This morning I'm preaching in the 19th century.
Of course that is a very wide and
great theme and the problem is the problem
of organization as far as speaking on it
is concerned.
I don't need to remind you I'm sure
that the 19th century was a great age
of preaching.
Where we live in Edinburgh, Scotland, every day
we see reminders of what the 19th century
was in great church buildings that were once
filled with eager hearers of the word of
God.
They were built out of necessity and today
they languish that they stand as witnesses to
a great age that has gone by.
And this of course is a great age
of preaching not simply in Scotland but right
across the English-speaking world.
When you think of New England, some of
the men whose names have been mentioned this
week are the Hal Nettleton.
We haven't spoken of Edwin Daw Griffin and
Edward Payson and then outside of New England
in other states there were such men as
Archibald Alexander and William Nevins of Pittsburgh.
Gardner Spring of New York, Daniel Baker in
South Carolina and Benjamin Morgan Palmer we have
mentioned.
James Henley Thornwall, a great company of men,
different denominations who preach with the Holy Ghost
sent down from heaven.
And that of course was true in England
also amongst the Anglican evangelicals there were men
of whom we have spoken, Charles Bridges, John
Charles Ryle, others Charles Simeon, Richard Cecil and
of course in the English non-conformists we
think at once of Charles Haddon Spurgeon but
many others who shared with him in that
great day of preaching.
The same was true in the Principality of
Wales and in other parts also.
It was a great age of preaching.
Let me just mention one or two features
of that preaching briefly as we move on.
I think it is interesting to note how
commonly these preachers sustained long pastorates.
Benjamin Palmer that I just mentioned went to
New Orleans in 1856 and was there until
his death in 1902.
Well that really wasn't a long period for
those days.
Gardner Spring was 50 years in the brick
church in New York.
John Angel James, one of the great English
non-conformists, he went to Cars Lane Birmingham
in England in 1805 to a congregation of
about 50 people.
1805 to 1859.
The longest pastorate that I know of is
that of William J of Bath.
1789 he preached his first sermon in Bath
in 1789.
1852 he was still in Bath.
62 years in the pastorate of Argyle Chapel
in Bath.
It's an interesting point.
More important as a feature of this preaching
the remarkable effects which so often accompanied it.
Now when we speak of remarkable effects I
suppose we tend to think immediately of the
numbers who were influenced.
But let me give you one example first
of just one person that was converted by
a sermon by an unknown preacher.
In the month of January in 1814 the
sermon was preached in Whitfield Chapel in Tottenham
Court Road in London.
Whitfield of course had been dead for many
years.
It was a midweek service and on Tottenham
Court Road a young man was walking that
evening when he met the wife of his
employer.
And this good lady asked him to come
to the service.
He said afterwards he was never more, never,
never was any man less prepared to hear
the word of God than he was.
The sermon was on the text what shall
it profit a man if he gained the
whole world and lose his own soul.
He was converted.
His name was John Williams.
John Williams became the man who was the
instrument of God in opening up vast areas
of the whole Southern Pacific.
He sailed to Tahiti in 1817, Solomon Islands,
Veratonga, the New Hebrides.
Vast area of the Southern Pacific was opened
up because of one conversion that took place
in Tottenham Court Road in 1814.
Let us never forget what can result from
one conversion.
Then of course there were many times when
this preaching was followed by the conversion of
large multitudes.
I'd like to read a few lines from
a service that took place in Scotland in
the year 1816.
The preacher was John Macdonald.
You may not have heard of his name.
He ministered in a Highland parish.
In 1816 he was asked to preach in
this country district in Perthshire.
It was an open air service and the
minister of the parish says he came to
us in the fullness of the gospel of
peace.
There was a vast congregation collected reckoned between
four to five thousand for I had spread
the information far and wide.
He preached two hours and 20 minutes from
Isaiah 54 verse 5 for thy maker is
thine husband.
I may say during the whole sermon there
was hardly a dry eye.
Eagerness to attend the word preached was written
on every face while tears flowed copiously and
literally watered the ground.
The most hardened in the congregation seemed to
bend as one man and I believe if
ever the Holy Spirit was present in a
solemn assembly it was there.
The general impression seemed to be a universal
melting under the word.
It will be a day remembered through ages
of eternity as many I trust have enjoyed
eternal good.
There was no doubt joy in heaven on
that occasion.
I could compare it to nothing but the
days of the apostles after the day of
Pentecost.
The great influence of preaching in these days.
I hope a number of you have read
the life of John Elias of Wales book
that we publish and it doesn't sell nearly
as well as it ought to.
A man in this school of preaching and
you can see in the biography of John
Elias exactly this exemplified.
How communities neighborhoods were transformed.
The same is true in the United States.
For example between 1816 and 1826 without any
new school evangelism in the old Presbyterian churches
the congregations grew from the number of 920
in 10 years to 2,000 and the
increase of membership was over 300 percent that
was under old school doctrinal preaching.
And then of course think of the influence
of Spurgeon's preaching and sermons.
Those sermons began to be published in 1855
and concluded in 1917.
The great influence of preaching.
Now having said that I want to try
to divide up my material in this way.
I do believe I'm sure it is true
that there is a marked difference speaking generally
between the school of preaching that prevailed in
the first half of the century and the
school of preaching that became predominant and popular
before the end of the last century.
There's a very decided contrast.
By that I mean that the men that
I we want to look at this morning
were principally the men of the first half
of the century.
Now of course there were men in the
second half who were exceptions to what I'm
going to say.
Men like Spurgeon and Palmer and others.
But these men by and large became increasingly
isolated.
You know how Spurgeon and Dabney and these
others they felt that they were the rear
guard.
That they were the old fogies as it
were.
They represented something that was passing away.
They prayed for its recovery.
But they knew as they looked around them
that their view of preaching was a view
that was losing ground.
And they died with faith that God would
renew that vision.
But it was not the prevailing view by
the time that they died.
And the reason it was not the prevailing
view was that this change had come about.
Now I'd like to say a little then
about the differences between the men of the
first half and the men of the second
half of the century.
One difference that strikes me is this.
And you bear in mind of course I
am generalizing.
But I think it's a true generalization.
The first difference is that the men of
the first half of the century very often
were builders.
That is to say they didn't inherit great
churches.
They didn't inherit large buildings.
They came as it were often upon almost
virgin ground.
They came like John Angel James to perhaps
50 people or so.
And at the end of their days they
left strong large churches.
The men of the second half of the
century were the men who inherited what had
been done before them.
In other words the men of the first
half undertook the hardest work.
They were preeminently evangelists.
Daniel Baker of South Carolina who belonged to
the first half.
He made this comment on one occasion.
He said it is easier to keep a
house already built from falling down than to
erect one when the materials are still in
the forest.
Well that was the difference.
They had to go to the forest and
God enabled them to do that.
This man John McDonald who I mentioned preaching
in Scotland in 1816.
He traveled far and wide and was mightily
used as an evangelist.
On one occasion there was a godly woman
in his church, his parish church at Ferentosh,
who became irregular in her attendance at worship.
And then it was heard that she was
being seen rather often in neighboring churches.
They were evangelical churches, places called Rosales and
Killernan.
You would never have heard of these names
I'm sure.
Anyway this good woman was to be found
there a little too often for the pleasure
of the elders of her own church.
So she was ultimately, as things went in
those days, she was brought before the session
and she was asked the explanation.
And this is what she said.
Well she said at Killernan the sheep are
fed and the Drosolus, the lambs, are given
their portion.
And the elders not looking too pleased at
these words, one of them said, and what
happens here?
Oh she said here the dead are raised.
Well she meant that her minister was so
consumed with the work of evangelism and conversion
that sometimes she needed to go to get
more food for the growing Christian life.
Well there was probably some truth in that.
The emphasis in those days was the building
of the church, as Baker says, taking the
wood out of the forest to build.
Now a second difference between the first half
and the second half of the century, a
very important one.
The men of the first half of the
century lived, of course, much nearer to the
great evangelical revival.
Now that was true in England.
People like William Jay personally met John Wesley.
Many of William Jay's hearers had been hearers
of George Whitefield.
They lived close to the awakening.
It was even more true here in the
United States because you had what Britain did
not have, a second evangelical awakening beginning there
at the end of the century.
And it is very noticeable that the men
of the first half of the century, they
had deeply learned the lessons of those awakenings.
They consciously sought, in the first instance, to
know the presence, the enabling of the Spirit
of God.
The lessons of the revivals they acted upon.
If you read the life of John Elias
or Thornwell or Griffin, any of these men,
you'll see a note in their biographies which
has very largely disappeared when you read the
biographies of men at the end of the
century.
You know the biographies of some of the
later Victorians, men like Joseph Parker and Alexander
White and others.
They're interesting biographies but there's a vast difference
between them and books like the life of
John Elias and these others.
Now thirdly, another difference.
It's noticeable that the men of the first
half of the century, annexed to their Bibles,
did most of their reading among the Puritan
authors.
The 18th century, after all, didn't produce a
great deal of literature.
Jonathan Edwards, some other brethren, but by and
large the teachers of the church were still
the Puritans.
It was said in England, for example, at
the beginning of the 19th century that most
of the Anglican evangelicals were profoundly acquainted with
John Owen.
Profoundly acquainted with John Owen.
Richard Cecil, who was one of these Anglican
evangelicals, his biographer says, his habit of reading
remained with him to his last hours.
He was wholly engaged in reading the choicest
parts of such authors as Leighton and Traill
and Boston and Gurnall.
He read Gurnall's Christian Armour without interruption during
the last four days of his life, reading
it when the last stroke came.
And William Jay of Bath, he says, in
divinity, in divinity for unction, illustration, excitement and
effect, I have much preferred the old authors
to most of the moderns.
And then just one quotation from the History
of the Dissenters by Bogan Bennett, a book
published in the 1830s, in the middle of
this period when this school of preachers were
at their height.
And Bogan Bennett, speaking of this time, they
say that the principles of the non-conformists
and Puritans are highly valued by the present
generation, can be inferred from the encouragement given
to republish their works.
Those of Charnock and Owen, Baxter, Watts and
Doddridge and Edwards, which are so voluminous that
nothing but extensive circulation could repay the cost.
These, they say, were being published and read
in the 1830s.
Now when you pass on 50 years, you
find a great change.
The men of the second half of the
century were not reading the same books.
There was a revolution in reading.
Fourthly, another difference, the men of the first
half of the century concentrated on the work
of the pulpit.
They made a great deal of that text
in the Book of Acts.
We will give ourselves to the ministry of
the Word and Prayer.
When Mr. Martin and I were in Melbourne,
we enjoyed seeing a great portrait of John
G.
Paton of the New Hebrides.
And underneath that striking portrait, the words of
the text, this one thing I do.
And that's what these preachers felt.
They did supremely one thing.
William Jay uses the illustration of a visitor
who came to England, and he was driving
on a stagecoach, sitting up beside the driver.
And as they went through these villages and
places, the visitor was naturally very interested, and
he would say to the coach driver, and
who lives there?
And the coach driver would say, I don't
know.
And then the visitor would ask him, what's
that place?
Or where is this?
Or whatever.
The coachman didn't seem to be able to
answer any of these questions.
So the visitor in disgust said in the
end, do you know anything?
The coach driver said, I know how to
drive a coach.
And William Jay used that with regard to
preachers.
We may not know a lot of things,
but if we are servants of Christ, the
one thing we ought to know is to
preach.
Thomas Chalmers, whose name was mentioned by John
DeWitt the other evening.
Thomas Chalmers, very interesting ministerial biography.
He was a very able man.
Went to this parish of Kilmanny early in
the last century.
He was so able that he found it
possible to spend most of his week in
the University of St Andrews.
He taught.
He was quite a scientist, besides being a
preacher.
He wrote articles and was making quite a
name for himself.
And then on Saturdays, he found he could
put together some material for the pulpit and
sometimes even on Sunday morning.
But there it was.
And this went on comfortably until about 1810.
And then Chalmers was converted.
Was converted.
And what a transformation.
What a transformation.
He had an old elder who used to
call to visit him.
He always befriended this young minister.
And this old elder, after Chalmers' conversion, he
said to him one day, he said, Mr.
Chalmers, when I used to call on you,
I never found you reading the Bible.
But now when I come, I find you
doing nothing else.
And Chalmers' memorable reply was, all too little,
John.
All too little.
Well, then Chalmers was called to a large
church in Glasgow.
The largest city in Scotland.
And when he got there, he found that
ministerial traditions were well established.
And it was customary for ministers to attend
all funerals.
Customary for them to honour society committees with
their presence.
Customary for them to open various functions and
to be involved in a great deal of
public life.
Chalmers wrote in his diary, I am gradually
separating myself from all this trash.
And, and he said, I long to establish
it as a doctrine that the life of
a town minister should be what the life
of a country minister might be.
And his entire time disposable to the purposes
to which the apostles gave themselves wholly.
That is, the ministry of the word and
prayer.
And because Chalmers was able to do that,
we have benefited from Robert Murray M'Chayne
and Andrew Boner and others.
He made a very important decision.
And that decision, as I say, affected the
lives of others also.
Now when you come to the second half
of the century, you notice the difference.
These men were spreading themselves much more widely
and a good deal thinner.
The men of the first half, this one
thing I do.
Now then, fifthly, the preaching, again speaking generally
and with very eminent exceptions, the preaching generally
was different.
Different, of course, in a number of ways.
But in one way, let me put this
first at any rate, it's noticeable how the
preaching of the first half of the century
dealt far less with any contemporary issues.
John Angel James has a fine book published
in the first half of the century, 1847.
An earnest ministry.
The want of the times.
Some of you I'm sure know it.
And if you read James, you forget he
was writing in the 1840s.
It could have been the 1740s or whatever.
He's concerned that men are brought face to
face with eternity.
That the realities of the gospel and the
world to come are set before men.
And that was the characteristic of that period.
They said very little about contemporary issues of
any kind.
But, and this is the important thing, although
they said so little about contemporary issues, they
did much more to influence contemporary events.
The men of the second half of the
century had much more to say about social
events and educational trends and all the rest.
And they did far less actually to influence
those things.
W.
G.
T.
Shedd has a very good testimony of this
point.
Talking about Puritan preaching, he says, That preaching,
which, upon the face of it, does not
seem even to recognize that man has any
relations to this little ball of earth, which
takes him off the planet entirely and contemplates
him simply as a sinner in the presence
of God.
That preaching, so destitute of all literary, scientific,
economical, political elements and illusions, was, he says,
nevertheless, by indirection, one of the most fertile
causes of the progress of England and America.
So Shedd.
And a word from Joseph Parker, one of
the second half men, very much so.
And in his autobiography, he says a word
about the previous school of men.
And he gives this, I think, remarkable confession
and testimony.
He talks about the doctrines those men preach,
the infallibility of scripture, the eternal punishment of
those who die impenitent and other doctrines.
But then he says, before giving it up,
that is, that system of belief, we ought,
at least, he says, to do justice to
it.
These may be old-fashioned doctrines, but they
created missionary societies, Sunday schools, hospitals, orphanages, refuges
for the penitent.
They gave every child a new value, every
father a new responsibility, every mother a new
hope, and constituted human society into a new
conscience and a new trust.
Very true.
These men who didn't seem to deal with
contemporary issues, in fact, did vastly more than
those who followed them.
Now, that's my fifth point, the difference in
the preaching.
But, of course, the preaching differed in a
whole number of ways.
Just last night, I read for the first
time these words, and I thought I'd read
them to you this morning.
It illustrates the point I come to now.
These men of the first half of the
century, they aimed at the conscience, they aimed
at the heart.
It was said of Whitfield that he got
into the hearts of men and he overpowered
them.
William Nevins of Pittsburgh, commenting on the change
that he could see coming before he died,
he says, there is a great deal of
preaching which is only didactic, argumentative, nearly indicative,
and simply inviting.
It teaches, it reasons and invites, but, he
says, it does not apply, does not entreat,
does not warn, persuade, expostulate.
The preacher seems satisfied with having done as
he supposes his duty, and does not seem
or appear to care whether his hearers do
theirs.
Now, the quotation I want to give you
from Benjamin Morgan Palmer in New Orleans.
Here's a visitor dropping into his church for
the first time.
He asks one of the ushers at the
door if he can have a seat in
a good position, explains he's a visitor.
The usher apologizes and tells him there's no
room in the body of the church, he
has to go to the gallery.
He finds his way to the gallery and
he says that Palmer's text was, the cup
that my father gave me, shall I not
drink it?
He describes something of the sermon.
Christ's submission to suffering.
Why our Lord submitted in the spirit that
he did?
And then he moved on to the believers,
he's dealing now in the application of the
sermon, the believers submission to suffering, as being
the father's will.
Well, he says, the preacher had not proceeded
very far with this theme.
When I perceived that he was moving upon
what a certain poet has termed the unknown
seas of feeling in my heart, I tried
to show myself a man and keep my
handkerchief in my pocket.
But it was no use.
The man who sat next to me was
a rough and unlettered man, a man of
the world.
He found it convenient just at this time
to brush his rough hand over his eyes
in order to see better.
I looked down upon the 1,000 people
beneath me and they reminded me of the
tops of the mulberry trees when the wind
is shaking them.
The men were shielding their faces with their
palm leaf fans while their wives made open
use of their handkerchiefs.
Now, Palmer was no sentimental preacher.
He was a very doctrinal preacher.
But when he came to this point in
the sermon, when all the teaching was becoming
clear, that was the condition of the congregation.
They preached to the heart.
Now, moving on then, if this is true
that there was this general difference between the
first and second half of the century, just
a few reasons to explain that.
Why did it happen?
What were the causes that contributed to this
revolution in preaching?
Well, of course, there were many and I
can only list a few.
The first perhaps, not first in order of
importance, but I put it first, evangelical religion
at the beginning of the last century was
not a very fashionable thing.
George Whitefield was not the great preacher in
his day.
You know, people garnish the sepulchres of the
prophets.
It was not a respectable thing to be
an earnest evangelical at the beginning of the
last century.
But as time went on, as the influence
of the evangelical and Calvinistic truths spread and
grew, then in a subtle kind of way,
the offense seemed to lessen, became more respectable
and more acceptable.
Now, in a sense that's understandable.
But in another sense, it created a whole
series of dangers.
Jesus says, woe unto you when all men
speak well of you.
And in that process of development, something seemed
to be lost.
And secondly, and I suppose connected with it,
in the second half of the century, there
came a new mood of liberality and of
tolerance and a dislike of clear-cut opinions.
Of course, the Catholic spirit is essential in
Christians.
We have said, have we not, Brethren, what
injury is done to the cause of Christ
by a spirit which is not Catholic in
the best sense.
And yet at the same time, it must
be true that indifference to truth is equally
a great evil and something that kills preaching.
And that's what happened.
Ryle talks about men coming out of theological
schools.
He says they were as round and smooth
as billiard balls.
As smooth as billiard balls.
And somebody mentioned how much offense Spurgeon gave
when he was a young man.
And he gave offense because he was really
out of the spirit of his age.
It was too polite and too respectable to
put things as clear and straight as Spurgeon
put them.
In other words, the mood of the times
was changing.
And thirdly, there came into the churches an
unhealthy concern for success, for numbers, for influence.
The men of the first half of the
century were given great influence, but they didn't
really seek it.
They sought to honor God.
They sought the unction of the spirit of
God.
And in that seeking, God blessed their labors.
In the second half of the century, it
is more noticeable that there's a concern about
what will keep our churches large, what will
interest people, all that sort of thing.
James Henley Thornwell, whose biography the banner has
reprinted, writing in 1846, puts his finger on
the change that he saw coming.
He says, our system of operations gives an
undue influence to money.
And where money is the great want, numbers
must be sought.
And where an ambition for numbers prevails, doctrinal
purity must be sacrificed.
The root of this evil is the secular
spirit of our ecclesiastical institutions.
What we want is a spiritual body, a
church whose power lies in the truth and
in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
To unsecularize the church should be the unceasing
aim of all who are anxious that the
ways of Zion should flourish.
Page 291 of Thornwell's life.
Then further, the second half of the century
witnessed a compromise with what I think we
can call the besetting sin of the later
19th century.
And that sin was the idolizing of the
intellect.
And how subtle Satan is.
The 19th century, I don't need to remind
you, was the age of the great expansion
of knowledge and learning and schools and universities.
And all the new disciplines developed.
And people began to read.
Education multiplied.
And in the midst of all that resurgence,
the church felt that she mustn't be behind
the times.
She mustn't be in the backwoods.
The church must show that she was also
in possession of all truth.
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness
thereof.
And therefore it belonged to the church to
be in the vanguard of every form of
intellectual development.
Now there is surely much that is right
in that.
But just because there was much that was
right, the danger came in.
And the danger was that ministers became concerned
that they should be regarded as thinking men.
That they should be abreast of the latest
books that came out of Germany or wherever.
And when the question of who is going
to be called to the ministry was being
discussed, the great priority became that we must
have men of talent.
That's the word that was used.
Men of talent.
And the better the university they can be
sent to, so much more influential will be
their ministries if we can get these men
into the pulpits.
And behind all that was this great danger
that the idolizing of the intellect was becoming
a great sin.
And that sin entered the church.
And it entered the church when, as Mr.
Pronunciation was mentioning in connection with the Netherlands,
the teaching of the word of God became
moved into the secular realm.
Into the universities.
You know we take it for granted now
that if a man is going to be
a big name, horrible expression, pardon it.
But you know what I mean.
He needs to have at least some letters
there behind his name.
We forget that until little more than a
hundred years ago, these distinctions were unknown in
the church practically.
The great seminaries that did the work of
raising prophets and preachers, men like, seminaries like
Princeton Theological Seminary, they gave no degrees for
many years after their commencement.
But then in the 1750s, 1760s, the whole
idea came in.
London University began to give Bachelor of Divinity
degrees.
About that time.
Quite modern.
But how quickly the idea caught on.
And with it that caught on, the idea
that the men who are going to teach
and do the curriculum and so on, they
have to be specialists of course in all
the latest knowledge.
They have to know what's being said in
Leipzig and Berlin and so on.
And of course the ordinary preacher and pastor,
he doesn't know that, so he can't train
men for the ministry.
Training for the ministry became a specialized thing.
And it's all summed up in the words
of the psalmist.
They mingled with the heathen and they learned
their works.
There was no distinction made between knowledge that
stood in reverent awe of the Word of
God and knowledge which undermined the authority of
the Word of God.
The idolatry of the intellect.
C.
H.
Spurgeon says of the men who were coming
out of the colleges at this later date,
he says they know a little of everything
except vital godliness and puritanic divinity.
They are very great at anything metaphysical, geological,
anthropological or any other ology except theology.
Now that was the young Spurgeon.
But the older men like John Angel James
and William Jay, they pointed the same warnings.
They said the church is going in the
wrong direction in uniting with the universities and
accepting these theological degrees and so on.
Well brethren, these are some of the reasons
why the great change came.
One last one remains.
And I need only to mention it because
we have been dealing with it time and
again during the week in the various sessions.
The influence of the decline of Calvinistic belief.
How radically that affected the public.
Preaching, Dr. Lloyd-Jones says, preaching is theology
coming through men who are on fire.
No good being on fire if you haven't
got the theology.
No good having the theology sometimes too if
you're not on fire.
Very good definition of preaching.
Theology coming through men who are on fire.
The theology went and so also did the
influence.
The old preachers like Griffin and Nettleton and
Payson, they preached in such a way that
men asked the question that the disciples asked,
who then can be saved?
And that prepared the way for that answer.
With man it is impossible, but not with
God.
They knew that it was not their business
to induce regeneration.
It was not their business to count converts.
They knew that God had to bestow life.
God has to quicken the dead.
And they preached with that conviction.
And that's not a technical difference.
That's a different ethos to the ethos of
a man who doesn't believe that and doesn't
understand.
And equally, if it's true that our influence
in the pulpit is dependent upon what we
are out of the pulpit, these men out
of the pulpit were humble, God-fearing men.
It wasn't a man-centered age.
They wouldn't care even for us, I'm sure,
to be speaking about them to this extent
today.
But when the fear of God was weakened,
then preaching and churches became so much more
man-centered and personality-centered.
And revivals in the old sense disappeared.
Spirit of God was grieved and quenched.
Somebody was saying to me a few days
ago, I was asking him about a glorious
revival in Charleston, South Carolina in 1841.
And it appears there's no record of that
revival.
But my friend said, yes, but that kind
of event was no uncommon thing then.
There was no point in recording every such
awakening.
But then, as you know, a day came
when these things became so rare that they
were hardly ever seen in the church at
all.
Well, I want to close with John Bunyan
because that's the best point I know to
close out.
The first half of this century has been
the dark half.
For God's mercy, we do believe that there's
a quiet rising tide of prayer and conviction
and concern.
And it's as though, again, we've been like
Christians and hopeful in Doubting Castle.
Do you remember Bunyan's description of how, having
fallen asleep on the ground of giant despair,
they're put there in those dungeons?
How they wring their hands and tremble at
the prospect and wonder what the future will
bring?
And then Bunyan says on Saturday night about
midnight, they began to pray.
And towards the breaking of the day, Christian
stood up like a man amazed.
And he said, oh, what a fool I've
been.
I have in my bosom a key called
promise, which is able to open every lock
in Doubting Castle.
And hopeful said, that's good news, my brother.
Pull it out of thy bosom and try.
And so he did.
And that's our position.
We have keys called promise.
How much more, says our Lord, will your
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask him.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the same glorious
Savior to whom we come this day.
May God then cause us to abound in
hope to use these great promises and to
humbly learn to walk with our God and
Savior.
Shall we pray?
Oh Lord, our heavenly Father, we do seek
together again to give thanks to thee for
thy mercies to us at this time.
Lord, we thank thee that thou art gathering
thy people from every kindred and tongue and
tribe.
We thank thee that thy word is not
bound.
We thank thee for thy servants this day
who in the distant corners of the earth
are serving thee and lifting up the Lord
Jesus Christ.
We pray that thy hand and thy spirit
would be upon them.
And Lord, we pray for ourselves.
Help us to see more and more our
need and our emptiness.
But grant us also we beseech thee to
know him in whom is all fullness of
grace and truth.
We bless thee that thou has shown us
that we are not our own, but that
we belong to our faithful Savior.
And we pray thee, O Lord, that thou
would be our strength, our refuge at all
times.
Grant us thy help and blessing as we
depart from this conference.
We pray for safety and travel.
We pray we may be reunited with families
and congregations and that thou would make us
all a blessing to them.
And we commit to thee our final gathering
this morning.
Do thou, O Lord, make thy presence deeply
known in all our hearts that we may
fall and worship thee, our God and our
Redeemer.
Lord, receive our thanks and pardon our sins.
For Jesus' sake, amen.
This lecture message is made available to you
by the Banner of Truth Trust in America
and in Edinburgh, Scotland, in cooperation with the
Trinity pulpit in Essexville, New Jersey.
These conferences are held each year in America,
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621 Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 17013.
Also, a list of the reprinted works of
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may be sent to you on request by
writing to the Banner of Truth Trust.
Now, let Ernie Reese, Sr., pastor of the
Pompano Beach Baptist Church in Pompano Beach, Florida,
tell you something of these conferences.
This is our sixth ministers and elders conference
in the United States.
However, in England the Banner of Truth has
had this type of conference for over 25
years.
I think my first conference was 1962.
I believe that would be about 22 years
ago.
To my knowledge, they have all been used
in a great measure, used of God to
instruct and at times to search us and
always to encourage those in the ministry.
And I pray that this will be no
exception.
I have every reason to believe that the
men attending such a conference are here not
looking for frothy religious excitement, but rather biblical
and experimental substance.
Of course, that can only be received from
the Bible.
Men who come to these conferences are men
who desire to be instructed and desire to
be searched, like David.
Men who desire to be used.
And certainly, as already has been indicated, we
all come because we need encouragement.
And age doesn't change those things.
You're still needed when you're older, those three
things.
We have a hymnal back in our churches.
The name of the hymnal is, Brethren, we
are met to worship.
And one of the lines, I think the
line is, Brethren, we are met to worship
and adore of the God we love.
But there's a line that says this, All
is vain, except all is vain, unless the
spirit of the Holy One come down.
And it doesn't matter about the conference or
the speakers or spiritual goods, that same thing
is true here.
Unless the spirit of the Holy One come
down.
And I pray that that will be our
portion this week.
If you would like a listing of these
messages from the Banner of Truth conferences and
many other Banner of Truth tapes from the
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other messages, you may write to the Mount
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