The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.

Marcus Loane Biographer

When I was at the Banner Conference in Leicester in the Spring I picked up a copy of their reprint of Archbishop Marcus L Loane's They were Pilgrims. It contains four biographies of short-lived missionaries. I knew about Brainerd, Hugh Martyn and M'Cheyne before but Ion Keith-Falconer (1856-1887), the amazing Arabist who became a missionary in Aden on the Gulf, was new to me.
Last week at the EMA I noticed that Christian Focus have republished Loane's Oxford and the Evangelical Succession (1951) and Cambridge and the Evangelical Succession (1952). The first looks at Whitefield, Newton, Thomas Scott, Richard Cecil (1748-1810) and Daniel Wilson (1778-1885) who became Bishop of Calcutta. The latter two are just names to me and so I'm finding their stories very interesting. The second book looks at Grimshaw, Berridge, Venn and Simeon.
Somewhere I'm sure I have Masters of the English Reformation - Yes, there it is, an ex-library copy in hardback from 1955. It looks at Bilney, Tyndale, Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer.
Born in 1911, Loane is a good writer and the biographical sketches (about 40 pages each?) are a good length. I notice he also has books on Bunyan, Baxter, Rutherford and Alexander Henderson (Makers of Religious Freedom in the Seventeenth Century also known as Makers of Puritan History) Robert Barnes, John Bradford, John Frith and John Rogers (Pioneers of the Reformation in England), Martyn, Zinzendorf and J B Lightfoot (Three faithful servants), Archbishop Mowll, H C G Moule and J C Ryle, etc. This is quite apart from his many other books.

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