This is an article by my father (Rev John J Murray) which appeared in the Banner of Truth Magazine in April 2015 entitled 'Profiting from Good Books'. The article is also available as a separate leaflet.
How many
pastors today have to acknowledge that their people are not readers of good books?
In the same way as there is not a great desire for sound preaching, so likewise
there is not a hunger for good books. There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s
when congregations seemed eager to have bookstalls, and publishers readily
complied. It was not unusual even to see a queue forming when a newly published
title reached a Christian bookshop.
What has gone
wrong? The spiritual appetite seems to have decayed. Judging by the front window displays in many Christian
Bookshops the literature in popular demand is of a very light character. We are
also living in a visual age. The overhead is taking over in our churches. Items
of praise and Scripture passages are projected on to a screen in front of us.
Bibles are being set aside. The ‘download’
is being used more and more. It is a rare sight to see a Christian home with a
bookshelf of Christian classics.
The testimony of history
We have only
to look back in history to see the important place that books have played in the
progress of the Christian Church.
There are
many instances of books being used in the conversion of sinners, who subsequently
became mighty instruments in God’s hands. There is one oft-quoted chain of
effect in this area. The ‘heavenly’ Richard Sibbes produced The Bruised Reed in 1630 and it was used
in the conversion of Richard Baxter. The ‘saintly’ Baxter wrote A Call
to the Unconverted (1657). Many years later, the book was blessed to the
conversion of Philip Doddridge. His Rise
and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) was used to bring light into
the soul of William Wilberforce. Then years
later Wilberforce’s Practical View of
Christianity (1797) helped to bring from death into light and life the soul
of the ‘Moderate’ churchman, Thomas Chalmers, who became the instrument under God of the Revival of
1839-42. We could also think of Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man being the means of the conversion
of George Whitefield.
There are also
instances of books that have had an influence in producing a new era in spiritual
life. At the time of the first Awakening
in New England, Jonathan Edwards gave an
account of it in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737). Iain Murray notes: ‘Edwards’ Faithful
Narrative was possibly the most significant book to precede the great
evangelical Awakening on both sides of the Atlantic’. (Iain Murray, Jonathan Edwards, Edinburgh: Banner,
1987, p 122). We have also to think of the effect that Edwards’s An Humble Attempt to Promote Extraordinary
Prayer had on the Baptists in England and the subsequent rise of the worldwide missionary movement. Dr John Macleod
gives an interesting example of the power of a book when he tells us of what
happened in Kilbrandon (Argyll). The minister, Rev John Smith, was invited by
Lady Glenorchy to translate Joseph Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted into Gaelic. ‘As he advanced with the work
he used what he translated as pulpit matter, and when the people of Kilbrandon
came thus in touch with the bones of the Puritan prophet, an awakening began, the memory of which has not yet passed
away.’ (John Macleod, Some Favourite Books,
Edinburgh: Banner, 1974,p 90).
We could also
recall the way in which good books shaped the lives of generations of Christians
in, for example, Puritan England and Presbyterian Scotland. Family religion
encompassed regular family worship, the keeping of the Sabbath and the reading
of good books. Most Christian homes would have a shelf or more of books some of
which were ‘thumbed out of existence’ There were the classic writings of such men
as Rutherford, Guthrie, Bunyan, Boston, Brown, Henry, M’Cheyne and Spurgeon.
The books would be passed on through the generations. Of Boston’s Fourfold State it could be said, ‘It did more to mould the thought of a
generation than anything except the Westminster Shorter Catechism’. The farm labourer had more knowledge of
Scripture and a greater grasp of doctrine than many a learned scholar.
The need of the present hour
The effect of
a renewed hunger for reading would do much to rectify some of the failings of
modern evangelicalism:
1 Ignorance of
doctrine, ‘children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
doctrine’ (Ephesians 4.14). In the words of Dr Robert Reymond, ‘a theological
illiteracy which invites the rise of wholesale heresy pervades the Church’. The
great lack of discernment, even among leaders in the Church, is alarming.
2 Lack of depth
in Christian experience, ‘even as unto
babes in Christ’ (1 Corinthians 3.1). We
have an anaemic version of faith that signs up to the benefits purchased by
Christ with no evidence of a radical change in relationship and lifestyle.
3 Neglect of
Church history, ‘There arose another generation after them, which knew not
the Lord nor yet the works which he had done for Israel’ (Judges 2.10). As Dr
Lloyd-Jones observed many modern evangelicals think that evangelism began with D
L Moody. Others think the blessings of Pentecost were only re- discovered in
the 20th century! The love and
promotion of good books could provide an antidote to these ills.
1 The Reformers knew that ignorance, not learning, was
the breeding ground for heresy and superstition. Luther, Calvin and Knox
flooded the market with instruction in the Christian faith. They saw the need for producing catechisms,
confessions and manuals of doctrine. A solid foundation was laid in the minds
of the young. How desperately our generation stands in need of that foundation!
2 The more genuine
and deep the conversion experience the more likely our people are to go back to the
books that came out of ‘white hot’ soul experience and have an unction
attending them. George Whitefield, writing of the Puritans, said: ‘Though dead, by their writings they yet
speak, a peculiar unction attends them to this hour, and for these thirty years past I have remarked, that
the more true and vital religion hath revived either at home or abroad, the
more the good old Puritanical writings have been called for’. (Whitefield’s Works, Vol 4, p 306). A modern preacher presents a vivid picture of
what we mean: ‘As furnaces burn with ancient coal and not with leaves that fall
from today’s trees so my heart is kindled with the fiery substance I find in
the old Scripture-steeped sermons of Puritan pastors.’ (John Piper, in a
recommendation for Meet the Puritans
by Beeke and Pederson).
3 It is by reading the history of the Church and the biographies
of men and women of God in the great eras of the Christian Church that we come
to be convicted of what we are lacking in our day, individually and corporately.
It gives the longing in our hearts to
identify with the spirituality of those days and to recapture something of it
for ourselves. C H Spurgeon speaks of
his discovery of Puritan classics in the room in the old manse at Stambourne. ‘Out
of that darkened room I fetched those old authors when I was yet a youth, and
never was I happier than when in their company’. (Autobiography of C H Spurgeon, vol. 1:The Early Years, London:
Banner, p 11). Happily, they had the effect of producing a God-centred,
Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered ministry, the effects of which continue with
us to this day.
May we respond with Augustine to the voice which cried
‘Take up and read’!
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