10 Leaders who left the Church of Scotland in 1843

David Octaviu Hill, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Thomas Chalmers
2. James Bannerman
3. James Begg
4. Andrew and Horatius (and James) Bonar
5. David Brown Aberdeen
6. James Buchanan
7. Robert Candlish
8. William Cunningham
9. ("Rabbi") John Duncan
10. George Smeaton (Also Patrick Fairbairn, etc)

(Over 400 left in 1843 See more here)

Westminster Conference 2010 06

The final session of the conference was the usual biographical paper with no discussion. Malcolm MacLean gave an excellent paper on Andrew Bonar. He took us through the salient biographical detail and then focused on five areas - his preaching, prayer life, love of Christian literature, loyalty to the church and heart for evangelism. His prayer life came as something of a challenge to me.

Mr MacLean concluded with four further points, highlighting Bonar's

1. Realism about himself

2. Deep humility

3. His eagerness to make progress and his use of self-examination to that end

4. His great love for Christ, a love that made him like his Master

(PS The paper is available online here)

Roberts on Bonar

Contemporary photograph, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Andrew Bonar Lecture

Contemporary photograph, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

The Evangelical library have announced their Annual Lecture for 2010. It will be at 6.30 pm on June 7 and on Scots worthy Andrew Bonar. They say
This year sees the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of that great 19th century Scots minister Andrew Bonar. The Reverend Maurice Roberts of Inverness has kindly agreed to speak on Bonar on the occasion of our 2010 annual lecture which will again be held at Bethesda Baptist Church, Kensington Place, London W8, near Notting Hill Gate tube station at 6.30 pm on Monday, June 7, 2010. We are very grateful to Mr Roberts for committing himself to lecture on this important figure in Scots church history. Bonar was not only the biographer of M’Cheyne and the brother of Horatius but a significant figure in his own right in the days of the disruption and beyond.

More here

2010 and eternity

A little slow off the mark I guess - I wasn't sure just where to begin until I found this quotation near the very end of F W Boreham's Bunch of everlastings. He says

I recently took a long, long railway journey through a thousand miles of civilisation, a thousand miles of desert, and a thousand miles of bush. The train bore me to a part of this vast continent in which I found myself surrounded by trees that were entirely new to me, and by flowers such as I had never seen before. I freely expressed my admiration, and, when the time came to commence my homeward journey, I found among the mementoes with which I was presented a beautiful bunch of everlastings. A Bunch of Everlastings! It seems to me I have this morning been gathering just such a bouquet. Here is Stephen Grellet listening to the great word that rings through the silence of the forest Etemity! Eternity! Eternity! Here is Uncle Tom uttering the same word with strange and wonderful effects: Eternity! Here is Dr Chalmers confessing that the mistakes of his life lay in his forgetting the greatness of Eternity! The list could be indefinitely continued; the valleys are full of everlastings. ‘That night,’ says Ebenezer Erskine, in recording in the pages of his diary the greatest spiritual crisis that he ever knew ‘that night I got my head out of Time into Eternity!’ ‘The vastness of the word Eternity was impressed upon me,’ says Andrew Bonar in his diary; and, a few months later, he says again, ‘I strive to keep the feeling of Eternity always before me!’ ‘Gentlemen,’ exclaims old Rabbi Duncan to his students as he dismisses them at the end of the year’s work, ‘many will be wishing you a Happy New Year. Your old tutor wishes you a happy Eternity!’.

Westminster Conference 2010

So a pretty good and well attended conference. Next year's conference is on December 7 and 8. Not all speakers have been finalised yet but the subjects are as follows.

1. Rewriting the Reformation (response to Duffy, Starkey, Sansom, etc)
2. Puritan attitudes to Rome
3. AV 1611
4. Preaching for repentance
5. The 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference
6. Andrew Bonar (born 1810)

We will use the American Church again despite some drawbacks. The rearrangement of the chairs this year was a great help.
Website here.

Stapleford again

I fly to the Philippines July 1 but there's a lot to do before then and this week is looking pretty busy. I had a little bit of a groundhog day yesterday. About a year ago I blogged this. I've used part of that entry as a template for this one (snag is I don't think the old links work - oh perhaps they do).

I was out all day Tuesday. Bright and early Eleri took me to the London Gateway Services near the bottom of the M1 (did you know that the M1 has no Junction 3?) where I met up with Jeremy Walker (Maidenbower Baptist) to travel to Stapleford, just off the M1 between Derby and Nottingham. In a chapel there I was at my (first) second full committee organising upcoming Westminster Conferences. It was good to be amongst august company.

The next Westminster Conference (2009) is all set. It will again be at the American Church in Tottenham Court Road. We have two on Calvin (from Don Carson and Garry Williams), one on the 1859 Revival (Stephen Clark), one concerning Darwin and Darwinism (Ken Brownell), one on the Elizabethan settlement of 1559 (Robert Oliver) and, to round off, one on the Moravians (Bruce Jenkins). It looks like it will be a very good conference. Do come along.

As for 2010 (December 7, 8) things are shaping up well. We are hoping to have papers on Puritans and preparationism, the KJV, properly understanding the Reformation and the opposition to Rome and on Andrew Bonar.

A lady in the church kindly made us hot drinks and gave us a light lunch again. We were again invited to have a meal at the nearby home of a former committee member now retired. We again had a lovely time chatting and enjoying hospitality there, sharing news and anecdotes, etc.

We then headed home. I was back by 9 pm but Jeremy would have taken rather longer. Kind man. He avoided the city this time.