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Voices from the past

Puritan devotional readings

Books and Bibles?

VOICES FROM THE PAST
Puritan devotional readings
Edited by Richard Rushing
Banner of Truth. 418 pages. £16.50
ISBN 978-1-84871-048-1

None of us can claim that personal devotion is hindered by lack of material!

We live in an age when Christian bookshops are awash with personal Bible study booklets, prayer guides, and devotional, ‘through the year’ books.

The very volume and variety of such material is wonderful — but this makes it harder for new offerings to get a ‘foot in the door’.

Richard Rushing, who is based in California, has produced a ‘through the year’ collection of devotional readings from the writings of the Puritans. The list of authors cited is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of famous names from that fruitful period. Sometimes he has quoted verbatim from their original writings; sometimes he has updated the language to make their message more accessible to the modern reader. Each extract fills a single page of the book.

Each day’s offering comes with a Bible verse in the heading, although — as Rushing tells us in the Preface — this has been selected to fit the theme of the extract, rather than being an exposition by the original Puritan writer.

And, in some ways, therein lies the problem. Great care is needed in suggesting how this book might be used by the 21st-century Christian. It’s not that the daily extracts aren’t helpful: they are, and many of them have that perception, insight and spiritual depth that we associate with the Puritan period. But the danger would be in seeing this book as the prime source of one’s daily ‘spiritual food’. For example, there are times when the daily Puritan offering doesn’t really connect with the context of the Bible verse that accompanies it.

In fairness, Rushing is a man who has clearly benefited personally from Puritan writings, and wants to introduce their treasures to the modern reader in an accessible form. To that end, he succeeds, in what is a well-presented, nicely bound book (although a ribbon-marker would have been helpful).

As a ‘thought for the day’ it is superb. Just don’t let it become a substitute for your main reading and studying of passages of Scripture.

Andrew Wilson,
Sidcup