We just managed to scrape into double figures this afternoon at the Evangelical Library. I spoke on William Brock 1807-1875 Devon-born minister of Baptist churches in Norwich and Bloomsbury. There are two main biographies, one by C M Birrell and a shorter one by George M'Cree. I emphasised how much Spurgeon liked him as I think he was basically one of the good guys. All the liberal emphases of the 19th century were brought to bear on him, however, and how unscathed he remained I don't know. He wrote once to his son, also a minister.
How
well I understand
your difficulties about election.
I knew them at your age - I have known them ever since - I know them
now. But there they are; and if you give up all belief in election
there will be other difficulties of equal intricacy and force. Semblances are not always realities. To our ignorances there are perhaps actual contradictions: let us get rid of the ignorance, and the contradiction disappears. To leave a man, you think, is to reject him. Then 'men are rejected,' you infer; 'not being chosen of God they are surely doomed.' But so far from dooming men, God beseeches them to return to Him and live. As it thus appears that none are doomed, 'what follows,' you ask, but that 'none are elected'? Logically the case appears to you complete. But then, in come Scriptures in abundance to disturb the conclusions of your logic. There are men who have been chosen to salvation (2 Thess. I 3): and all men are invited to salvation (John vi. 37). What remains but that we put up with the difficulty reverentially; and expound God's Word according to its meaning text by text.
I hope to get the full text of the lecture out into the wider world soon.
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