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The Life And Ministry Of Thomas Chandler
My dear Sir, I send you a brief account of the departure of our beloved friend, Mr. Thomas Chandler, for many years the honest and faithful minister of Edenbridge. He departed this life Thursday, March the 29th, 1866, in the 69th year of his age. I deeply regret not being able to gather together more of the facts connected with his life; but as he has not left anything behind him in writing, and, true to his usual quiet and retiring character, had forbidden his widow to say anything about his departure beyond that "he is gone to eternal rest," the information I can supply must of necessity be very brief and fragmentary. As far as I can gather, he was called by grace under…
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John Foxe (1517-1587): The Acts and Monuments Of The Church
Born at the birth of the Continental Reformation, one of the most illustrious figures in the English and Continental Reformation is that of John Foxe, the martyrologist. Few Reformers had his overall grasp of Biblical theology and church history and few were as all-round as he in applying Christian virtues to every sphere of everyday life. Foxe was born in Boston, Lincolnshire in 1517, the very year that Luther nailed up his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche. We know little of his family background apart from the fact that his father died when he was an infant and his mother soon remarried. Foxe was tutored by his step-father until he entered Brazennose College, Oxford at the age of sixteen. At this time,…
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Katharina Luther (1499-1552): The Morning Star Of Wittenberg
They say that behind every successful man there is a woman; the point being that the man would have been less a man without his wife. This piece of earthly wisdom is rarely applied to Martin Luther. The German Reformer is invariably depicted as “The Monk Who Changed the World”; the idea being that ingredients of Reform are to be found in cloistered, celibate seclusion. Such a conception might suit Rome but it is foreign to Biblical thinking. The alarming fact is that Luther’s critics, of whatever category, often appear to be blissfully unaware that Luther did his best work as a happily married man. Nick-names often reveal traces of character hidden by lexical nomenclature. Any student of Luther needs to notice how he addressed…
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The Life And Ministry Of Mr. Gingell
The following was written by himself: "It pleased the Lord to call me by his grace when young, in the year 1828. I went out one Sabbath morning with some companions, walking the fields, fearless and careless of everything. When we had been out half an hour, I heard a voice which spoke to my conscience. I passed on, and said nothing to my companions. I believed then it was a voice from heaven. In about three minutes the same voice spoke again, but rather louder. I did not say anything even then; but I had not gone many yards, before I heard the same voice louder and nearer. Then I said to those with me, ‘I have heard a voice speak to me three…
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John Chamberlain: And His Exemplary Missionary Success In India
Baptist missionary John Chamberlain (1777-1821) and his wife were called to India before the Baptist Mission Society (BMS) there had been able to organise itself for practical missionary work. There had thus been very few converts prior to their arrival, especially compared with the work of former and contemporary missionaries in India which very quickly gained true converts in large numbers. Only Dr John Thomas, one of the first Baptists, appeared to be pulling his weight in the early days of the mission but that often proved disastrous as Thomas could not handle money though his preaching gained the first mission converts amongst the Portuguese and Indians. A good number of thriving churches had already been planted in India, including several in the trading towns…
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John Howard: The Prisoner’s Friend
Baron Donald Soper is remembered for his London Hyde Park and Tower Hill soap-box campaign for a social gospel and his claim that Christians neglected the poor and needy. Whether this claim was just or not, Christians always need to be reminded that social responsibilities go hand in hand with practical religion. As James says (1:27), spotless saints are social workers. Seen from a brighter point of view, since the days of Ulrich Zwingli and Henry Bullinger, whose preaching served to ban poverty in their cantons, Reformed Christians have emphasised their social responsibilities to a high, but not over-balanced, degree. Indeed. from the sixteenth century to our present day evangelical Christians have shown what true religion is according to James, producing such social reformers as…
