes and inner being are fixed on what is taking place. He barely glances at his phone, except to check the references. Everything else is put to one side when he is worshipping. He sings with all his heart, and he knows all the words. He prays fervently—his intercessions are almost legendary for their length and their passion. He loves with heart and mind and soul and strength, and he worships accordingly. He’s got all the literature, too—he knows the history back to front, he’s totally up-to-date with the present needs, and he knows the entire situation inside and out, back to front. He’s a true fount of knowledge. If the worship lasts longer than usual, rather than becoming bored, he is all the more enthused. His intensity only seems to increase the longer worship lasts.

He is a real evangelist, too! He wants everyone else to worship with him. He has no regard for false gods, for he knows the truth. Indeed, sometimes his zeal borders on the excessive in his attitude to those who don’t see things the way he sees them. He has even been known to criticise his own fellow-worshippers if they don’t give themselves wholeheartedly to their cause. He cannot bear ‘armchair worshippers’ who don’t put in any effort. In fact, he once got beaten up because he couldn’t bear to hear people speak the way they did about the object of his worship. He wears the scars of that encounter with a certain gratitude, because they show what his worship is worth to him.

As for commitment, he is second to none. His place of worship is on the other side of the city, but he will make it every single time. Come wind and high water, he will be there. You will see him and his fellow-worshippers turn up early to make sure they get their places, standing sometimes in wind and rain, in ice and snow, in searing heat, because of their love. If he has to travel further, that’s no problem to him—he will be there! This is where his planning and preparation come in, and money is really no object. If he travels to a foreign city, it’s the first thing he thinks about; in fact, he even arranges such trips around his worship!

To be honest, things have not been going so well recently. Some of those armchair worshippers have fallen away. Worship has been tough. They haven’t seen the blessings for which they had been hoping, and there’s been some unrest among the worshippers. But him and his friends engage all the more fervently. Such difficulties only increase their zeal. He is a worshipper till he dies, and nothing is going to change his wholehearted allegiance.

He is a worshipper.

He is a fan of a football club.

And he puts the followers of Jesus Christ to shame.

It might not be football. It might not be sport. It might be business. It might be pleasure. It might be fame. It might be ease. Whatever it might be, there is only One who is truly worthy of worship. The instinct to worship is ripe and robust in the hearts of fallen men and women. Why does it seem to be diluted in the hearts of the saints? Why is it that the worship of the world puts to shame the worship of the one true and living God? Should not the glories and beauties of Christ capture and enrapture our hearts more than the fading glories and flawed beauties of this world? Should not the solid joys and lasting treasures of the heavenly Zion fix our energies and endeavours upon the things that do not pass away? May God help us to become true worshippers of the One who is truly worthy.

Jeremy Walker is pastor at Maidenbower Baptist Church and blogs at Reformation 21 and The Wanderer. More articles by Jeremy Walker at the Banner of Truth.

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‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.’—John 14:16, 17.

YOU will be surprised to hear me announce that I do not intend this morning to say anything about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter. I propose to reserve that for a special Sermon this evening.[1] In this discourse I shall endeavour to explain and enforce certain other doctrines which I believe are plainly taught in this text and which I hope God the Holy Ghost may make profitable to our souls. Old John Newton once said that there were some books which he could not read, they were good and sound enough; but, said he, ‘they are books of halfpence;—you have to take so much in quantity before you have any value; there are other books of silver, and others of gold, but I have one book that is a book of bank notes; and every leaf is a bank note of immense value.’ So I found with this text: that I had a bank note of so large a sum, that I could not tell it out all this morning. I should have to keep you several hours, before I could unfold to you the whole value of this precious promise—one of the last which Christ gave to his people.

I invite your attention to this passage, because we shall find in it some instruction on four points, first, concerning the true and proper personality of the Holy Ghost; secondly, concerning the united agency of the glorious Three Persons in the work of our salvation; thirdly, we shall find something to establish the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of all believers; and fourthly, we shall find out the reason why the carnal mind rejects the Holy Ghost.

1. First of all, we shall have some little instruction concerning the proper PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. We are so much accustomed to talk about the influence of the Holy Ghost, and his sacred operations and graces, that we are apt to forget that the Holy Spirit is truly and actually a person—that he is a subsistence—an existence; or as we Trinitarians usually say, one person in the essence of the Godhead. I am afraid that, though we do not know it, we have acquired the habit of regarding the Holy Ghost as an emanation flowing from the Father and the Son, but not as being actually a person himself. I know it is not easy to carry about in our mind the idea of the Holy Spirit as a person. I can think of the Father as a person, because his acts are such as I can understand. I see him hang the world in ether; I behold him swaddling a new-born sea in bands of darkness; I know it is he who formed the drops of hail, who leadeth forth the stars by their hosts, and calleth them by their name, I can conceive of Him as a person, because I behold his operations. I can realize Jesus, the Son of Man, as a real person, because he is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It takes no great stretch of my imagination to picture the babe in Bethlehem, or to behold the ‘Men of sorrows and acquainted with grief;’ of the King of martyrs, as he was persecuted in Pilate’s hall, or nailed to the accursed tree for our sins. Nor do I find it difficult at times to realize the person of my Jesus sitting on his throne in heaven; or girt with clouds and wearing the diadem of all creation, calling the earth to judgment, and summoning us to hear our final sentence. But when I come to deal with the Holy Ghost, his operations are so mysterious, his doings are so secret, his acts are so removed from everything that is of sense, and of the body, that I cannot so easily get the idea of his being a person; but a person he is. God the Holy Ghost is not an influence, an emanation, a stream of something flowing from the Father, but he is as much an actual person as either God the Son, or God the Father. I shall attempt this morning a little to establish the doctrine, and to show you the truth of it—that God the Holy Spirit is actually a person.

The first proof we shall gather from the pool of holy baptism. Let me take you down, as I have taken others, into the pool, now concealed, but which I wish were always open to your view. Let me take you to the baptismal font, where believers put on the name of the Lord Jesus, and you shall hear me pronounce the solemn words, ‘I baptize thee in the name,’—mark, ‘in the name,’ not names,— ‘of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ Every one who is baptized according to the true form laid down in Scripture, must be a Trinitarian: otherwise his baptism is a farce and a lie, and he himself is found a deceiver and a hypocrite before God. As the Father is mentioned, and as the Son is mentioned, so is the Holy Ghost, and the whole is summed up as being a Trinity in unity, by its being said, not the names, but the ‘name’ the glorious name, the Jehovah name, ‘of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ Let me remind you that the same thing occurs each time you are dismissed from this house of prayer. In pronouncing the solemn closing benediction, we invoke on your behalf the love of Jesus Christ, the grace of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and thus, according to the apostolic manner, we make a manifest distinction between the persons showing that we believe the Father to be a person, the Son to be a person, and the Holy Ghost to be a person. Were there no other proofs in Scripture, I think these would be sufficient for every sensible man. He would see that if the Holy Spirit were a mere influence, he would not be mentioned in conjunction with two whom we all confess to be actual and proper persons.

A second argument arises from the fact, that the Holy Ghost has actually made different appearances on earth. The Great Spirit has manifested himself to man; he has put on a form, so that whilst he has not been beheld by mortal men, he has been so veiled in appearance that he was seen, so far as that appearance was concerned, by the eyes of all beholders. See you Jesus Christ our Saviour? There is the river Jordan, with its shelving banks, and its willows weeping at its stale. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, descends into the stream, and the holy Baptist, John, plunges him into the waves. The doors of heaven are opened; a miraculous appearance presents itself, a bright light shineth from the sky, brighter than the sun in all its grandeur, and down in a flood of glory descends something which you recognize to be a dove. It rests on Jesus—it sits upon his sacred head, and as the old painters put a halo round the brow of Jesus, so did the Holy Ghost shed a resplendence around the face of him who came to fulfil all Righteousness, and therefore commenced with the ordinances of baptism. The Holy Ghost was seen as a dove, to mark his purity and his gentleness, and he came down like a dove from heaven to show that it is from heaven alone that he descendeth. Nor is this the only time when the Holy Ghost has been manifest in a visible shape. You notice that company of disciples gathered together in an upper room, they are waiting for some promised blessing, by-and-by it shall come. Hark! there is a sound as of a rushing mighty wind, it fills all the house where they are sitting, and astonished, they look around them, wondering what will come next. Soon a bright light appears, shining upon the heads of each: cloven tongues of fire sat upon them. What were these marvellous appearances of wind and flame but a display of the Holy Ghost in his proper person? I say the fact of an appearance manifests that he must be a person. An influence could not appear—an attribute could not appear: we cannot see attributes—we cannot behold influences. The Holy Ghost must then have been a person; since he was beheld by mortal eyes, and came under the cognizance of mortal sense.

Another proof is from the fact, that personal qualities are, in Scripture, ascribed to the Holy Ghost. First, let me read to you a text in which the Holy Ghost is spoken of as having understanding. In the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, chap 2, you will read, ‘But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.’ Here you see an understanding—a power of knowledge is ascribed to the Holy Ghost. Now, if there be any persons here whose minds are of so preposterous a complexion that they would ascribe one attribute to another, and would speak of a mere influence having understanding, then I give up all the argument. But I believe every rational man will admit, that when anything is spoken of as having an understanding it must be an existence—it must, in fact, be a person. In the 12th chap., 11th verse of the same Epistle, you will find a will ascribed to the Holy Spirit. ‘But all these worketh that one and the self same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.’ So it is plain the Spirit has a will. He does not come from God simply at God’s will, but he has a will of his own, which is always in keeping with the will of the infinite Jehovah, but is, nevertheless, distinct and separate; therefore, I say he is a person. In another text power is ascribed to the Holy Ghost, and power is a thing which can only be ascribed to an existence. In Romans 15:13, it is written, ‘Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.’ I need not insist upon it, because it is self-evident, that wherever you find understanding, will, and power, you must also find an existence; it cannot be a mere attribute, it cannot be a metaphor, it cannot be a personified influence; but it must be a person.

But I have a proof which, perhaps, will be more telling upon you than any other. Acts and deeds are ascribed to the Holy Ghost; therefore he must be a person. You read in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, that the Spirit brooded over the surface of the earth, when it was as yet all disorder and confusion. This world was once a mass of chaotic matter; there was no order; it was like the valley of darkness and of the shadow of death. God the Holy Ghost spread his wings over it; he sowed the seeds of life in it; the germs from which all beings sprang were implanted by him; he impregnated the earth so that it became capable of life. Now it must have been a person who brought order out of confusion; it must have been an existence who hovered over this world and made it what it now is. But do we not read in Scripture something more of the Holy Ghost? Yes, we are told that ‘holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’ When Moses penned the Pentateuch, the Holy Ghost moved his hand, when David wrote the Psalms, and discoursed sweet music on his harp, it was the Holy Spirit that gave his fingers their Seraphic motion; when Solomon dropped from his lips the words of the Proverbs of wisdom, or when he hymned the Canticles of love it was the Holy Ghost who gave him words of knowledge and hymns of rapture. Ah! and what fire was that which touched the lips of the eloquent Isaiah? What hand was that which came upon Daniel? What might was that which made Jeremiah so plaintive in his grief? or what was that which winged Ezekiel, and made him like an eagle, soar into mysteries aloft, and see the mighty unknown beyond our reach? Who was it that made Amos, the herdsman, a prophet? Who taught the rough Haggai to pronounce his thundering sentences? Who showed Habbakuk the horses of Jehovah marching through the waters? or who kindled the burning eloquence of Nahum? Who caused Malachi to close up the book with the muttering of the word curse? Who was in each of these, save the Holy Ghost? And must it not have been a person who spake in and through these ancient witnesses? We must believe it. We cannot avoid believing it, when we recall that ‘holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’

And when has the Holy Ghost ceased to have an influence upon men? We find that still he deals with his ministers and with all his saints. Turn to the Acts, and you will find that the Holy Ghost said, ‘Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work.’ I never heard of an attribute saying such a thing. The Holy Spirit said to Peter, ‘Go to the centurion, and what I have cleansed, that call not thou common’. The Holy Ghost caught away Philip after he had baptised the eunuch, and carried him to another place; and the Holy Ghost said to Paul, ‘Thou shalt not go into that city, but shalt turn into another.’ And we know that the Holy Ghost was lied unto by Ananias and Sapphira, when it was said, ‘Thou hast not lied unto man, but unto God.’ Again, that power which we feel every day who are called to preach—that wondrous spell which makes our lips so potent—that power which gives us thoughts which are like birds from a far-off region, not the natives of our soul—that influence which I sometimes strangely feel, which, if it does not give me poetry and eloquence, gives me a might I never felt before, and lifts me above my fellow-man—that majesty with which he clothes his ministers, till in the midst of the battle they cry, aha! like the war-horse of Job, and move themselves like leviathans in the water—that power which gives us might over men, and causes them to sit and listen as if their ears were chained, as if they were entranced by the power of some magician’s wand—that power must come from a person, it must come from the Holy Ghost.

But is it not said in Scripture, and do we not feel it, dear brethren, that it is the Holy Ghost who regenerates the soul? It is the Holy Ghost who quickens us. ‘You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.’ It is the Holy Spirit who imparts the first germ of life, convincing us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come. And is it not the Holy Spirit who after that flame is kindled, still fans it with the breath of his mouth and keeps it alive? Its author is its preserver. Oh! can it be said that it is the Holy Ghost who strives in men’s souls, that it is the Holy Ghost who brings them to the foot of Sinai, and then guides them into the sweet place that is called Calvary—can it be said that he does all these things, and yet is not a person? It may be said, but it must be said by fools; for he never can be a wise man who can consider that these things can be done by any other than a glorious person—a divine existence.

Allow me to give you one more proof, and I shall have done. Certain feelings are ascribed to the Holy Ghost, which can only be understood upon the supposition that he is actually a person. In the 4th chapter of Ephesians, verse 30th, it is said that the Holy Ghost can be grieved: ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.’ In Isaiah, chap. 63:5-10 it is said that the Holy Ghost can be vexed: ‘But they rebelled, and vexed his Holy Spirit, therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them.’ In Acts, chap. 7:51, you read that the Holy Ghost can be resisted: ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye.’ And in the 5th chapter, 9th verse of the same book, you will find that the Holy Ghost may be tempted. We are there informed that Peter said to Ananias and Sapphira, ‘How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?’ Now, these things could not be emotions which might be ascribed to a quality or an emanation they must be understood to relate to a person; an influence could not be grieved; it must be a person who can be grieved, vexed, or resisted.

And now, dear brethren, I think I have fully established the point of the personality of the Holy Ghost; allow me now, most earnestly, to impress upon you the absolute necessity of being sound unto the doctrine of the Trinity. I knew a man, a good minister of Jesus Christ he is now, and I believe he was before he turned aside unto heresy—he began to doubt the glorious divinity of our blessed Lord, and for years did he preach the heterodox doctrine, until one day he happened to hear a very eccentric old minister preaching from the text, ‘But there the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. Thy tacklings are loosed: they could not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail.’ ‘Now,’ said the old minister, ‘you give up the Trinity, and your tacklings are loosed, you cannot strengthen your masts. Once give up the doctrine of three persons, and your tacklings are all gone. Your mast, which ought to be a support to your vessel, is a ricketty one, and shakes.’ A gospel without a Trinity!—it is a pyramid built upon its apex. A gospel without the Trinity!—it is a rope of sand that cannot hold together. A gospel without the Trinity!—then, indeed, Satan can overturn it. But, give me a gospel with the Trinity, and the might of hell cannot prevail against it; no man can any more overthrow it, than a bubble could split a rock, or a feather break in halves a mountain. Get the thought of the three persons, and you have the marrow of all divinity. Only know the Father, and know the Son, and know the Holy Ghost to be One, and all things will appear clear. This is the golden key to the secrets of nature; this is the silken clue of the labyrinths of mystery, and he who understands this, will soon understand as much as mortals ever can know.

2. Now for the second point—the UNITED AGENCY of the three persons in the work of our salvation. Look at the text, and you will find all the three persons mentioned. ‘I,’—that is the Son— ‘will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter.’ There are the three persons mentioned, all of them doing something for our salvation. ‘I will pray,’ says the Son. ‘I will send,’ says the Father. ‘I will comfort,’ says the Holy Ghost. Now, let us for a few moments discourse upon this wondrous theme—the unity of the Three Persons with regard to the great purpose of the salvation of the elect. When God first made man, he said, ‘Let us make man,’ not let me, but ‘Let us make man in our own image.’ The covenant Elohim said to each other, ‘Let us unitedly become the Creator of man.’ So, when in ages far gone by in eternity, they said, ‘Let us save man.’ It was not the Father who said, ‘Let me save man,’ but the three persons conjointly said with one consent, ‘Let us save man.’ It is to me a source of sweet comfort, to think that it is not one person of the Trinity that is engaged for my salvation; it is not simply one person of the Godhead who vows that he will redeem me, but it is a glorious trio of Godlike ones, and the three declare, unitedly, ‘We will save man.’

Now, observe here, that each person is spoken of as performing a separate office. ‘I will pray,’ says the Son—that is intercession. ‘I will send,’ says the Father—that is donation. ‘I will comfort,’ says the Holy Spirit—that is supernatural influence. Oh! if it were possible for us to see the three persons of the Godhead, we should behold one of them standing before the throne with outstretched hands crying day and night, ‘O Lord, how long?’ We should see one girt with Urim and Thummin, precious stones, on which are written the twelve names of the tribes of Israel; we should behold him crying unto his Father, ‘Forget not thy promises, forget not thy covenant,’ we should hear him make mention of our sorrows, and tell forth our griefs on our behalf, for he is our intercessor. And could we behold the Father, we should not see him a listless and idle spectator of the intercession of the Son, but we should see him with attentive ear listening to every word of Jesus, and granting every petition. Where is the Holy Spirit all the while? Is he lying idle? Oh no, he is floating over the earth, and when he sees a weary soul, he says, ‘Come to Jesus, he will give you rest.’ When he beholds an eye filled with tears, he wipes away the tears, and bids the mourner look for comfort on the cross. When he sees the tempest-tost believer, he takes the helm of his soul and speaks the word of consolation, he helpeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds; and ever on his mission of mercy, he flies around the world, being everywhere present. Behold how the three persons work together. Do not then say, ‘I am grateful to the Son,’—so you ought to be, but God the Son no more saves you than God the Father. Do not imagine that God the Father is a great tyrant, and that God the Son had to die to make him merciful. It was not to make the Father’s love flow towards his people. Oh, no. One loves as much as the other; the three are conjoined in the great purpose of rescuing the elect from damnation.

But you must notice another thing in my text, which will show the blessed unity of the three—the one person promises to the other. The Son says, ‘I will pray the Father.’ ‘Very well,’ the disciples may have said, ‘We can trust you for that.’ ‘And he will send you.’ You see here is the Son signing a bond on behalf of the Father. ‘He will send you another Comforter.’ There is a bond on behalf of the Holy Spirit, too. ‘And he will abide with you forever.’ One person speaks for the other, and how could they if there were any disagreement between them? If one wished to save, and the other not, they could not promise on one another’s behalf. But whatever the Son says, the Father listens to, whatever the Father promises, the Holy Ghost works, and whatever the Holy Ghost injects into the soul, that God the Father fulfils. So the three together mutually promise on one another’s behalf. There is a bond with three names appended—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. By three immutable things, as well as by two, the Christian is secured beyond the reach of death and hell. A Trinity of Securities, because there is a trinity of God.

3. Our third point is the INDWELLING of the Holy Ghost in believers. Now beloved, these first two things have been matters of pure doctrine, this is the subject of experience. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost is a subject so profound, and so having to do with the inner man, that no soul will be able truly and really to comprehend what I say, unless it has been taught of God. I have heard of an old minister, who told a Fellow of one of the Cambridge Colleges, that he understood a language that he never learnt in all his life. ‘I have not,’ he said, ‘even a smattering of Greek, and I know no Latin, but thank God I can talk the language of Canaan, and that is more than you can.’ So, beloved, I shall now have to talk a little of the language of Canaan. If you cannot comprehend me, I am much afraid it is because you are not of Israelitish extraction, you are not a child of God nor an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

We are told in the text, that Jesus would send the Comforter, who would abide in the saints for ever; who would dwell with them and be in them. Old Ignatius, the martyr, used to call himself Theophorus, or the Godbearer, ‘because,’ said he, ‘I bear about with me the Holy Ghost.’ And truly every Christian is a God-bearer. Know ye not that ye are temples of the Holy Ghost? for he dwelleth in you. That man is no Christian who is not the subject of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; he may talk well, he may understand theology and be a sound Calvinist; he will be the child of nature finely dressed, but not the living child. He may be a man of so profound an intellect, so gigantic a soul, so comprehensive a mind, and so lofty an imagination, that he may dive into all the secrets of nature; may know the path which the eagle’s eye hath not seen, and go into depths where the ken of mortals reacheth not; but he shall not be a Christian with all his knowledge, he shall not be a son of God with all his researches, unless he understands what it is to have the Holy Ghost dwelling in him, and abiding in him, yea, and that for ever.

Some people call this fanaticism, and they say, ‘You are a Quaker: why not follow George Fox?’ Well we would not mind that much, we would follow any one who followed the Holy Ghost. Even he, with all his eccentricities, I doubt not, was, in many cases, actually inspired by the Holy Spirit; and whenever I find a man in whom there rests the Spirit of God, the Spirit within me leaps to hear the Spirit within him, and he feels that we are one. The Spirit of God in one Christian soul recognizes the Spirit in another. I recollect talking with a good man, as I believe he was, who was insisting that it was impossible for us to know whether we had the Holy Spirit within us or not. I should like him to be here this morning, because I would read this verse to him: ‘But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.’ Ah! you think you cannot tell whether you have the Holy Spirit or not. Can I tell whether I am alive or not? If I were touched by electricity, could I tell whether I was or not? I suppose I should; the shock would be strong enough to make me know where I stood. So, if I have God within me—if I have Deity tabernacling in my breast—if I have God the Holy Ghost resting in my heart, and making a temple of my body, do you think I shall know it? Call ye it fanaticism if ye will; but I trust that there are some of us who know what it is to be always, or generally, under the influence of the Holy Spirit—always in one sense, generally in another. When we have difficulties we ask the direction of the Holy Ghost. When we do not understand a portion of Holy Scripture, we ask God the Holy Ghost to shine upon us. When we are depressed, the Holy Ghost comforts us. You cannot tell what the wondrous power of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost is: how it pulls back the hand of the saint when he would touch the forbidden thing; how it prompts him to make a covenant with his eyes; how it binds his feet, lest they should fall in a slippery way, how it restrains his heart, and keeps him from temptation. O ye who know nothing of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, despise it not. O despise not the Holy Ghost, for it is the unpardonable sin. ‘He that speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but he that speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him, either in this life, or that which is to come.’ So saith the Word of God. Therefore, tremble, lest in anything ye despise the influences of the Holy Spirit.

But before closing this point, there is one little word which pleases me very much, that is, ‘forever.’ You knew I should not miss that; you were certain I could not let it go without observation. ‘Abide with you for ever.’ I wish I could get an Arminian here to finish my sermon. I fancy I see him taking that word, ‘for ever.’ He would say, ‘for—for ever;’ he would have to stammer and stutter; for he never could get it out all at once. He might stand and pull it about, and at last he would have to say, ‘the translation is wrong.’ And then I suppose the poor man would have to prove that the original was wrong too. Ah! but blessed be God, we can read it— ‘He shall abide with you for ever.’ Once give me the Holy Ghost, and I shall never lose him till ‘for ever’ has run out; till eternity has spun its everlasting rounds.

4. Now we have to close up with a brief remark on the reason why the world rejects the Holy Ghost. It is said, ‘Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.’ You know what is sometimes meant by ‘the world,’—those whom God, in his wondrous sovereignty, passed over when he chose his people: the preterite ones; those passed over in God’s wondrous preterition—not the reprobates who were condemned to damnation by some awful decree, but those passed over by God, when he chose out his elect. These cannot receive the Spirit. Again, it means all in a carnal state are not able to procure themselves this divine influence; and thus it is true, ‘Whom the world cannot receive.’

The unregenerate world of sinners despises the Holy Ghost, ‘because it seeth him not.’ Yes, I believe this is the great secret why many laugh at the idea of the existence of the Holy Ghost—because they see him not. You tell the worldling, ‘I have the Holy Ghost within me.’ He says, ‘I cannot see it.’ He wants it to be something tangible: a thing he can recognize with his senses. Have you ever heard the argument used by a good old Christian against an infidel doctor? The doctor said there was no soul, and he asked, ‘Did you ever see a soul?’ ‘No,’ said the Christian. ‘Did you ever hear a soul?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you ever smell a soul?’ No.’ ‘Did you ever taste a soul?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you ever feel a soul?’ ‘Yes,’ said the man— ‘I feel I have one within me.’ ‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘there are four senses against one: you have only one on your side.’ ‘Very well,’ said the Christian, ‘Did you ever see a pain?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you ever hear a pain?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you ever smell a pain?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you ever taste a pain?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you ever feel a pain?’ ‘Yes,’ ‘And that is quite enough, I suppose, to prove there is a pain?’ ‘Yes.’ So the worldling says there is no Holy Ghost, because he cannot see it. Well, but we feel it. You say that is fanaticism, and that we never felt it. Suppose you tell me that honey is bitter, I reply ‘No, I am sure you cannot have tasted it; taste it, and try.’ So with the Holy Ghost, if you did but feel his influence, you would no longer say there is no Holy Spirit, because you cannot see it. Are there not many things, even in nature, which we cannot see? Did you ever see the wind? No; but ye know there is wind, when ye behold the hurricane tossing the waves about and rending down the habitations of men; or when in the soft evening zephyr it kisses the flowers, and maketh dewdrops hang in pearly coronets around the rose. Did ye ever see electricity? No, but ye know there is such a thing, for it travels along the wires for thousands of miles, and carries our messages, though you cannot see the thing itself, you know there is such a thing. So you must believe there is a Holy Ghost working in us, both to will and to do, even though it is beyond our senses.

But the last reason why worldly men laugh at the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is because they do not know it. If they knew it by heart-felt experience, and if they recognized its agency in the soul; if they had ever been touched by it; if they had been made to tremble under a sense of sin; if they had had their hearts melted; they would never have doubted the existence of the Holy Ghost.

And now, beloved, it says, ‘He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.’ We will close up with that sweet recollection—the Holy Ghost dwells in all believers, and shall be with them.

One word of comment and advice to the saints of God, and to sinners, and I have done. Saints of the Lord! ye have this morning heard that God the Holy Ghost is a person; ye have had it proved to your souls. What follows from this? Why, it followeth how earnest ye should be in prayer to the Holy Spirit, as well as for the Holy Spirit. Let me say that this is an inference that you should lift up your prayers to the Holy Ghost, that you should cry earnestly unto him, for he is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you can ask or think. See this mass of people; what is to convert it? See this crowd; who is to make my influence permeate through the mass? You know this place has now a mighty influence, and God blessing us, it will have an influence, not only upon this city but upon England at large, for we now enjoy the press as well as the pulpit, and certainly, I should say before the close of the year, more than two hundred thousand of my productions will be scattered through the land—words uttered by my lips, or written by my pen. But how can this influence he rendered for good? How shall God’s glory be promoted by it? Only by incessant prayer for the Holy Spirit; by constantly calling down the influence of the Holy Ghost upon us; we want him to rest upon every page that is printed, and upon every word that is uttered. Let us then be doubly earnest in pleading with the Holy Ghost, that he would come and own our labours, that the whole church at large may be revived thereby, and not ourselves only, but the whole world share in the benefit.

Then to the ungodly, I have this one closing word to say. Ever be careful how you speak of the Holy Ghost. I do not know what the unpardonable sin is, and I do not think any man understands it; but it is something like this: ‘He that speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him.’ I do not know what that means: but tread carefully! There is danger; there is a pit which our ignorance has covered by sand, tread carefully! you may be in it before the next hour. If there is any strife in your heart to-day, perhaps you will go to the ale-house and forget it. Perhaps there is some voice speaking in your soul, and you will put it away. I do not tell you you will be resisting the Holy Ghost and committing the unpardonable sin; but it is somewhere there. Be very careful. Oh! there is no crime on earth so black as the crime against the Holy Spirit. Ye may blaspheme the Father, and ye shall be damned for it unless ye repent, ye may blaspheme the Son, and hell shall be your portion, unless ye are forgiven; but blaspheme the Holy Ghost, and thus saith the Lord, ‘There is no forgiveness, neither in this world, nor in the world which is to come.’ I cannot tell you what it is, I do not profess to understand it; but there it is. It is the danger signal, stop! man, stop! If thou hast despised the Holy Spirit, if thou hast laughed at his revelations, and scorned what Christians call his influence, I beseech thee, stop! this morning seriously deliberate. Perhaps some of you have actually committed the unpardonable sin; stop! Let fear stop you; sit down. Do not drive on so rashly as you have done, Jehu! Oh! slacken your reins! Thou who art such a profligate in sin, thou who hast uttered such hard words against the Trinity, stop! Ah, it makes us all stop. It makes us all draw up and say, ‘Have I not perhaps so done?’ Let us think of this, and let us not at any time trifle either with the words, or the acts, of God the Holy Ghost.

^[1] Published as No. 5 in the New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 1. We hope to repost this next week.

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We need not concern ourselves with the details of Augustine’s life, except incidentally — but the teaching with which we are provided by Owen is of singular benefit for our appreciation of what is involved in becoming a Christian. Perhaps too, when the teaching of the 17th-century Puritans is decried as scholastic and a tragic admixture of Calvin and Aristotle, and when we discover a continuing trend to return to the early Fathers, it is salutary to remember that Owen himself did this, and found a hearty concurrence between his own view of Scripture teaching and that of so eminent a Father of the Church as St Augustine.

It is axiomatic in Reformed writings that a true view of regeneration, conversion, and the progress of holiness is intimately related to a true view of sin and inherent corruption. So Owen is at pains to lay before his readers ‘the effects of that depravation’² which is discovered in the heart of the unconverted man. These effects are five-fold:–

1. Corruption is at work in the human soul from the earliest years of our lives; it is ‘original’ and its depravity is universally evident, preventing all the ‘actings’ of God’s grace. Psalm 58:3 provides a striking proof and illustration of this — where infants are described as ‘speaking lies’ from their birth, and going astray ‘from the womb.’ While few today would follow Owen so confidently when he affirms the high infant mortality rate as an evidence of such an imputation and outworking of original sin, many still find the most striking illustration of Romans 5:14 — death reigning over those whose transgression was not like that of Adam — in the painful fact of the death of little ones.

2. As the capacity of a person develops, so his native corruption is enabled to exert its influence with greater frequency and potency. Again Owen is able to draw on the O.T. Scriptures, this time Ecclesiastes 11:10 — ‘childhood and youth are vanity.’ Augustine, like ourselves, was well able to recall those ‘vagaries’ of his childhood. Regarded by the carnal mind as mere trifles, part of the process of evolution and maturation, these have never been so regarded by the Christian mind. For it is these ‘childish innocencies’ which when ‘carried over unto riper age and greater occasions bring forth those greater sins which the lives of men are filled withal in the world.’ `By this means is the heart prepared for a further obduration [hardening] in sin.’³

3. Following these ‘irregularities’ come immoralities. Such are the actual sins of lying and deceitfulness, exercised even against parents. As it was in the Garden of Eden, it ever has been, so that ‘They rob their father and mother and say, It is no transgression’ (Prov 28:24). How many blush to remember the sins that once held them captive! How many have thus sinned and hardened their hearts against the voice of common conscience and the law of God, saying ‘It is no transgression?’

4. As men further develop, sin gains a greater foothold in their lives both subjectively and objectively — subjectively they have a greater capacity for sin, as their experience develops and their physical and intellectual capacities mature; objectively they have a greater opportunity for sin, as the opportunities to do so without parental restraint and admonition increase. At this juncture in experience, a consciousness of the sinfulness of sin may lead men to repentance, but unless attended with the work of the Holy Spirit, it may rather evoke in them a desire to break off all restraint and to give themselves over to a path, planned and experienced, of waywardness and sin. ‘Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil’ (Eccles. 8:11).

5. ‘A course in, and custom of sinning with many ensues hereon.’ Referring to Paul’s devastating description of the effects of sin in Ephesians 4:18-19, Owen comments –‘Custom of sinning takes away the sense of it; the course of the world takes away the shame of it; and love to it makes men greedy in the pursuit of it.’⁴ There may be great differences in the way this is displayed outwardly in men’s lives. Owen is in no doubt that any restraint that is exercised is only of the restraining goodness of Almighty God.

So much then for the course of sin in the human heart — its inheritance, its development, and its maturation. But how does the Spirit of God work contrary to this chosen path in a man’s heart, to bring him to an authentic experience of conversion? Owen draws a sure map for us to consider and follow.

Firstly, Owen brings forward the consideration that many have the remnants of a ministry of grace in their memories — for example, from the days of their minority, under godly parental care. There may remain ‘certain sparks of celestial fire’⁵ which may be fanned into life. Owen does not, of course, mean this in any heterodox sense. He stands in the tradition of Calvin, and merely means that there is an innate knowledge of God in men that may have been heightened by the teaching and example of early life. But generally these impressions wear off. Only in some they remain, and are the beginnings of a saving work of grace.

Secondly, God works in men to draw attention to himself — to make them aware of their separation from him, and their ‘obnoxiousness unto his righteousness on the account of sin.’ He does this by a great variety of circumstances: —

(a) By sudden judgments, such as overtook Jonah and Pharaoh.

(b) By personal afflictions. ‘I find by long observation’, he writes in another connection, ‘that common light, in conjunction with afflictions, do begin the conversion of many, without this or that special word.’⁶

(c) By remarkable deliverances, such as that of Naaman.

(d) By the witness of other Christians’ lives.

(e) Pre-eminently by the ministry of God’s Word, either read or preached. It is, according to Paul, by the law that the knowledge of sin comes.

But again, this work may be hindered in a man, and he may not give room for it to come towards fruition. There are many reasons for this — such as the natural darkness of man’s mind; a facile presumption that the present condition of an awakened conscience is all that God requires; the fear of the mocking and teasing of ungodly acquaintances; a failure to improve the work that God has already graciously performed within the heart; the wiles of the devil, or, as Owen picturesquely describes them, his ‘engines’ of war; or simply -‘mere love of lusts and pleasures, or the unconquered adherence of a corrupted heart unto sensual and sinful objects that offer present satisfaction unto its carnal desires.⁷

Many Christians have no need to see these hindering influences transcribed from the experience of an Augustine; an examination of their own biography, written indelibly in the memory, is sufficient illustration of many, or perhaps all, of these influences and experiences which are here described. Clearly another, and more effectual operation of God is required if the work of conversion is to be consummated.

So, thirdly, our attention is drawn to the work of the Holy Spirit in convincing men of sin. Owen discusses, in order, the Nature, Causes, Refusal, and Completion of this work of God the Holy Spirit.

Its Nature is two-fold. It involves ‘a fixing the vain mind of a sinner upon a due consideration of sin’ and also ‘a fixing of a due sense of sin.’ ⁸ The first has reference to the false vanity of the mind, in that it feels no compunction to consider sin at all, the second has reference to the false security of the mind, in that it cannot grasp the enormity of the blasphemy which sin entails. It is the producing of an awareness of sin and its sinfulness that constitutes the Spirit’s work of conviction.
The cause of this conviction is also two-fold. The efficient cause is, of course, the Spirit of God; the instrumental cause is the Word of God, especially the Law (Rom. 7:7). Speaking elsewhere of the work of the Law, Owen writes: ‘When it hath by its convictions brought the sinner into a condition of a sense of guilt which he cannot avoid — nor will anything tender him relief, which way soever he looks, for he is in a desert — it represents unto him the holiness and severity of God, with his indignation and wrath against sin; which have a resemblance of a consuming fire. This fills his heart with dread and terror, and makes him see his miserable undone condition.’⁹

This effectual working of the Word (1 Thess. 2:13) is what the Holy Spirit uses to bring about conviction, and later, as we shall see, actual conversion.

But once again, Owen is at pains to point out that this work may also be stubbornly resisted — by the power of the lusts of the flesh, and by the power of the promptings of friends in social fellowship. There can be no rest from conversion work until it has been consummated.

That consummation is often preceded by a violent conflict between the corruptions of the soul and the convictions of the mind — as it was in the case of the apostle (Rom 7:7-9). The initial reaction may be to promise and endeavour to live differently. But this is a mistake — it may silence the voice of the law temporarily, but frequently these ungrounded resolves will last only until the next onslaught of temptation. This is in a sense to confuse the work of mortification (the proper work of the believer) with that of conversion (the proper concern of the unbeliever). Thus in his treatise on the Mortification of Sin, Owen reminds us –‘When the Jews upon the conviction of their sin, were cut to the heart, Acts 2:37, and cried out “What shall we do?” what doth Peter direct them to do? Does he bid them go and mortify their pride, wrath, malice, cruelty and the like? No; he knew that was not their present work, but he calls them to conversion and faith in Christ in general.’¹⁰

Then the individual upon whom the Word has wrought with such convicting power may be torn between ‘the power of corruption and the terror of conviction’¹¹ — former convictions are heightened, and the principle of grace, warring with the flesh begins to overthrow the dominion of sin. So Augustine was able to speak of ‘the new will which began to be in me.’¹² To such God may well speak a word to silence the tumult of the soul — thus Augustine found as he picked up Romans, to read ‘Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. . .’ (Rom. 13:13-14). So many others have found relief just at this point. Others may have to walk a little farther — increasing in a sense of dread of their eternal condition. For conviction of sin brings a sense of shame on the one hand, and fear of eternal wrath on the other — giving rise to ‘perplexing unsatisfactory enquiries after means and ways for deliverance out of this present distress and from future misery.’¹³ At every stage of the development of this internal work, there is a time when a man may draw back, and walk no more with the companionship and guidance of the Spirit and Word of God!

It was at this point that the generality of Puritan writers, and Owen with them, believed that a man was brought into the ‘spirit of bondage’¹⁴ described in Romans 8:15 — a stage of experience ministering to the development of the experience of the Spirit of God as the One who brings liberty. But Owen himself is quick to point out that in all these experiences there is no question of a standard or measure to be attained. They are, he says ‘no part of what is required of us, but of what is inflicted on us.’¹⁵ Some may ‘walk or wander long in darkness; in the souls of others Christ is formed in the first gracious visitation.’¹⁶ It is surely helpful to have this reminder and directive about the sovereignty of the Spirit and the diversity of his operations, all within the framework of what God has revealed he plans to accomplish. Owen suggests that there are, however, two things in general which precede the consummation of conversion work: — the first is a conviction of sin that makes the individual conscious that he is under the curse of the law; the second is a realisation that there is no other way of salvation for him than that offered in the Gospel of Christ.

How then is such an enquirer to be directed? His responsibility is to seek for Christ, not accepting the remedies for his awakened conscience that may be first proffered him — such as human superstitions, or even the dictates of the Law itself. He is to be reminded to beware of ‘entangling temptations’, such as believing he does not feel sufficient sorrow for sin, or, that those who direct him are not aware that he is a sinner beyond redemption; there is none in such a condition so long as Christ is able to save the ‘chief of sinners.’

This brings us to Owen’s final point; what is involved in the generating and production of faith in a man who has thus been brought to the point of conversion? This is a question to which he has turned his attention elsewhere, and in this context he is able to answer it with some brevity: — faith is wrought by the Spirit in response to the preaching of the Gospel. That Gospel consists largely, in the preaching of it, of the declaration of Christ crucified and exalted as the only Saviour. Through him sinners thus convicted of sin may be pardoned. In order for the message of pardon to prevail in their hearts, it will be attended with arguments, invitations, encouragements, exhortations and promises. When a true response is made, it is always accompanied by ‘a universal engagement of heart unto all holy obedience to God in Christ’ with ‘a relinquishment of all known sin.’¹⁷

It is such as respond gladly with a true heart who are then admitted to the mysteries of the Church, because they have, indeed, been converted.

This article was first published in the November 1974 edition of the Banner of Truth magazine.

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About the Author

Bradley G. Green is Professor of Theological Studies at Union University (Jackson, TN), and is Professor of Philosophy and Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY) . He is the author of several articles and books, including The Gospel and the Mind: Recovering and Shaping the Intellectual Life (Crossway); Covenant and Commandment: Works, Obedience, and Faithfulness in the Christian Life (New Studies in Biblical Theology, IVP); Augustine: His Life and Impact (Christian Focus). Brad is a member of First Baptist Church (Jackson, TN), where he works with college students.

About Christ Over All

Christ Over All is a fellowship of pastor-theologians dedicated to helping the church see Christ as Lord and everything else under his feet. Christ Over All is a ministry that aspires to edify the church with evergreen content that will help the church think in biblical categories and apply Christ’s preeminence to all areas of life. If it has to do with Christ, they will write on it. If it is under his feet, they will speak to it. From Bible and theology to the church and culture, Christ Over All will help the church apply all the Scriptures to all of life. Find out more about Christ Over All.

Notes

1. A Christian Manifesto, revised edition (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 9. Unless otherwise noted, all further references to A Christian Manifesto will come from this revised edition from the 1981 original.

2. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 9.

3. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 9.

4. Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (New York City: Sentinel, 2020).

5. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 18.

6. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 19.

7. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 20.

8. [Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, Expanded edition (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

9. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 27.

10. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 27.

11. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 29.

12. Schaeffer, Manifesto, 17.

13. Interestingly, I read A Christian Manifesto in preparation for writing this essay, and only turned to Hankins’ book when I had written the bulk of the first draft. The Marsden/Noll criticism that there was no full-blown “Christian America” to my mind does not really strike at the heart of Schaeffer’s general thesis. Schaeffer’s main point, it seems to me, is that there are two general views of the world competing with each other (in Schaeffer’s time): a (1) naturalistic/secularistic view of the world and (2) a theistic, Judeo-Christian view of the world. Now that schema might be challenged as well, but to argue that there is not a distant “Christian America” does not really mitigate against Schaeffer’s general argument.

14. I would recommend digging into primary sources to discern this question. A place to start: Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall, The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009).

15. For the record, I doubt Schaeffer was as mistaken as Noll suggested. Schaeffer’s own understanding of America’s former “biblical consensus,” or “Christian consensus,” or “Christian ethos” was rather nuanced and qualified, on my view.

16. Noll, Hatch, and Marsden, Christian America, 143n19.

17. Noll, Hatch, and Marsden, Christian America, 129.

18. Noll, Hatch, and Marsden, Christian America, 125.

19. Noll, Hatch, and Marsden, Christian America, 130.

20. But see Schaeffer, Manifesto, 113-14. For an introduction to the way the constitution has been largely abandoned and/or overrun by recent legislation, see Caldwell, The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).

Photo by Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash

The post A Christian Manifesto Revisited: Bradley Green appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.

Proverbs 14:34

I love those that thunder out the word! The Christian world is in a deep sleep. Nothing but a loud voice can waken them out of it!

Whitefield, 1739

For the past thirty years numerous evangelical people have been saying, ‘There can never be another revival! The times are too evil. Sin is now too rampant. We are in the midst of apostasy and the days of revival are gone for ever!’ The history of the eighteenth-century Revival entirely contradicts that view. It demonstrates that true revival is the work of God – not man – of God who is not limited by such circumstances as the extent of human sin or the degree of mankind’s unbelief. In the decade between 1730 and 1740 the life of England was foul with moral corruption and crippled by spiritual decay, yet it was amidst such conditions – conditions remarkably similar to those of the English-speaking world to-day – that God arose in the mighty exercise of His power which became the eighteenth-century Revival. In an over-all view of a century of British history we are able to observe these conditions, not only in themselves, but as to their cause, their effect and their cure.

*

Our glance goes back to 1660. In the violent rejection of Puritanism that then accompanied the Restoration of the monarchy, Englishmen were given to believe that the life of unfettered licentiousness might be indulged in with impunity. In this assurance much of the nation threw off restraint and plunged itself heedlessly into a course of godlessness, drunkenness, immorality and gambling. Legalisation was enacted which distressed the Puritan conscience, and in 1662, on one of the darkest days in all British history, nearly two thousand ministers – all those who would not submit to the Act of Uniformity – were ejected from their livings. Hundreds of these men suffered throughout the rest of their lives, and a number died in prison. Yet these terrible conditions became the occasion of a great volume of prayer; forbidden to preach under threat of severe penalties – as John Bunyan’s Bedford imprisonment bore witness – they yet could pray, and only eternity will reveal the relationship between this burden of supplication and the revival that followed.

During these years a teaching known as Deism was introduced into England. Deism was not an organised cult, but was a form of religious rationalism advocated by a number of authors[i]. It taught that whatever God there may be is nothing more than the First Cause, a force that made the world the way a clock-maker makes a clock, and having set its mechanism to operate according to certain laws, simply winds it up and lets it run. This Deity, they said, had revealed himself only in creation and that man’s sole responsibility towards Him was that of recognising His being. This vague contemplation they termed Natural Religion, and, strangely enough, they claimed that it, and it alone, was true Christianity.

The Deists carried on a vigorous warfare against supernatural religion – Biblical Christianity – and in doing so made loud boast about the reasonableness and logic of their views. They claimed that the Bible could not be a revelation of the Deity, for, had He chosen to reveal Himself, He would not have done so through one small, ancient nation and in a book rendered unreliable by divergent readings. They sought to explain away the argument from fulfilled prophecy by stating that the prophecies were either written after their supposed fulfilment or were so ambiguous as to admit of many fulfilments. They argued that the miracles were unproved and that such dogmas as the Virgin birth and literal resurrection were no more than pious imagination. Jesus, they said, was merely a man, earnest but deluded, and raised to an imagined Saviourhood by the fancies of His disciples.

To Englishmen who had already rejected the idea of moral restraint Deism proved especially welcome. It removed from their thoughts the God of the Bible, the God of holiness and justice whom the Puritans had preached, and substituted this vague Deity found, as they believed, in nature. In its assertion that man was not held responsible for his actions and that there was no judgement day, it rationalised the sin with impunity concept and, as a result, was widely received.

Deism gradually made its way into the thought of the nation. Its influence began to be felt between 1660 and 1670, and the successive appearance of each of its books increased its popularity. Tindal’s Christianity as Old as Creation, published in 1730, brought it to the peak of its fame.

*

Confronted by the challenge of Deism the Church displayed both its strength and its weakness. Its strength was manifested in the intellectual force of its reply. From the ranks of the Church of England such men as Berkeley, Conybeare, Warburton and Butler, and, from the Dissenters Watts, Doddridge, Lardner and Leland – these and many others – took up their pens and replied to the Deists with consummate skill.[ii] It deserves to be noticed that these men very largely adhered to the supernatural in Christianity and the works they produced still stand as the greatest body of apologetics in the English language.

But the Church’s weakness was also revealed in these efforts. The works against Deism ought to have radiated the beauty and warmth of Christianity, but actually contained little besides logic, and most were as cold as they were correct. Their appeal was almost solely to the intellect, and few persons apart from those of sufficient mental strength to pore through such treatises as Conybeare’s Defence or Butler’s Analogy could be influenced by them. They were also merely defensive, for, whereas the Christian forces ought to have mounted a mighty offensive against sin and unbelief, Deism alone took the initiative and the Church politely replied. English Christianity provide itself to be little more than a religious ethic, sedate and timid – a disposition admirably exemplified in Dr John Tillotson, Archbishop from 1691 to 1694 – and this remained the vogue until challenge by the militant evangelism of the revival.

Moreover, much of the Church was in no way strong enough to withstand the onslaught of Deism. After the ejection of the two thousand pastors in 1662, the Church of England accepted as their substitutes whatever men were available, and many whom it received were sadly lacking in both learning and Christian principles. In turn, the ministerial standards suffered a long and steady decline, insomuch that, nearly a century later, a member of the clerical ranks, Archdeacon Blackburne, saw fit to state

The collective body of the clergy, excepting a very inconsiderable number, consists of men whose lives and occupations are most foreign to their profession – courtiers, politicians, lawyers, merchants, usurers, civil magistrates, sportsmen, musicians, stewards of country squires, tools of men in power, and even companions of rakes and infidels, not to mention the ignorant herd of poor curates to whom the instruction of common people is committed, who are, accordingly, in religious matters, the most ignorant common people who are in any Protestant, not to say in any Christian society upon the face of the earth.[iii]

Among clergy of this kind Deism easily gained acceptance, and it was not uncommon for them to drone its tenets from their pulpits. And even among better men, doctrines that had once been considered essential to Christianity were regarded as open to dispute, and for more than half a century a great debate over the Deity of Christ – the Trinitarian Controversy – was waged within the Church.

Large numbers of the people, both high and low, believing Christianity to be false, dropped all pretence of religious profession. The majority of the populace, however, in keeping with the belief that the Church of England was a necessary support of the monarchy and a key factor in maintaining the peace of the realm, asserted that, despite its outworn dogmas, it ought to be retained. To such persons its rituals were but empty formality; an incident revealing this attitude among the highest circles comes from the record of the death of Queen Caroline:

She had been out of health for a long time, and in November, 1737 was on her death-bed … And now we have a painful but very characteristic scene. People wondered that the Queen did not have anyone to pray with her. To stop these remarks, Robert Walpole [the Prime Minister] asked the Princess Emily to suggest to the Queen that Archbishop Potter should be sent for. The Princess hesitated. Then, although about a dozen persons were present, Walpole added: ‘Pray, Madam, let this farce be played; the Archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the Queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the good and wise fools, who will call us atheists if we don’t profess to be as great fools as they are.’ [iv]

The attitude revealed in this very characteristic scene could doubtless have been found in many a home and many a pulpit throughout the nation. There was, however, one aspect of the religious question on which the people of England were in general unity. This was the fear of what they called ‘enthusiasm’. The term meant as much as or more than the word ‘fanatic’ to-day, and they applied it to anyone whose practice of Christianity manifested any true fervour. In the belief that the wars of the mid-seventeenth century had been caused by over-zealous religion, it was commonly assumed that prayer and preaching which displayed a vital earnestness would prove a threat to the peace of the realm, and in fear of such an outcome public opinion decreed that everything to do with religion must be quietly dispassionate. Thus, empty formality was the order of the day, and an unwritten law demanded that it remain so.

*

Among the Nonconformists (Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists) conditions were undoubtedly better, but very little so, than in the Church of England. Though persecuted from the time of The Great Ejection of 1662 onward, they came into liberty with the Act of Toleration of 1689. In the joy of this new freedom they immediately began to conduct themselves with great vitality; yet their fervour lasted but a short time, and before many years had passed the spiritual lethargy of the times had descended on them too.

The strength of the Nonconformist bodies became sapped, as had that of the Church, by scepticism. Certain men who held to the fundamental principles of Christianity endeavoured to contend for them, but amidst the majority of the ministers Arianism was common, and some preached nothing more than the vagaries of Deism. With but a few notable exceptions, the pulpits were cold, and discord and stagnancy were the chief features of denominational life. By the year 1700 such divisions had taken place that in London there were three separate groups of Presbyterians, four of Independents and six of Baptists. The growth was so small that a report covering the work of these three denominations for the period from 1695 to 17630 stated:

One church only had been erected, but by enlargements, increased accommodation had been made for four thousand persons. Twelve of the old congregations had been dissolved and ten new congregations organised; fourteen had increased, fifteen had declined and twenty remained in about the same state.[v]

The plain truth is that the churches of England had failed. Much is made in some quarters to-day of the fact that the ecclesiastical machinery was all functioning the same as ever. Nevertheless, in their lack of spiritual authority, their lack of earnestness and lack of power, the churches had failed. Furthermore, they had failed at a time when they were most sorely needed. Subjected to the effects of Restoration licentiousness, and robbed of a sense of the reality of God by Deism, the people of England stood more in need of the Gospel of Jesus Christ than at any time since the Reformation. But they were denied the message of its transforming power and, as a result, found themselves in the bondage of sinful habit.

Nowhere was the nation’s weakness more evident than in the Gin Craze. With the prohibition, in 1689, of the importation of liquor, Englishmen began to brew their own, and so large was the demand that, within a generation, every sixth house in London had become a gin shop and the nation was in an uncontrollable orgy of gin drinking. ‘What must become’, asked Magistrate Fielding, ‘of the infant who is conceived in gin, with the poisonous distillations of which it is nourished both in the womb and at the breast.’[vi] ‘Those cursed liquors’, asserted Bishop Benson, ‘will, if continued to be drunk, destroy the very race of the people themselves.’ The nation which had been taught to scoff at self-restraint learned that it had not the strength to withstand the slavery of alcohol. We shall need to remember that it was among a people broken by gin that Whitefield and the Wesleys went about in the nobility of their ministries and that there was triumphant meaning to Charles Wesley’s lines on the deliverance effected by the Gospel:

Hear Him, ye deaf! His praise ye dumb,

Your loosened tongues employ;

Ye blind, behold your Saviour come,

And leap ye lame for joy!

He breaks the power of cancelled sin,

He sets the prisoner free!

His blood can make the foulest clean,

His blood availed for me!

Perhaps the worst effect of the Gin Craze was that indicated by Bishop Benson, when, towards the close of his life he stated, ‘Gin has made the English people what they never were before – cruel and inhuman’. From almost every aspect of British life there arises evidence that an unwonted heartlessness had come over the nation. The Puritans had prohibited sports which indulged in cruelty to animals, but in the age of gin a traffic in games which found their pleasure in torturing beasts was carried on throughout the land, and people had become so callous that they could look on suffering and delight in it.

The generality of England’s upper class manifested a deep-seated inhumanity. Their lives were marked by pride and ostentation; they created homes of boastful magnificence and lived in luxury, but although they gave lip service to the Church, Deism was the creed of many hearts and polite thievery went hand-in-hand with their intrigues for political power. Far below them there existed the vast numbers of the poor. Of course, every country has its poor in every age, but, as England became more and more enfeebled by its long rejection of moral restraint and its indulgence in gin, larger and larger numbers of them became unable or unwilling to work. The indigent increased in such a fashion that by 1740-50 the arrangements throughout the country for collecting and expending the Poor Rate proved inadequate and the increase in the local Poor Rate alarmingly high. Conditions in the slums of London have been described in these words:

Behind the streets there was hidden, in a squalid confusion of buildings, fever-laden haunts of vice and wretchedness, … a maze of alleys and lanes fading into the unwholesome vapour that always overhung them, of dirty tumble-down houses, with windows patched with rags and blackened paper, and airless courts crowded with quarrelling women and half-naked children, wallowing in pools and kennels.

The men of the Restoration had pictured the licentious life as one of unalloyed pleasure, but England learned to its sorrow that it also brough lawlessness and violence. Crime became rampant and the authorities resorted to the only hope they had of checking it: the increase of punishment. They made as many as 160 offences punishable by death, but lawlessness still mounted. London erected a permanent scaffold at Kennington and another at Tyburn, and a hanging became a gala event with a boisterous crowd making merry around the gallows. Jail sentences were meted out with great freedom, and many persons spent the major portion of their lives in the prisons amidst conditions of unspeakable wretchedness.

The prisoners were huddled together [says the Encyclopedia Americana], utterly regardless of their influence on each other, the young and the old, the first offender and the hardened criminal, and the treatment of women was almost worse than that of men. Hundreds of women were crowded together in London prisons, some of them women of the streets, and others accused of little thefts to keep their children alive; and with many of the prisoners, children were allowed to be there because there was no one but their mother to care for them. Poor women were often hanged for passing a counterfeit pound note which sometimes they did not know was counterfeit, and the fact that they had children at the breast or were in pregnancy, was no mitigation of their offence.[vii]

John Howard said of the Knaresborough jail, ‘Only one room … earth floor; no fireplace; very offensive; a common sewer from the town running through it uncovered … An officer confined there took with him a dog to defend him from vermin; but the dog was soon destroyed … by them.’[viii] We shall need to bear these conditions in mind when we witness the ministrations of the men of the revival among prisoners, and see, for instance, Charles Wesley as he shewed mercy to a ‘poor sick negro in the condemned hole’, and saying as he told him and his companions the Gospel, ‘I found myself overcome with the love of Christ to sinners.’

Much more might be said in description of the evils of the times: the treatment of the insane, cruelties to children, the London mob – Sir Mob it called itself – the incredible extent of gambling, the obscenity of the stage – ‘that sink of all corruption’ as John Wesley termed it – these and similar aspects of English conditions might be depicted at length. We notice, however, a contemporary note on the corruption of the printed page. Dr Stanhope, Dean of Canterbury and Chaplain to the King, in a sermon preached in 1723, described certain productions of the press as,

… those monsters of irreligion and profaneness, of heresy and schism, of sedition and scandal, of malice and detraction, of obscenity and ribaldry, which mercenary wretches, void of shame, published for the sake of a paltry present gain, thereby not only debauching the principles of the age, but, if such detestable compositions can survive so long, propagating the poison to posterity…[ix]

Some will assert, however, that such a statement may be discounted since it comes from a clergyman, and that ministers invariably describe conditions that surround them as especially corrupt. But evidence that during the first half of the eighteenth century England was suffering moral and religious decay to an extraordinary degree comes also from such writers as Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a learned and witty member of high society, made such statements as, ‘To be styled a rake is now as genteel in a woman as in a man’, and ‘There are now more atheists among genteel women than men’. She made the claim, ‘Honour and virtue, which we used to hear of in our nursery, are as much laid aside as crumpled ribbons’, and joked that Parliament was ‘preparing a bill to have “not” taken out of the Commandments and inserted in the Creed’[x], in order to render these documents more in harmony with the times. Lord Chesterfield, the elegant worldling who instructed his son in the arts of seduction as part of a polite education, came to the place where he too deplored the evils of the age. Addressing Parliament in 1737 on the obscenity of the theatre he carried the matter to its basic cause. ‘When we complain of the licentiousness of the stage’, he asserted, ‘I fear we have more reason to complain of the general decay of virtue and morality among the people.’[xi]

In 1732 The Weekly Miscellany, London’s foremost religious paper, published an article deploring the prevailing conditions – an article later summarised as follows:

It broadly asserts that the people were engulfed in voluptuousness and business, and that a zeal for godliness looked as odd upon a man as would the antiquated dress of his great grand-father. It states that freethinkers were formed into clubs, to propagate their tenets, and to make the nation a race of profligates; and that atheism was scattered broadcast throughout the kingdom. It affirms that it was publicly avowed that vice was profitable to the state; that the country would be benefitted by the establishment of public stews; and that polygamy, concubinage, and even sodomy were not sinful.[xii]

*

Such conditions as these, however, did not exist without there being several efforts made to correct them. The love of righteousness – a legacy from the Reformation and more particularly from the Puritan age – still existed in many a heart throughout the nation, and England was not wanting in hundreds – probably thousands – who refused to bow the knee to Baal.

Important among the attempts which such persons made towards the betterment of conditions was the Religious Societies movement. In 1673 Dr Anthony Horneck, a Church of England minister in London, preached a number of what he called ‘awakening sermons’. As a result several young men began to meet together weekly in order to build up one another in the Christian faith. They gathered in small groups at certain fixed locations and their places of meeting became known as Society Rooms. In these gatherings they read the Bible, studied religious books and prayer; they also went out among the poor to relieve want at their own expense and to show kindness to all. This activity was recognised by the Church of England, rules were laid out to govern it, and the work so grew that by 1730 nearly one hundred of these Societies existed in London, and others – perhaps another hundred – were to be found in cities and towns throughout England. The Societies movement became, in many senses, the cradle of the Revival, and a knowledge of it is essential to an understanding of Whitefield’s early ministry and of John Wesley’s organisation.

But there were also several other steps taken in the attempt to improve conditions, and the principal ones may be listed as:

1. The establishment of hospitals. The years 1720-40 saw unprecedented activity in this field. These institutions not only did much to relieve suffering, but also aided considerably in the increase then being made in medical knowledge.

2. The publicising of the conditions of the prisons. In 1728 a Parliamentary Committee headed by James Oglethorpe, made a study of England’s prisons and presented a report, severely condemning the conditions they found and calling for vigorous reforms. Nothing, however, came of the attempt at the time, for Englishmen in general had little heart for such things.

3. Legislation against the sale of gin. Queen Caroline became so deeply concerned about the effects of the Gin Craze that, under her influence, The Gin Act – a law prohibiting much of the liquor traffic – was passed in 1736. But it was supported by so few and defied by so many that it proved impossible to enforce. Further legislation of a similar nature was passed in 1743, but this met the same fate.

4. The Charity Schools movement. In the early years of the eighteenth century Queen Anne led in the establishment of a number of free schools. William Lecky, the historian, says ‘Ninety-six grammar schools were founded in England between 1684 and 1727’, and others set the number much higher. But this noble effort was hindered by the vicious circle of the times in which competent teachers were difficult to obtain and dissolute parents were often more desirous that their children earn a few pence than that they learn to read and write.[xiii]

5. The Society for the Reformation of Manners. Failing by persuasion to influence evil-doers to desist from their practices, certain good men formed this organisation in order to force them to behave. They scouted out cases of blasphemy and immorality and, in a report issued in 1735, stated that, during the previous forty years, they had effected ‘99,380 prosecutions for debauchery and profaneness in London and Westminster alone’.[xiv]

6. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Coming into existence in 1699, this movement provided Christian literature for distribution among the common people. Its efforts were highly beneficial and contributed much toward the work of the Revival.

But despite these many commendable endeavours, there was no noticeable improvement in the moral and religious state of the nation. In fact, conditions became not better, but worse, until responsible men began to grow alarmed and warn of dire consequences. Henry Fielding, speaking as a London magistrate, said concerning the Gin Craze, ‘Should the drinking of this poison be continued at its present height during the next twenty years, there will, by that time, be very few of the common people left to drink it.’[xv] Bishop Butler declared that scepticism was so rampant that Christianity was treated as though ‘it was now discovered to be fictitious … and nothing remained but to set it up as the subject of mirth and ridicule.’[xvi] Archbishop Secker, writing in 1738, asserted:

In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard to religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age. This evil has already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal.[xvii]

But how was ‘this torrent of impiety’ to be stopped? It was evident that the writing of scholarly books in defence of Christianity would not suffice, for it had been tried, but with little avail. Nor would the threat of punishment, for the informing on wrongdoers and the increase of hangings had but hardened the criminal mind. The successive failures of the several attempts to better conditions simply proved that the nation’s trouble lay basically with the individual human heart and that the ‘torrent of impiety’ would flow until some power was found that could stanch it at its source.

During the very months in which Bishop Secker wrote his foreboding words, England was startled by the sound of a voice. It was the voice of a preacher, George Whitefield, a clergyman but twenty-two years old, who was declaring the Gospel in the pulpits of London with much fervour and power, that no church would hold the multitudes that flocked to hear. His voice continued to be heard, and then was joined by the voices of John and Charles Wesley and of many others, in a tremendous chorus of praise and preaching that rang throughout the land and was sustained in strength for more than half a century. The effect has been described in the words:

… a religious revival burst forth … which changed in a few years the whole temper of English society. The Church was restored to life and activity. Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners. A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education.[xviii]

It is the story of this, the eighteenth-century Revival, rich with its lessons for our own needy age, which is before us now.

Arnold Dallimore’s 2 Volume George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival can be purchased here.

Notes

[i] The following are some of the principal Deistic writers:

Matthew Tindal (1653-1733) Christianity as Old as the Creation

John Toland (1670-1722) Christianity Not Mysterious

Thomas Woolston (1670-1733) The Miracles of Our Saviour

Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) The Fable of the Bees

Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1729) Discourse of Free Thinking

Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751) Essays

[ii] The following are the more important of the works against Deism:

Bishop Berkeley, Alciphron

[iii] Alfred Plummer, The Church in England in the Eighteenth Century (Methuen, London, 1910), p 114.

[iv] Ibid, p 109.

[v] Herbert S. Skeats, A History of the Free Churches of England, (Jas. Clarke, London, 1868), p 334.

[vi] Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers

[vii] Encyclopedia Americana (1949 ed), Vol 10, p 31.

[viii] Cited by J. W. Bready, England: Before and After Wesley (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1939), p 133.

[ix] Cited from Tyerman’s Life of Whitefield, Vol 1, p 71

[x] A letter to the Countess of Mar, cited by Julia Wedgwood in her John Wesley (London, 1870)

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Tyerman, The Life and Times of John Wesley (London, 1880), Vol 1, p 217.

[xiii] No mention is made here of the Welsh Circulating Schools, for they were a fruit of the Revival, not antecedent to it.

[xiv] William Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1887), Vol 2, p 595.

[xv] Fielding, op cit, p 19.

[xvi] Joseph Butler, Works, (New York, 1842), Advertisement prefixed to the first edition of The Analogy of Religion.

[xvii] Thomas Secker, Works, (Porteus and Stinton ed), Vol 5, p 306.

[xviii] J.R. Green, A Short History of the English People (Harper ed, 1899), pp 736-7.

Picture credit: ‘Gin Lane’ from ‘Beer Street and Gin Lane’ by William Hogarth. Public domain.

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A commanding figure

Physically he was a striking figure of a man. There was the strong influence of the military background in which he was reared. He had a fine upright bearing and a brisk step. There was the same disciplined and methodical approach to his work and ministry. This combined with his physical tenacity enabled him to undertake a prodigious amount of work throughout his life. Likewise in church life and in national life he had a commanding voice.

A godly man

Many things could be said about him as a Christian. His subsequent life was shaped by that conversion experience which he records: ‘I hereby put on record that since the Lord in his sovereign mercy entered my heart on the lonely summit of Bell’s Hill in the Pentlands on that memorable afternoon – 9th August 1909 – I have ever sought to serve Him as my only Lord’. Finding no food for his new-born spiritual life in the Church his parents attended in Edinburgh, he searched and found a satisfying ministry in Free St Columba’s, where the Rev Donald MacLean was the pastor. Soon after his conversion he tasted something of the old Highland piety in the childhood haunts of his native Ross-shire and he carried with him to the end of his days an ideal that he kept pursuing.

A soul winner

He was first and foremost a preacher and a pastor. He loved to preach Christ and him crucified. He wrote: ‘I must not lose sight of the preacher’s golden rule, “Never preach a sermon which has not sufficient in it – used of the Spirit – to lead a soul to Christ”.’ And he was used by God to lead many souls to the Saviour. In one place he gives figures of those brought to Christ under his preaching. He expected conversions. He was a diligent pastor. Typical entries in his diary include: ‘Spent a most enjoyable day in Totscore. Gave a brief exhortation in every house upon a text which I judged to be suitable to the state of each family, and thus was able to bring the truth to twenty-three individuals capable of comprehending it, nine of whom either cannot or will not go out (to the church) to hear it’.

A champion for the truth

I think we are especially indebted to him as a champion for the cause of Christ in the midst of a deteriorating spiritual situation in the Church in Scotland. Having experienced the soul-destroying nature of theological liberalism and the subtle danger of the new school of Victorian evangelism, he was wholly committed to full-orbed Calvinism all his days. He was ministering in the midst of a drift from the old ways and no man understood the nature of the declension better than Rev MacRae. He felt that the distinctive Reformed testimony of the Free Church was being compromised by a weakening of principles. He had the discernment to see when some of his colleagues were supporting outside movements that would be harmful to the testimony of his Church.

In this connection he had a great concern to instruct the rising generation in these principles. As early as 1936, at the request of the Public Questions Committee and sanctioned by the General Assembly, he undertook a three month itinerary ‘with a view to seeking to persuade the young people of the Church to a greater interest in and zeal for the message and testimony which has been given the Free Church to declare’. He prepared a sheet ‘What the Free Church Stands For’ which was given out at the close of each meeting. The account of the tour in the Diary is most revealing. It highlighted a great need for such instruction, especially in congregations south of the Highland line.

Sadly the situation did not improve and in later years Mr MacRae had to fight some battles in the courts of the Church. Things came to a head in the 1950s. A booklet which he wrote on his voyage to Australia in 1953 was published under the title, The Resurgence of Arminianism, in 1954, coinciding with the time of the Greater London Crusade of Dr Billy Graham. The General Assembly of the Free Church in May 1954 had indicated public approval of the Crusade. Mr MacRae in a letter published in The Monthly Record in September 1954 gave ‘another point of view’ and felt that the approval was ‘a betrayal of our testimony.’ Coming to the 1955 General Assembly with an Overture from his Synod to deal with the matter in hand he faced some bitter opposition and the motion was defeated by 53 votes to 37. It was a watershed in the history of the Church. He recorded in his Diary: ‘It was a sad Assembly, which chilled my heart and filled me with apprehension as to the future’.

A voice in the nation

If we assess the situation carefully we will discover that Mr MacRae was probably the last preacher of the Word who made a lasting impact on the nation. He was a firm believer in the church’s duty to call statesmen (the magistrate) to account with regard to the laws of God. He regularly instructed his own people about the threats that were arising in the nation, and he was so highly respected that he could carry many in the community with him in opposition to encroachments on the Sabbath. He used the correspondence columns of the newspapers to great effect. A tribute in the local paper after his passing said : ‘Probably no man in his day has done more by word and by pen and appropriate action to keep the moral and spiritual tone of the island at a high level’.

Mr MacRae was thrilled to discover in the late 1950s a resurgence of interest in the Reformed Faith, manifested by the reprinting of old classics on both sides of the Atlantic. In his eightieth year he travelled to London to conduct services in the Free Church congregation there and to go on to the city of Leicester to speak at the first Banner of Truth Trust Ministers’ Conference when he shared a platform with fellow stalwarts in the faith, Professor John Murray and the Rev W J Grier, Belfast. Back in Stornoway he reported that he had seen in England ‘a little cloud like a man’s hand’. He concluded: ‘Worm Jacob may yet thresh the mountains.’

When he died in Stornoway in May 1964 the crowd wishing to attend his funeral was so enormous that two separate services had simultaneously to be held, one in the main Church building and the other in the Seminary in Francis Street, both packed to capacity. The press reported that at least a thousand men took part in the procession. ‘Hundreds of women lined the streets many of them weeping’.

May God raise up men like him in our day!

Notes

*Published by the Trust in 1980, this title is currently out of print.

This post first appeared on the Banner website on Sept 17th, 2014.

Photo credit: Mathias Reding on Unsplash

The post A Voice for Truth in Kirk and Nation: Remembering Kenneth MacRae appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.