The Beginning of a Famous Book

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.  I dreamed, and, behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face [...]

Read Full Post »

William Tyndale

In some ways, Tyndale was poorly equipped to survive, let alone thrive, in this feverish atmosphere.  He was no wheeler-dealer; more of an idealistic scholar whose linguistic gifts were so remarkable and, hence, so subversive, that he was drawn into high religious politics.
His ruling passion was a simple one: he wanted to render the defining [...]

Read Full Post »

Personal Godliness

Urgently do we need a revival of personal godliness.  This is, indeed, the secret of church prosperity.  When individuals fall from their steadfastness, the church is tossed to and fro.  When personal faith is steadfast, the church abides true to her Lord.  We have, in and around our own denomination, many true-hearted servants of Christ [...]

Read Full Post »

For the Lord’s Day (50)

The saying is trustworthy: if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.  Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.  He must manage his own [...]

Read Full Post »

Augustine’s “Confessions”

Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite.  And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness, that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, [...]

Read Full Post »

A Meditation on Death

When I am in a serious Humour, I very often walk by my self in Westminster Abby; where the Gloominess of the Place, and the Use to which it is applied, with the Solemnity of the Building, and the Condition of the People who lye in it, are apt to fill the Mind with a [...]

Read Full Post »

The Lord’s Supper and the Atonement

I cannot but believe that, while this sacred institution continues in the church (as it will undoubtedly do to the end of the world), it will be impossible to root that doctrine out of the minds of plain, humble Christians by all the little artifices of such forced and unnatural criticisms as those by which [...]

Read Full Post »

The Law of God’s Mouth

This is a reason why David reckoned that when, by his afflictions, he learned God’s statutes, and the profit did so much counterbalance the loss, he was really a gainer by them; for God’s “law,” which he got acquaintance with by his affliction, was “better” to him than all the “gold and silver” which he [...]

Read Full Post »

The Mystical Union of True Believers

Who, indeed, can describe the pleasure with which the members of Christ’s flock do meet each other face to face?  They may have been strangers before.  They may have lived apart and never been in company; but it is wonderful to observe how soon they seem to understand each other.  There seems a thorough oneness [...]

Read Full Post »

Coming to the Defense of Spurgeon

…Your paragraph about Spurgeon really vexed me – and it is the only thing you have ever said, or written, or done, that did vex me or that I thought not worthy of your magnanimity.  It also amazed me, for never yet did I hear anyone speaking of Spurgeon in that way. 
I never knew any [...]

Read Full Post »