A Family History of Sabbatarianism

By Dustin Bruce

Hearing bits of anecdotal family history is one of the most interesting parts of holiday gatherings. When aspects of family history intersect with theological concepts, I find them even more fascinating. Recently I enjoyed learning of the Sabbatarian practices my grandparents experienced as children in the early twentieth-century rural south.

Growing up in a devout Baptist family, my grandfather was not allowed to work or attend any worldly amusements on the Lord’s Day. Slight exceptions were made to allow for some cooking and feeding of animals. Work was not allowed, but the Sabbath was not to be spent frivolously. Fishing and hunting, common pastimes in rural Alabama, were simply out of the question. 

It is interesting to note how quickly the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day has faded from the church culture. Area churches that would have encouraged Sabbath keeping just 70 years ago likely have no current members who give the concept much thought. The shift away from Sabbatarianism has been so swift and decisive that my grandfather’s childhood experience in this area more closely resembles that of Andrew Fuller’s than my own.

In an 1805 letter to a friend, Fuller defends the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day. Responding to doubts as to its observance, Fuller asks, “If the keeping of a Sabbath to God were not in all ages binding, why is it introduced in the moral law, and founded upon God’s resting from his works. If it were merely a Jewish ceremonial, why do we read of time being divided by weeks before the law?”[1]Fuller possessed a theological conviction that compelled him to set apart the Sabbath as a holy day to the Lord. He instructs, “The first day then ought to be kept as the Lord’s own day, and we ought not to think our own thoughts, converse on our own affairs, nor follow our own business on it.”

One wonders if Fuller first learned this Sabbatarian practice as a child growing up in the home of Particular Baptist parents. Like my grandfather’s mother, Fuller’s mother may have prevented him from hunting or fishing or attending to other worldly amusements, setting an early example of keeping the Lord’s Day.

Anecdotal family history is interesting, but should also be instructive. Like other types of history, learning of the religious beliefs and practices of those who form my family tree should cause me to reflect on whether I am being more or less faithful in my Christian walk. Feel free to share any interesting examples of your family’s religious history in the comments below.

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 828.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Fuller’s Three Classes of Religious Dissenters

By Dustin Bruce

Often when considering the English Reformation, we distinguish only between those who remained within the newly formed Church of England and those who dissented from it. In “A Brief Statement of the Principles of Dissent,” Andrew Fuller reminds us that “as all dissent is expressive rather of what is disapproved than of what is embraced, it is natural to suppose that the objects of disapprobation will be different in different persons.”[1]

Fuller goes on to distinguish three classes of dissenters:

  1. Those who disagree with the theology of the Church of England.
  2. Those who approve of the theology, but desire further Reformation within the English Church.
  3. Those who approve of the theology, but reject the establishment of a nation church in principle.

Concerning the first class of dissenters, Fuller speaks of those who abandoned the Church of England due to some unorthodox beliefs or practice. For Fuller, disagreement with the doctrine of these dissenters provides no justification for persecuting them. None who hold respect for private judgment and the authority of Christ “can forbear to regret that the Reformation should at so early a period have been stained with blood.”

The majority of Puritans and Nonconformists form the second class of dissenters. These men did not take issue with the establishment of a national church, but desired a national church with a Presbyterian form of government, which they found “more agreeable with the Scriptures.”

For the third class of dissenters, the primary objection to the Church of England was not one of theology, but of the very existence of a national church. Fuller states,

“The temporal power of bishops, the imposition of ministers, to the exclusion of the free election of the people, the mixture of godly and manifestly ungodly characters at the Lord’s table, the corruption of worship, the total want of discipline, and all other deviations from primitive Christianity, appeared to them to be no more than might be expected, if circumstances admitted it, to grow out of a national establishment. They, therefore, peaceably withdrew from its communion, with the view of forming churches on the plan of the New Testament.”

To this third class of dissenters belongs the Independents and the Baptists. Both holding to a form of congregational church government, the Baptists further dissented from the Independents by rejecting the practice of infant baptism.

Interestingly, Fuller makes two points of application for the third class of dissenters.

  1. “If the government should even offer to make theirs the established religion, however they might be obliged to them for their kindness, they could not accept it without relinquishing their first principles relative to church government.”
  2. “Neither can they, without relinquishing the first principles of the system by which they are distinguished from other Christians, persecute any man for his religion, whatever that religion be. They may think and speak of men according to their true character; they may refuse all religious connexion with them; they may expose their principles to just abhorrence; but their hand must not be upon them.”

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 459.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

“Heart-Piercing Conviction” in Logan County, Kentucky

By Dustin W. Benge

James M’Gready (1763–1817) was born in Pennsylvania and later settled in North Carolina with his father. After theological training for ministry, he became a Presbyterian pastor and leader during the Second Great Awakening. In 1796, M’Gready left his North Carolina home for southern Kentucky. He was called to serve the congregations of Gaspar River, Red River, and Muddy River in Logan County, Kentucky. In the summer of 1798, he reported “some movement” among the congregations in Logan County. He describes the event as “a very general awakening.” The spirit of prayer deepened and twelve months later it was apparent that a powerful work of conversion was in progress. During a communion service at Red River at the end of July 1799, “many of the most bold and daring sinners of the country were brought to cover their faces and weep bitterly.” A month later the same “heart-piercing conviction” was also evident during services at Gasper River. Some individuals were reported to have been so overcome with emotion that they fell to the floor. Much more was to follow.

M’Gready writes, “The year 1800 exceeds all that our eyes ever beheld on earth. All the blessed displays of Almighty power and grace, all the sweet gales of the divine Spirit, and soul-reviving showers of the blessings of Heaven which we enjoyed before, and which we considered wonderful beyond conception, were but like a few scattering drops before a mighty rain, when compared with the overflowing floods of salvation, which the eternal, gracious Jehovah has poured out like a mighty river, upon this our guilty, unworthy country. The Lord has indeed shewed [sic] himself a prayer-hearing God: he has given his people a praying spirit and a lively faith, and then he has answered their prayers far beyond their highest expectations.”

For more information on James M’Gready and his ministry, please visit here.

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Dustin Benge serves as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Jackson, Kentucky. He is also a PhD candidate at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a junior fellow at The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. Dustin and his wife, Molli, live in Jackson.

The poor estate of English roads in the 18th & early 19th centuries

By Michael A.G. Haykin

In an early nineteenth-century French gazetteer, there is an interesting comment on the state of the roads in London: “Les rues de Londres sont mal pavées; les grandes routes ne le sont point du tout” (Méthode abrégée et facile pour apprendre la Géographie [Lyon: Blache et Boyet, 1806], 222). Putting aside the possibility of French bias when it comes to all things English, this is a fascinating comment that, if it is borne out by other sources, would illumine the challenges of getting around eighteenth-century London.

Of course, the poor repair of roads in general in eighteenth-century England is a factor that explains the isolation of Nonconformist causes in the land. And here is a good example of how geographical knowledge can be invaluable to historians.

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

Some memories of John Codman about Andrew Fuller

By Michael A.G. Haykin

John Codman (1782–1847) was an American Congregationalist minister who graduated from Harvard in 1802. His grandfather, also John Codman (1719–1792), was converted under and nourished by the preaching of George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent. After his graduation from Harvard, the younger Codman decided to study in Scotland and made the trip across the Atlantic in July and August, 1805—the voyage took a month. While on board ship Codman read what he called “an excellent little pamphlet by Andrew Fuller, on the question, “What shall I do to be saved?” This must have been Fuller’s The Great Question Answered, a 19th century copy of which I have published by the American Tract Society and that was kindly given me in 2008 by Nathan Harmon, when he was studying at SBTS.

Codman later met Fuller with John Ryland at an ordination in the fall of 1805. He described Fuller to a correspondent as “our much admired Andrew Fuller” and observed after this meeting that the English Baptists were “highly intelligent and respectable, and they unite with the most evangelical sentiments the true spirit of charity.” (William Allen, Memoir of John Codman, D.D. [Boston, MA: T.R. Marvin and S.K. Whipple & Co., 1853], 12, 20, 35, 45).

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

When a Friend Dies: A Funeral Sermon for Andrew Fuller

By Dustin Benge

The day before his forty-second birthday, May 21, 1815, Joseph Ivimey, arrived to preach his usual Sunday sermon at the Baptist church at Eagle Street, London. This Lord’s day at Eagle Street stood in marked contrast to all the rest. Ivimey would not deliver his usual exposition, but instead, would reflect on the memory of his dear friend and fellow BMS member, Andrew Fuller. Fuller, pastor of Kettering Baptist Church, Northamptonshire, died at Kettering, about eleven o’clock on the Lord’s day morning, May 7, 1815, at sixty-two years of age. The English Baptist world began to lament his death with several sermons being preached marking the loss of this great stalwart of gospel zeal. Ivimey mounted the pulpit on May 21, no doubt with much heaviness in his heart, to preach a sermon entitled, The Perpetual Intercession of Christ for His Church: A Source of Consolation Under the Loss of Useful Ministers.

Ordained as pastor of Eagle Street in 1805, Ivimey had occupied the same pulpit for 10 years and became one of the leading forces of the English Baptist denomination. Biographer, George Prichard, said of Ivimey in 1835, “he was a warm friend and zealous advocate of missionary enterprise.”[1] It was this zeal for the missionary enterprise that lead him to his first acquaintance with the secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, Andrew Fuller, while Fuller was visiting London in 1807 on official BMS fund-raising business. The following years would be marked by frequent correspondence and communication between these two growing friends. In 1812, Ivimey would be invited by Fuller to become apart of the executive management of the BMS. On April 19, 1814 the Baptist Society for Promoting the Gospel in Ireland was formed. Ivimey was the first secretary (an honorary office); he visited Ireland in May 1814, and retained the secretaryship till October 3, 1833. Ivimey died on February 8, 1834, and was buried on at Bunhill Fields in London. A little before his departure he was reported to have said, "Not a wave of trouble rolls across my peaceful breast." The legacy of Joseph Ivimey is seen most vividly in his four volume, A History of the English Baptists, for which he is most widely known.

The Perpetual Intercession of Christ for His Church is not ostentatious flattery, but on the contrary, is a humble reflection of an eminent figure of theological and pastoral stature, as well as a dear friend. The sermon climaxes with a careful analysis of the honorable and godly character of Andrew Fuller. Character that was attested to by many. Ivimey describes his personal inadequacy to fully describe such a man’s character. He says, “It may, however, be said of him, as it was of Barnabas: He was a good man.” Regarding Fuller’s view and practice of friendship, Ivimey says, “To those who were indulged with his friendship, he felt and manifested tender affection.”

Ivimey’s words weave a portrait of a man who loved Christ, loved the gospel, and gave his life in the advance of the Kingdom of Christ with the assistance of many dear friends. Ivimey speaks of a man who admits time and time again, that his work could never have been accomplished had it not been for the undergirding of friends. Ivimey says, “Surely, the language of David, concerning Abner, “Know ye not, that a prince, and a great man, is fallen this day in Israel?” May, without any impropriety, be applied to the late Andrew Fuller.”

                [1] George Pritchard, Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Joseph Ivimey (London: George Wightman, 1835) 82.

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Dustin Benge serves as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Jackson, Kentucky. He is also a PhD candidate at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a junior fellow at The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. Dustin and his wife, Molli, live in Jackson.

Free Andrew Fuller Biographies Available Online

By Nathan Finn

For those interested in reading more about the life of Andrew Fuller, numerous biographies are available online for free. Several of these are nineteenth-century works available through Google Books. For example, see the following:

John Ryland Jr., The Work of Faith, the Labour of Love, and the Patience of Hope, illustrated; In the Life and Death of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, Late Pastor of the Baptist Church at Kettering, and Secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society, From its Commencement, in 1792 (Charlestown: Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1818).

J. W. Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, Late Pastor of the Baptist Church at Kettering, and First Secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society, First American, from the last London edition, ed. Rufus Babcock (Boston: Lincoln and Edmonds, 1830).

Andrew Gunton Fuller, Men Worth Remembering: Andrew Fuller (London: Houghton and Stoddard, 1882).

In addition to these biographies on Google Books, the Baptist History Homepage, maintained by Jim Duvall, includes numerous shorter biographies of Fuller. Most of these sources are nineteenth-century dictionary entries and obituaries. Both Google Books and the Baptist History Homepage also include numerous primary sources written by Fuller.

In terms of more recent electronic biographical resources, last summer Desiring God published John Piper’s Andrew Fuller: I Will Go Down If You Will Hold the Rope! (Desiring God, 2012). The book, based upon Piper’s 2007 biographical address on Fuller at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors, is available for free in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats.

On the Andrew Fuller Center website, you can read Michael Haykin’s biographical essay on Fuller, titled “‘A Dull Flint’: Andrew Fuller— Rope-Holder, Critic of Hyper-Calvinism & Missionary Pioneer.” This essay will be published as a chapter in Haykin’s forthcoming book “Ardent Love to Jesus”: English Baptists and the Experience of Revival in the Long Eighteenth Century (Bryntirion Press, 2013).

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

The 259th anniversary of Andrew Fuller’s birthday and his place in the dictionaries

After the death of Andrew Fuller in 1815, one of his friends, Robert Hall, Jr., the son of Fuller’s mentor, the elder Robert Hall, was dining with a John Greene not far from the place of Fuller’s birth in the fens of East Anglia. “Do you remember, sir,” Hall asked Greene, “what occurred at his [i.e., Fuller’s] birth?” Greene, who was a lot younger than either Hall or Fuller, had no idea what Hall was referring to. “Why, sir,” Hall told him, “the fen-ditches were all convulsed, the earth shook to its very centre, and the devils ran frightened to one corner of hell”![1] Greene appears to be the only source for these curious remarks, a kind of Gothic description of the impact of Fuller’s thought on his fellow Baptists, and more broadly, on the world of Evangelical thought and action. Such is a right estimate of the impact and importance of Fuller in his day, as a variety of dictionary entries over the past century bear witness. I spent three hours today, from roughly 4:30pm to about 7:30pm, photocopying a variety of dictionary entries on Fuller that bespoke his significance, from the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) to a recent piece by Jeffrey Anderson in The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (2011).  A couple of entries stood out.

First, that by E.F. Clipsham in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), in which an early figure in the renaissance of Fuller studies affirmed that Fuller was “unquestionably one of the outstanding evangelical leaders of his day.” The other was by an older Baptist historian, the renowned Albert Henry Newman, who rightly noted in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia (1908–1914) that Fuller’s impact “on American Baptists has been incalculable.”

Good cause to remember this dear brother and thank God for Andrew Fuller (which a number of us did at the Bristol Grille here in Louisville yesterday afternoon—see previous post).

[1] John Greene, Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M. in Olinthus Gregory and Joseph Belcher, eds., The Works of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M. (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1854), 26–27, n.§.

Celebrating Andrew Fuller's 259th Birthday

Today is Andrew Fuller's 259th birthday. Yesterday, a group of Southern Seminary students and alumni associated with the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at Southern gathered with the Center's Director, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin to commemorate Fuller's birthday with a special lunch. We had great food and fellowship. No doubt Fuller and his friends (men such as John Sutcliff, William Carey, Samuel Pearce, John Ryland, Jr., and Robert Hall, Jr.) enjoyed similar fellowship two hundred years ago. The topics of discussion included this year's annual conference (scheduled for September) on Fuller and His Controversies (speakers to include Paul Helm, Mark Jones, Nathan Finn, and Tom Nettles) and the Andrew Fuller Works Project (for which there is exciting progress being made). And, of course, we had cake to celebrate Fuller's birthday!

You can celebrate Fuller's birthday today by familiarizing yourself with the content of this website. You should find plenty to keep you busy today and beyond. Sorry, no cake provided!

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin. 

Politics and Christianity: oxymoronic?

I am a firm believer in the fact that Christians should be involved in the political realm. Not the Church per se, but individual believers. One of the reasons Christian shun this realm—though do they not often mightily complain about it?—is because of the stumbling-blocks in the whole sphere of politics. This is nothing new.

Here is a letter from the Welsh Baptist Benjamin Davies, the one-time Principal of Canada Baptist College in Montreal, writing from London, England, in the 1840s  to his good friend John Gilmour, the Scottish Baptist then resident in Canada, and who was such a force for good on the Canadian scene.

Davies has been complaining about the British political scene of his day—1845—and then he observes:

“Is it vain for us to expect honest and sterling principle in political men? It seems a desperate case, at least in the present day.”

Not much has changed in this regard, it seems. Oh, for politicians who truly love justice and right and righteousness—and not adulation and power.

Ian Clary on "Church History on the Ground"

Rivers of Living Water: Celebrating 125…Dr. Haykin recently collaborated with Ian Clary on a history of the 125-year-old Hughson Street Baptist Church in Hamilton, Ontario, “Rivers of Living Water”: Celebrating 125 Years of Hughson Street Baptist Church, Hamilton, Ontario, 1887-2012. Ian wrote about his experience working on this project and the value of local church histories here. Be sure to check out his suggestions for both beginning and professional historians, along with his plea to churches, seminaries and other Christian institutions to publish histories regularly.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

 

The seminary and piety: a surrejoinder

If we define a faithful minister of the Word along the lines of Acts 6, a man devoted to the Word and prayer, it seems to me that in the twentieth century faithful orthodox seminaries have done fairly well in training men in one half of this equation: the Word. But what of the other? Well, I think many leaders in former generations expected these things to be caught by osmosis even though Jesus responded positively to the disciples’ request that he teach them how to pray. Spirituality needs to be “taught” and handed on. And while all professors in a seminary need to approach their specific subjects with an answerable spiritual frame, it is not wrong for some to focus on spirituality. Given the fact that spirituality and spiritual formation are increasingly huge engagements for both our larger cultural “moment” and within the boundaries of the Church, it is not unrealistic to ask certain men to specialize in the praxis of spirituality and the history of biblical spirituality.

As an historian, I feel the latter is very important: during the course of the twentieth century for a variety of reasons many of those who loved the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God and faithfully upheld biblical orthodoxy failed to pass on the rich piety of their forebears in the Reformation, Puritan, Pietist and early Evangelical traditions. And surely this is one of the reasons why certain communities within the broad stream of twentieth-century English-speaking Evangelicalism became enamoured of the Spirit and talked as if they were the first to discover him since the Pentecost: they looked around and saw a tradition that seemed to have little place for piety, experience, and dare I say it, rapture (no I am not talking about an eschatological item!). Incidentally, here is where a man whom Carl has been writing about in recent days, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, is so helpful: his balance of Word and Spirit is admirable (re other matters Carl has raised about the Doctor, this is not the place to go into those, though I agree with Carl that the recent collection of essays on the Doctor is by and large a welcome addition to the books on that remarkable servant of God).

Maybe, I need to take up Carl’s offer and we can do a book together on this subject of the seminary and piety—and maybe Dr Lucas, if he is so inclined, could also be involved!

Spiritual formation and the modern seminary

One of the classic introductions to theological studies is B.B. Warfield’s The Religious Life of Theological Students, where his primary concern is to argue for the necessity of personal piety in the life of those studying at a theological seminary. He expects that the seminary be a place of piety, where piety is inculcated and where the students experience what we call today “spiritual formation.” Reading my dear friend Carl Trueman’s recent post at reformation21 on “Witsius, Character and Cleaning Rosters” I was honestly surprised to find the following remarks in which he clearly disagrees with his distinguished Presbyterian forebear:

“I find the whole notion of ‘spiritual formation’ within seminaries to be somewhat problematic: seminaries impart knowledge and skills which are essential for ministry and which cannot be acquired with like ease in a practical mentoring situation; they also provide a context for developing important and useful friendships which will last a lifetime; but they cannot really engage in spiritual formation in any deep way.”

Trueman argues that this is because seminaries are not centers where the means of grace like the Lord’s Supper and the preaching of the Word are observed:

“Certainly, the professor can and should strive to model Christian behaviour; but the real, deep, lasting spiritual formation for ministerial candidates takes place in a church context just as it does for every other Christian. The church is where the word is preached, the sacraments administered and discipling takes place.”

To be sure, seminaries are not churches and I agree wholeheartedly that as such a seminary is not the place where baptism (albeit Carl and I differ somewhat about this ordinance/sacrament) and the Lord’s Supper are carried out. But surely the Word is preached at Westminster? What does Carl expect should happen as that Word is heard by students there? And surely the lifelong friendships formed are a central means of grace in the lives of the students—or maybe my dear brother has forgotten the way that our Evangelical (or should I say Reformed?!) forebears prized friendship as a means of grace? And would he disagree that part of the seminary professor’s role is to mentor the students (or some at least) under his care? Surely seminaries are places where more than places where “knowledge and skills which are essential for ministry” are imparted? If this is all our idea of a seminary, I would not be surprised if the long-term result were a hall of dry orthodoxy!

I am sorry, I think I shall stick with the perspective of B.B. Warfield, or one of my favorite models, D.A. McGregor (1847–1890), professor of systematic theology at and then principal of Toronto Baptist College. A former student said of his teaching: “He not only thought out the…doctrines upon which he lectured, but he felt their power, and falling tears often evinced his emotion while he spoke of some particular aspect of the truth. This made us all feel that we had before us not only a theological professor but also a Christian man whose life was swayed by the great principles about which he spoke… He not only made us see the truth, but he made us feel its power and perceive its beauty.” Were not lectures like this a rich vehicle of spiritual formation?

In fine, spiritual formation is a vital part of what should be happening at the seminary as well as the local church.

William Carey and William Ward, and being indebted to the Moravians

At time it appears that the debate about whether or not William Carey is rightly called the Father of the modern missionary movement is a seemingly endless palaver: of course, anybody who has read anything about the eighteenth-century awakening knows the Moravians were there first. But it was Carey’s name that was remembered through the long century that followed. Yet, it should never be forgot—though one fears many of the Victorian admirers of the English Baptist did forget—that Carey and his colleagues knew the extent of their debt to the Moravians. As William Ward exclaimed in 1801, after reading some Moravian missionary journals: “Thank you, Moravians! Ye have done me good. If I am ever a missionary worth a straw, I shall owe it to you, under our Saviour.” (Periodical Accounts, 2 [Clipstone, 1801], no.VII, 5).

A Needed Balance

“Let us cultivate the most cordial esteem for all that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. …but let us aim, at the same time, to acquire and retain the most accurate conceptions of religious truth.” Who said this? None other than Robert Hall, Jr., who is sometimes seen as lax in the second of these two admonitions. I am so glad that Pastor Cody McNutt has done a PhD thesis on Hall at Southern, hopefully a progenitor of an intellectual biography of a man who was the first Baptist celebrity of the 19th century (that is, before Spurgeon). He defends it in a few weeks.

For the source of the above quote, see Hall’s “Introductory Preface to the Third London Edition” of his father’s Help to Zion’s Travellers (Boston: Lincoln, Edmands and Co., 1833), xv.

Remembering C.H. Spurgeon’s success and spirituality

In many ways, C.H. Spurgeon's ministry was nothing less than amazing: the crowded auditories that assembled to hear the "Cambridgeshire lad" in the 1850s and that continued unabated till the end of his ministry in the early 1890s; the remarkable conversions that occurred under his preaching and the numerous churches in metropolitan London and the county of Surrey that owed their origins to his Evangelical activism; the solid Puritan divinity that undergirded his Evangelical convictions-something of a rarity in the heyday of the Victorian era during which he ministered for that was a day imbued with the very different ambience of Romanticism; and finally, the ongoing life of his sermons that are still being widely read around the world today and deeply appreciated by God's children. What accounts for all of this? Numerous reasons could be cited, many of which may indeed play a secondary role in his ministerial success. For example, in a fairly recent biography of Spurgeon, Mike Nicholls emphasizes the importance of Spurgeon's voice to his success as a preacher.  He possessed, Nicholls writes, "one of the great speaking voices of his age, musical and combining compass, flexibility and power."(1) Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), the son of one of Spurgeon's fellow Baptist pastors and who served as the Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916, testifies to this fact. Birrell records that when he went to hear Spurgeon preach once, the only seat he could find was in the topmost gallery, in what the English call "the gods." He was squished between a woman eating an orange and a man sucking peppermints.  Finding this combination of odours unendurable, he was about to leave, when, he said, "I heard a voice and forgot all else."(2) But Spurgeon himself looked to quite a different source for the blessings that attended his ministry.  In a speech that he gave at a celebration held in honour of his fiftieth birthday in 1884, the Baptist preacher forthrightly declared that the blessing he had enjoyed in his pastorate "must be entirely attributed to the grace of God, and to the working of God's Holy Spirit... Let that stand as a matter, not only taken for granted, but as a fact distinctly recognized."(3) In other words: behind Spurgeon's successes as a minister of the gospel was his walk with God.

  1. C. H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot, Oxfordshire: Baptist Historical Society, 1992), 37.
  2. Cited E.J. Poole-Connor, Evangelicalism in England (London: The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, 1951), 226-227.
  3. C.H. Spurgeon's Autobiography, compiled Susannah Spurgeon and J.W. Harrald (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), IV, 243.

Baptist ministers in the 18th century: a further reflection

Standing at the far left of the picture of the Baptist ministers we have been considering is Samuel Pearce (1766-99), one of my Baptist heroes. Immediately to his right is William Steadman (1764-1837), who played a central role in Baptist renewal in the North of England. Steadman far outlived Pearce, but the two had been close friends during their time together at Bristol Baptist Academy, where they both studied in the late 1780s. Whoever drew this picture must have known of their friendship for their being placed together is not fortuitous. It corresponds to two other groups of friends that we will consider at a later point. Pearce was widely known to be a friend of Andrew Fuller and John Ryland, both sitting in the picture, but the friendship with Steadman was not as widely known, which makes this point quite interesting.

Baptist Ministers in the 18th Century: ruminations on a picture

(Click on photo to enlarge)

This is quite a well-known picture that depicts many of the luminaries of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century English Baptist community. Recently, Cody McNutt, a PhD student at SBTS, pointed out to me the central place held by Robert Hall, Jr (1764-1831) in this picture. Cody is doing a much-needed thesis on Hall and that is why his attention was drawn to Hall's place in the picture.

The seated figures in the front row--(from l. to r.) William Carey, Joseph Kinghorn, John Ryland, Jr., Andrew Fuller, and John Foster--were all remarkable figures, but the creator of this portrait seems to have wanted to highlight Hall. He is standing in a posture that surely bespeaks the preacher with a Bible in his right hand. And if the Baptists of that era were about anything it was preaching. As a means of grace, it was second to none as a way of communicating God's will and presence. All of the men in the picture were preachers (except for Foster, who tried to preach but failed miserably in it--his forte was the written essay), why highlight Hall in this regard? Does it reveal the conviction that Hall represents the cream of Baptist preaching? There is no doubt, for many of that era, Hall was the greatest of a great generation of preachers.

Kinghorn also has a book, probably a Bible, but by having him seated it seems he has been depicted in a more prayerful, meditative pose. This depiction of Kinghorn is dependent on the A. Robertson painting of Kinghorn (1813). This painting was popularized through an engraving by the engraver W. Bond. And upon close inspection, Dan Taylor (directly behind Hall and the only bewigged figure in the picture--also one of only two General Baptists, the other is J.G. Pike, on Taylor's left) is also holding a book--probably a Bible? But one has to look very closely to see it. He is definitely overshadowed by Hall.

This is a fascinating picture and a tremendous window into Baptist thinking of that day. Thinking about Hall's place in this picture has sparked further thoughts about the figures in this picture, which I hope to share later.

Reading Alexander Maclaren and how not to do history

We Evangelicals have a real problem in the way we do history and remember our own past. We highlight certain figures--the "great men" and the "great women"--in our past and the result is that we fail to understand often what God was doing in the given era which we are studying. For God never acts solely through one individual in the history of the church. We talk about Athanasius contra mundum, for instance, but what about Serapion of Thmuis, and Hilary of Poitiers, and Ossius of Cordoba, and Lucifer of Cagliari and Eustathius of Antioch and Meletius of Antioch and Epiphanius of Salamis. Tell me, why is only Athanasius remembered? Something is very odd here. I could mulitply numerous examples here. To be sure, one reason, for remembering Athanasius is all that he wrote. The other men just listed, apart from Hilary and Epiphanius, wrote little. But church history is not only about books, even though that is the medium by which we have access to it. Our path to the past we have confused with the past itself. Church history is not simply the story of great theologians talking to each other.

My recent excursion down this way of thinking happened recently when reading some of the sermons of Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910). I suddenly realized that the sermonic ability and achievements of CH Spurgeon overshadowed everyone else of that era, including Maclaren. But Maclaren is good, very good. Pick him up and read him.