Someone who listened to my lecture on forewords by Lloyd-Jones at the Evangelical Library recently kindly dug up this missing foreword for me. It is from the first edition of Peter Masters' Men of Destiny.
I welcome the publication of the articles, which have already appeared in the Evangelical Times, in this permanent form. I do so for many reasons. Throughout my Christian life I have found that, next to the Bible itself, nothing has given me greater help and encouragement than the reading of biographies of great Christians of various ages and countries.
Our danger is always to think that our problems are unique and our lot exceptionally hard. Thus we tend to become despondent and fearful. The finest antidote to that is to read the stories of great heroes of the faith of past ages. As we do so we are both shamed and also encouraged. That is what will happen to those who read this book.
At the same time it will serve what is a yet more important function, and especially at this present time. So many people today think ones attitude to Christianity is purely a psychological matter. If you belong to a certain type or group, or have a particular religious "complex", then you will be a Christian. They argue that it has nothing to do with objective truth but is purely a matter of our particular makeup.
Others fondly believe that it is purely a matter of intelligence and that no intelligent, educated, integrated person can possibly be a Christian. The simple answer to that is to be found, quite simply, in the history of the Christian church. Nothing is so amazing as the way in which people of every conceivable psychological type, and of all possible grades of intellect and knowledge have been found worshipping God together as Christians.
That is the thing that is brought out so clearly and unmistakably in the series of biographies found in this book. How different these men were on the surface, and by nature; but how united in their faith in the One Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Here, then, at one and the same time, is a challenge to the sceptic and a comfort for the saint. I wish it a very wide and large circulation
1968
D M Lloyd-Jones
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