A Scottish Christian Heritage

The life of John Knox is largely a narrative of persecution. I was already aware of this as I began reading Iain Murray’s A Scottish Christian Heritage, but I was surprised to learn that among his experiences was nineteen months spent as a slave in a French galley, chained to a bench with six other men pulling a fifty-foot-long oar. Following his release in 1549, he enjoyed a scant four years of peace in England before “Bloody” Mary Tudor ascended to the throne and restored Roman Catholicism as the state religion (her half-brother and predecessor, Edward VI, had been Protestant). Knox fled England, ending up finally in Geneva. His exile ended in 1559, when Mary Tudor died, and the Protestant faith was publicly restored in England.

His years of exile served as preparation for difficult years to come. “Of the lessons he had learned during that period,” Murray writes, “there are three which stand out:”

   1. Knox became a man of prayer. Prayer as ‘an earnest and familiar talking with God’, is not natural to us. It is be sanctified trouble and by the recognition of our own helplessness that were learn to pray. ‘Out of weakness made strong’ is the biblical principle. ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble’, became a promise of special significance to Knox. His first writing when the Marian persecution broke in England in 1554, was on What True Prayer Is, How We Should Pray, and For What We Should Pray. In another place he says that the Apostle Peter, as he sought to cross the water to Jesus, was allowed to sink because there was in him too much ‘presumption and vain trust in his own strength’. ‘Unless it had between corrected and partly removed,’ he comments, Peter ‘had never been apt or meet to feed Christ’s flock’ this was surely what Knox himself was being taught. He says that he wrote so much on prayer because,

I know how hard is the battle between the spirit and the flesh, under the heavenly cross of affliction, where no worldly defence but present death does appear. I know the grudging and murmuring complaints of the flesh . . . calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour utterly to fall from God. Against which rests only faith, provoking us to call earnestly and pray for assistance of God’s Spirit; wherein, if we continue, our most desperate calamities shall be turned to gladness, and to a prosperous end. To thee alone, O Lord, be praise, for with experience I write this and speak.

   . . .

   2. Knox’s lone exile made him and international Christian. Had he remained always in Scotland he might have remained as parochial as some of his contemporaries. It was in God’s design that he spent most of his time away from home among the English. These were the people against whom his forefathers had fought but in Christ the old enmity was gone. He was ahead of his time in foreseeing a common Protestant faith binding the two nations together, and that hope became central to his life. ‘Grant, O Lord,’ he prayed, ‘we never enter into hostility against the realm and nation of England.’ . . .

   3. It was during Knox’s exile, and especially in the final years in Geneva, that the master-principles which governed his thought on Reformation came to maturity. In outline, they may be stated as follows:
   i. We exist for God’s glory; therefore zeal for the honor of God is essence of true piety; conversely, to despise God, to offend his majesty, is the darkest form of human depravity. The indignation Knox felt against Roman Catholicism sprang from this source. He saw it as a system bound up with giving to men and to idols that which belongs to God alone. . . .
   ii. Christians are bound to a universal obedience to the Word of God, no matter what the cost, no matter what the consequences. More particularly, nothing is lawful to the church unless it is to be found in Scripture. To quote the Reformer’s later words to Queen Elizabeth: ‘Whatsoever He approves (by his eternal word) that shall be approved, and what he damneth, shall be condemned, though all men in the earth should hazard the justification of the same.
   iii. The true church is to distinguished from the false church in this manner; the true has Christ as its living head, it hears his voice it, follows him, and a stranger it will not follow. This church, further, is to be kept separate from the world by the faithful exercise of discipline in order that reproach is not brought upon God by the character of it’s members, so that the good is not affected by the evil, and so that those corrected may be recovered.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 13–15.

I love reading of the last days of great saints. While death is a fearsome thing to most, for the believer it is a gateway into life — life like we have not yet known, and cannot imagine. At long last, we will be at home with the Lord, free from all pain and suffering, disappointments and failures, and, most wonderful of all, free from sin. It is a day we should all long for, and be able to say with John Newton, “It is a great thing to die.” John Knox was such a man, and so was able to pass from this world in peace. Iain Murray writes,

   In the spring of 1572, while Knox was still in St. Andrews, there was a marked decline in his health, yet in August he was able to return to Edinburgh, and, after thirteen months absence, preach again in the pulpit of St. Giles. But the vast congregation could no longer hear his now feeble voice, and thereafter he chose the pulpit of the much smaller Tolbooth Church where he began to preach on the crucifixion on 21 September. The English ambassador reported on 6 October, ‘John Knox is now so feeble as scarce can he stand alone, or speak to be heard of any audience,’ Yet he was able, on Sunday, 9 November, to preach at the installation of his successor, James Lawson. It was the last time he was to leave his home. The following Thursday he had to lay aside reading and on the Friday, confused which day it was he declared he meant to go to church and preach on the resurrection of Christ. A week later, with increasing difficulty in breathing, he ordered his coffin to be made and waking hours were now spent in hearing Scripture read (especially Isaiah 53, John 17 and Ephesians), saying good-bye to friends, and speaking brief words of testimony and prayer: ‘Live in Christ. Live in Christ, and then flesh need not fear death – Lord, grant true pastors to thy Church, that purity of doctrine may be maintained.’
   On Monday, November 1572, he insisted on rising and dressing but within half an hour he had to be put back to bed. To the question of a friend, Had he any pain?, he replied: ‘It is no painful pain, but such a pain as shall soon, I trust put an end to the battle.’ There was further intermittent conversation that day and the last reading of 1 Corinthians 15 at which he exclaimed, ‘Is not that a comfortable chapter?’ About eleven o’clock that evening, he said, ‘Now it is come’, and, lifting up one hand, he passed through his final conflict in peace. In the words on his secretary, Richard Bannatyne,

In this manner departed this man of God: the light of Scotland, the comfort of the Church within the same, the mirror of godliness, and pattern and example of all true minister.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 32–33.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15)

The following rather humorous anecdote from the life of the Scottish preacher Robert Bruce (1555–1631, not Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, 1274–1329) is also a good reminder to all preachers, as well as anyone who would be a witness for Christ. In other words, every Christian.

On a day when Bruce was engaged to preach twice at the church, the interval between the services was extended longer than usual due to the preacher’s absence. Some noblemen who were present became anxious because of the time on account of the distance they had to ride to their homes later that day. They therefore asked the bellman to find Bruce and request him to begin the service in view of the journey they had before them. The bellman knew where Bruce was – in a room in a house near the church which he commonly used before the afternoon service. On going to the door the man knocked, but declined to enter when he heard the preacher talking to someone inside. He went back to those who had sent him and explained that he could not tell how long Bruce would be: ‘I think he shall not come out the day at all, for I hear him always saying to another that he will not nor cannot go except the other go with him, and I do not hear the other answer him a word at all.’

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 62.

Another testimony in death, this one from the Scottish preacher Robert Bruce:

Bruce was now some seventy-five years of age, his wife had been dead for several years and he was also ready for home. “I wonder why I am kept here so long,” he would say to friends. The following year, while having breakfast, his daughter, Martha, was about to prepare him another egg when he said, “Hold, daughter, hold; my Master calleth me.” He then asked that the house Bible, the Geneva Version, be brought. Unable himself to read it, he said, “Cast me up the 8th of Romans,” and he began to recite much of the second half of the chapter until he came to the last two verses: “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “Set my finger on these words,” he asked. “God be with you my children. I have breakfasted with you, and shall sup with my Lord Jesus this night. I die believing these words.”

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 56–57.

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), little known today, has been described by one biographer as “the greatest spiritual force Scotland saw in the nineteenth century.” He is credited with the recovery of Presbyterianism in Scotland, leading to the “Disruption of 1817” (a schism between Church of Scotland “moderates” and “evangelicals” over how much influence the State had in appointing ministers). Iain Murray writes that “He was at the centre of a recovery which brought the churches of Scotland from mediocrity, indifference, and unbelief to new conditions of spiritual vitality.”

But Chalmers had not always been the great man of God that he became. At the young age of eleven, he entered the University of St Andrews, and began his theological studies at fifteen with the intent of pursuing professional ministry. Of this time he wrote, “St Andrews was at this time overrun with Moderatism, under the chilling influences of which we inhaled not a distaste only but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly gospel.” Chalmers became one of these Moderates. His view of ministry was that it was a good profession for making one’s name in the world. He devoted little time to pursuits of actual ministry, often leaving preparation for preaching until Sunday morning. “After the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties,” he wrote, “a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure . . .”

In 1808, his career plans were interrupted. Intending to go to London “to get introduced into some of the literary circles,” he instead found himself at the bed-side of a sister, who soon died. Then it was the death of a beloved uncle, followed by his own severe illness, which kept him in his own room for four months. During that time, Chalmers was converted, and his life was dramatically changed. Previously, ministry had consumed little of his attention, and genuine spiritual issues none at all. His energies had been directed towards the study of science and mathematics. Murray writes:

Chalmers was to confess that he was then blind to the lesson which even those scientific studies should have taught him: ‘What, sir, is the object of mathematical science?’ he had replied. ‘Magnitude is the proportion of magnitude. But then, sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes. I thought not of the littleness of time — I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity.’

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 83.

Chalmers’s ministry was dramatically effected by his conversion. Murray quotes biographer William Hanna:

His regular and earnest study of the Bible was one of the first and most noticeable effects of Mr Chalmers’ conversion. His nearest neighbor and most frequent visitor was old John Bonthron, who, having once seen better days, was admitted to an easy and privileged familiarity, in the exercise of which one day before the memorable illness, he said to Mr Chalmers — ‘I find you aye busy, sir, with one thing or another, but come when I may, I never find you at your studies for the Sabbath.’ ‘Oh, an hour or two on the Saturday evening is quite enough for that,’ was the minister’s answer. But now the change had come, and John, on entering the manse, often found Mr. Chalmers poring eagerly over the pages of the Bible. The difference was too striking to escape notice, and with the freedom given him, which he was ready enough to use, he said, ‘I never come in now, sir, but I find you aye at your Bible.’ ‘All too little, John, all to little’, was the significant reply.

—ibid., 84–85.

Iain Murray Summarizes some of Thomas Chalmers’ thoughts on the work of the ministry:

   1. The governing principle upon which the strength of all ministerial duties depends is regard for the approval of God. If a minister lacks that principle his public work will be dominated by regard for himself or for the approbation of men. Where that principle is truly present it will operate first in the sphere of the preacher’s own inner life; he will not ‘strenuously urge sanctification’ without attending to that duty himself. His primary concern in all things must be to see that God approves him. ‘By far the most effective ingredient of good preaching’, he writes, ‘is the personal piety of the preacher himself.’ ‘How little must the presence of God be felt in that place, where the high functions of the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated exchange of entertainment, on the one side, and of admiration on the other! and surely it were a sight to make angels weep when a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded by his fellow sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgment along with them, finds it a dearer object to his bosom to regale his hearers by the exhibition of himself, than to do, in plain earnest, the work of his Master.’
   2. Ministers should never rest satisfied without growth in personal holiness of life. Chalmers’ private diary reveals a great deal of this: ‘Advance the power and life of religion in my own heart’ was his prayer. To friends he writes in similar terms: ‘Pray unceasingly for the progress of His work in your heart . . . Strike the high aim of being perfect even as God is perfect . . . Never let go your aspirings . . . Oh! with what unceasing progress towards perfection should we be enabled to advance did we cast all self-seeking and self-confidence away from us — did we consent be altogether guided by His strength, and be altogether accepted in His pure and unspotted righteousness.’
   Andrew Bonar, one of Chalmers’ students, used to repeat a saying heard when he was entering the ministry: ‘Remember that very few men, and very few ministers, keep up to the end the edge that was on their spirit at the first.’ It was a warning which could well have been heard from Chalmers. The prayerfulness and the desires after greater holiness which marked his early Christian life were with him to the end.
   3. Ministers must give themselves wholly to their true work: ‘Be assured that a single and undivided attention to the peculiar work of a Christian minister is the way of peace and of pleasantness.’ One of the greatest struggles which Chalmers ever had was to break free from the many secular duties and activities which had come to be expected of ministers. For him it was imperative, if the church was to be revived, that preachers should be left to concentrate exclusively upon their proper calling. In Glasgow he had found that ministers were continually required to be at funerals (four at one funeral was considered a ‘respectable number’), at committees of all the societies, at public functions of every kind, and so on. At one committee meeting, for example, arranged on behalf of the Town Hospital, he found himself with an honoured place among ‘some of the gravest of city ministers, and some of the wisest of the city merchants’ to engage in a solemn and, at length, warm discussion on whether pork broth or ox-head should be served to the inmates of the Hospital! After such experiences at that time in his life he wrote: ‘I am gradually separating myself from all this trash, and 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 the purposes to which the Apostles gave themselves wholly, that is, the ministry of the word and prayer.’ Speaking again of the secular duties to which so many ministers had given in, and which turned a preacher from being ‘a dispenser of the bread of life into a mere dispenser of human benefits’, he says, ‘This I have set my face against, and though I have a great deal of opposition to encounter, yet I am persuaded that I will have the solid countenance and approbation of all who value the pure objects of the Christian ministry.’
   4. A minister must deal directly with the men concerning their need of salvation. ‘Let us pray for that most desirable wisdom, the wisdom of winning souls.’ ‘A single human being called out of darkness, though he lived in putrid lane of obscurity, is a brighter testimony than all the applause of the fashionable.’ This meant plain, direct preaching to the heart and conscience. Commending Alleine’s Alarm, he warned against the ‘diseased touchiness’ of the age which disliked the urgent preaching of repentance. He told his prospective candidates for the ministry that their work must ot be to show their hearers the consistency between geology and the Bible, rather these hearers must be won ‘by entering into the chambers of their consciences and telling them of that sin which is their ruin and of that Saviour who alone can hush the alarms of nature’.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 94–96.

The Holy Spirit is seen by many as a source of extra-biblical revelation to those who are “sensitive to the Spirit’s leading.” The spiritually mature, those who are “spirit-filled,” may receive a “word from the Lord,” a “word of knowledge,” or just some added insight that can’t be had simply by reading the Bible. But the Spirit does not work that way. He uses a tool given for this purpose: the sword of the Spirit. Thomas Chalmers wrote:

   The Holy Spirit’s office, as defined by the Bible itself, is not to make known to us any truths which are not contained in the Bible; but to make clear to our understandings the truths which are contained in it. He opens our understandings to understand the Scriptures. The Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. It is the instrument by which the Spirit worketh. He does not tell us any thing that is out of the record; but all that is within it he sends home, with clearness and effect, upon the mind . . .

—Thomas Chalmers, quoted in Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 101.

Some time ago, I was asked why, if I had already read the Bible, I would want to read it again, not just once, but over and over, as long as I live? Obviously, this question came from an unbeliever. But I’m afraid many Christians feel little need for repeated readings of God’s Word. Many who have professed faith for years still have portions of their Bibles that remain unread.

Robert Moffat (1795–1883), Scottish missionary to Africa, would have been bewildered by such attitudes. Moffat dedicated his life to bringing the gospel to the Bechuana tribes of South Africa. Much of that time was spent in translating the entire Old and New Testaments into Sechuana (the native language). Yet, near the end of his life, he still felt inadequate in his knowledge of Scripture. In a letter to Mary, his wife, he wrote:

It was only yesterday, after laying down the Bible, that I wondered what kind of a mind I would have had if I had not the Book of God, the Book containing the astounding idea of ‘from everlasting to everlasting’, the development of all that is worth knowing . . . One would think, that as I have critically, and, I think, devoutly read and examined every verse, every word in the Bible, some a score of times over, I should not require to open the pages of that unspeakable and blessed Book. Alas, for the human memory! I read the Bible today with that same feeling I ever did, like the hungry seeking food, the thirsty when seeking drink, the bewildered when seeking counsel and the mourner when seeking comfort. Don’t you believe all this? For alas, I read it sometimes as a formal thing, though my heart condemns afterwards . . . I am yet astonished at my own ignorance of the Bible!

—Robert Moffat, quoted in Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 266–267.

Our generation is not the first to doubt the sufficiency of Scripture to change lives. In Robert Moffat’s day, many believed that civilization needed to precede the gospel. Moffat and other pioneer missionaries challenged and disproved that theory. In 1816, Moffat was formally commissioned as a missionary of London Missionary Society and was sent to South Africa. Twenty-six years later, he could testify to the power of the gospel to transform lives.

‘It is now demonstrated,’ [wrote Moffat] in 1842, ‘that the Gospel can transform these aceldamas [fields of blood], these dens of crime, weeping and woe, into abodes of purity, happiness, and love . . . We are warranted to expect, from what has already occurred, great and glorious results.’ A moral improvement in society in general is not needed to prepare the way for spiritual success. On this point Moffat wrote:

Much has been said about civilizing savages before attempting to evangelize them. This is a theory which has gained extensive prevalence among the wise men of this world, but we have never yet seen a practical demonstration of its truth. We ourselves are convinced that evangelization must precede civilization. It is very easy in a country of high refinement to speculate on what might be done among rude and savage men, but the Christian missionary, the only experimentalist, has invariably found that to make the fruit good the tree must first be made good. Nothing less than the power of Divine grace can reform the hearts of savages, after which the mind is susceptible of those instructions which teach them to adorn the gospel they profess.

   This lesson needs to be remembered wherever the moral decay of society tempts Christians to suppose the plain preaching of the gospel cannot meet the situation. Moffat was certain that only one source is adequate to answer the effects of sin upon society, whether these are among ‘barbarians’ or ‘the civilized nations of Europe’: ‘Nothing but the Bible can save man from his woes.’

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 269–270.

The demands on a pastor are many: he must be a scholar, a teacher, a preacher, and a counselor, just to name the most obvious of his duties. But before he can be an effective shepherd, he must meet a much more basic requirement: he must have a genuine love for the people in his care. Iain Murray offers an example of this pastoral love in the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661):

   For a seventeenth-century example of the closeness of pastors and people Samuel Rutherford’s Letters are unforgettable. Separated from his parish in days of persecution, he was forced to resort to letters, and the personal issues about which he writes show how his pastoral work was conducted, The spiritually cold, the sorrowing, the individual struggling with temptations, the believer lacking assurance, and many more, all have his attention and sympathetic interest. To an old man about whom he had some doubt he can write:

My soul longeth exceedingly to hear how matters go betwixt you and Christ; and whether or not there be any work of Christ in that parish that will bide in the trial of fire and water. Let me be weighed of the Lord in a just balance, if your souls lie not weighty upon me. Ye go to bed and rise with me: thoughts of your soul, my dearest in the Lord, depart not from me in my sleep. You have a great part of my tears, sighs, supplications, and prayers. Oh, if I could buy your soul’s salvation with any suffering whatsoever, and that ye and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow, when we shall stand before our judge! [Letters of Rutherford, p. 344]

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 126.

The gospel that saves souls and changes lives is not merely a message that inspires the emotions. It is a message that first brings the truth of God’s Word to the minds of listeners.

   The existence of real Christianity requires a stronger basis than feeling. The nature of that basis is clear in Paul’s injunctions to Timothy and Titus: it is ‘sound doctrine’, ‘sound words’, ‘the word’ (1 Tim. 1:10; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:2–3; Titus 1:9; 2:1).
   The reason for this apostolic priority is twofold: first, as already said, it is the mind of man that has first to be engaged and convicted; second, it is the Word of God that the Spirit of truth honours and nothing will convince without his witness. These convictions were the starting point for the evangelical preachers of Scotland. They did not see themselves as in charge of the situation. They were only the spokesmen for God and real preaching must have with it something more vital than their speaking. It must be ‘in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God’ (1 Cor. 2:4–5). Andrew Bonar understood this when he noted in his diary, ‘It is one thing to bring truth from the Bible, and another thing to bring it from God himself through the Bible.’
   If the content of preaching is biblical, it follows that it will be ‘theological’, that is to say, it will concern the knowledge of God. ‘Brethren,’ Spurgeon could tell his students, ‘if you are not theologians, you are in your pastorates just nothing at all. We shall never have great preachers until we have great divines.’ Closeness to Scripture and love for sound doctrine belong together.
   History has proved that when the influence of true preaching is at its greatest, commitment to sound doctrine will ever be present.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 330–331.

We read last week of the need for preaching that engages the mind with sound doctrine. We must add to that imperative the truth that preaching can be doctrinally sound and yet lifeless. The preacher must not merely know the message, he must be owned by it. He must have experienced it, and lived it, in order to preach it as he ought.

Ought not preachers themselves to live on the great fundamental truths of the gospel? Ought not our souls to be continually fed from them, and our hearts continually thrilling with them? Ought not a fresh glow to come over our hearts every day as we think of Him who loved us, and washed us from sin in His blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and to the Father? Give us the plainest preacher that ever was; let him preach nothing that a whole congregation do not know; but let him preach with a thrilling heart; let him preach like one amazed at the glory of the message; let him preach in the tone of wonder and gratitude in which it becomes sinners to realise the great work of redemption, — not only will the congregation listen with interest: they will listen with profound impression . . . We greatly need preachers for the people. A preacher to the people needs to be very clear in his views, homely in his style, full of illustration, direct and courageous in his application, rich in brotherly sympathy, and very warm and vigorous in delivery. Alas! they are not common. I believe that if only every tenth student that passes through our hands were a man of this stamp, we should soon see a change on the face of society.

—W. G. Blaikie, cited in Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 333–334.