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The Life And Ministry Of Samuel Oldacre
He was a sound, experimental preacher, a gospel lover and walker, of a kind, generous disposition, and acceptable and useful to many churches in the neighbourhood where he resided. The following particulars are copied from a memorandum written with his own hand: "It pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb to call me by his grace when I was between 17 and 18 years of age, after a very shameful and wicked act in one of my frolics, as I used to call them, which I forbear to name from its repulsive nature, which brought no small disgrace upon me. The first Sabbath after this occurrence I remained in the house all day till evening, shame keeping me in. I then ventured to…
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Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769): Poet of Eternity
Gerhard Tersteegen is best known to English-speaking Christians through his hymns translated by Emma Francis Bevan, Francis Elizabeth Cox, William Delamotte, Sarah Findlater (with her sister Jane Borthwick), Melanchthon Woolsey Stryker, John Wesley and Catherine Winkworth. Most of these translation are, as Lady Durand confesses concerning her own renderings of Tersteegen, ‘imitations’ rather than translations and the numerous Tersteegen hymns to be found in English often lack the plaintive mourning of the poet over his sin, his sweet serenity in contemplating his salvation and his deep inward joy in believing. Tersteegen is now chiefly known for his poetry and hymns but in his own day, it was his preaching that moved men most. Emily Chisholm and Samuel Jackson have made some of Tersteegen’s sermons and…
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Carl Olof Rosenius: And The Great Swedish Awakening
In the summer of 1960, I found myself in Northern Sweden helping Frans-Oscar Linde, a missionary to the Lapps. I was under great apprehension because I had recently sat for the London University Advanced Level General Certificates of Education with a view to continuing my course at London Bible College and matriculating for a London University BD degree. Two events put me at ease. First, a friendly pastor gave me a book called Korta dagbetraktelser by Carl Olof Rosenius. It was a collection of exquisite spiritual gems of daily readings throughout the year. After my conversion in Sweden, I had studied dry, Liberal works on the Bible and Church History in preparation for my A level in ‘Religious Knowledge’ so it was a real delight…
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The Life And Ministry Of John Collis
When about ten years old, his father enlisted into the army, and soon afterwards his mother died, when John went to live with an uncle, who treated him with great unkindness, his food being of the commonest kind. The treatment he met with was the means of driving him away from his uncle's, to seek a home elsewhere. Being of a gay and lively disposition and under no restraint, he ran into great lengths of sin and folly, the remembrance of which gave him much distress, and made him feel greatly ashamed through life. His companions were of the most debased kind. One incident will show their character. They went one Lord's day to a place of worship, the pews of which were very high-backed,…
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The Salvation Testimony Of Don Fortner
In May of 2019, the New Focus Conference was held at Gornal Baptist Church, Robert Street, in Dudley, West Midlands, England. Among the speakers was Don Fortner. He prefaced his sermon with a personal testimony on how the Lord brought his soul to a saving knowledge of Christ. Unknown to me at the time, my wife recorded the two minute testimony, for which I am forever grateful; not only to have a record of his testimony in his own voice, but to know that my grandfather, Jewell Smith, was the preacher under whom the Lord was pleased to open his understanding to the grace of God. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has not only put me into the ministry, but has been pleased…
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Paul Gerhardt And The Poetry Of Piety
Nowadays, it appears that our congregations seldom sing hymns depicting the sacrificial sufferings of Christ on the cross. When biographer Hugh I’Anson Fausset read William Cowper’s triumphant atonement hymn ‘There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins’, he reacted in disgust, calling the language ‘crude salvationism’, ‘barbarous’ and ‘hysterical’. This is perhaps why most of Paul Gerhardt’s 150 hymns, often sung by our fathers in the faith, are now almost unknown to the Christian youth of today. So, too, Gerhardt combined his teaching of Christ’s shed blood with hymns of solemn warning to unrepentant sinners and backsliding saints. Again, hardly themes for modern wishy-washy evangelism where Christ is presented as ‘Everybody’s Saviour’ whom we must love out of a sense of duty. …
