I've been a little slow reporting but it was good to hear Maurice Roberts giving the Evangelical Library lecture on Andrew Bonar last Monday. Bonar's dates were 1810-1892. He was the seventh son of a seventh son of good covenanter stock and had two brothers in ministry – Horatius and the lesser known John. After a summary of his life, Mr Roberts looked at seven things – his conversion and college life (1828-34) under Thomas Chalmers; his work in Jedburgh and Edinburgh (1835-38); his first ministry – at Collace (1838-56) which included a report on the 1839 trip to Palestine later written up in a lengthy book; his early years at Finnieston (1857-64); his ministry in Glasgow (1864-75); his “labours more abundant (1876-88) and the closing years (1889-92). The main source for his life is his diary (begun in 1828 and kept up almost to the end and written in Byrom shorthand) and letters later published by his daughter Marjory
He closed with four lessons:
1. A reminder that if we are to do anything worthwhile for our Saviour in this world we must be whole-hearted, entirely devoted to Him and jealous of our time, so that nothing be wasted. Men who are prayerful, spiritual and thirsting for fellowship with God in Christ will not live in vain. We cannot give ourselves the gifts which God has not given to us already. But we can use our talents to the utmost of our capacity. Bonar and M’Cheyne were in several ways different but in one thing they were identical men. They lived wholly for God and in the interests of eternal values.
2. Again, a lesson that comes home to us from the life of Bonar is that we should cultivate love one to another as Christians and we should have a sincere and a burning desire to see sinners saved and brought to Christ. Other things in the ministry may have their place. But there is no substitute in a minister for evangelistic zeal and passion to win the lost and to bring them to the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Bonar and M’Cheyne loved the Jewish people and sorrowed to think they were in darkness. Like Samuel Rutherford and many Puritans they cherished the confident hope that one day God would bring them to Christ as a nation. They would be grafted in again into their own olive tree, as Paul puts it. This prayer should be ours still today, and all the more so in that the Jews are now returning steadily to their ancestral homeland in Palestine and we have a still stronger hope that the day of their restoration is at hand. In that day, declares Christ, they will cry out, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord’.
4. Life is short and death is sure. Those who are wise live well in the anticipation that very soon we must leave this scene of time and enter into eternity. Those who live well will die well. To live well means to live by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and in His service. To die well is to be ready with Paul to say, ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge will give me in that day: and not to me only’. May God help to us all to hear these vital lessons so that we may all meet at last in that blessed land above.
Mr Roberts stayed with us that night. A real gentleman.
He closed with four lessons:
1. A reminder that if we are to do anything worthwhile for our Saviour in this world we must be whole-hearted, entirely devoted to Him and jealous of our time, so that nothing be wasted. Men who are prayerful, spiritual and thirsting for fellowship with God in Christ will not live in vain. We cannot give ourselves the gifts which God has not given to us already. But we can use our talents to the utmost of our capacity. Bonar and M’Cheyne were in several ways different but in one thing they were identical men. They lived wholly for God and in the interests of eternal values.
2. Again, a lesson that comes home to us from the life of Bonar is that we should cultivate love one to another as Christians and we should have a sincere and a burning desire to see sinners saved and brought to Christ. Other things in the ministry may have their place. But there is no substitute in a minister for evangelistic zeal and passion to win the lost and to bring them to the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Bonar and M’Cheyne loved the Jewish people and sorrowed to think they were in darkness. Like Samuel Rutherford and many Puritans they cherished the confident hope that one day God would bring them to Christ as a nation. They would be grafted in again into their own olive tree, as Paul puts it. This prayer should be ours still today, and all the more so in that the Jews are now returning steadily to their ancestral homeland in Palestine and we have a still stronger hope that the day of their restoration is at hand. In that day, declares Christ, they will cry out, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord’.
4. Life is short and death is sure. Those who are wise live well in the anticipation that very soon we must leave this scene of time and enter into eternity. Those who live well will die well. To live well means to live by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and in His service. To die well is to be ready with Paul to say, ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge will give me in that day: and not to me only’. May God help to us all to hear these vital lessons so that we may all meet at last in that blessed land above.
Mr Roberts stayed with us that night. A real gentleman.
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