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Letters of Thomas ChalmersWarm inkLETTERS OF THOMAS CHALMERS The age of long, detailed and heartfelt letter writing has now passed. We live in an age of blogs and texting and few would argue that depth and precision are features of this new means of communication. The Banner of Truth has yet again done the Church a great service in reprinting the letters of Thomas Chalmers along with an excellent biographical introduction by Iain H. Murray. Chalmers was, of course, the great founding father of the Free Church of Scotland and, without doubt, the leading churchman of his day. Chalmers was an academic, a pastor, a church planter, an evangelist, as well as leading the restoration of mercy ministries in the church. The believer will find much in this book to warm his heart and encourage him in the spiritual life. There is a touching example of this in a letter written to his daughter Anne on her first communion: ‘Are you willing to be all and to do all that God would have you? Is it your purpose, in singleness of heart, to be his only and his altogether? Are you honestly desirous of making yourself over wholly unto him? ... These I hold to be the proper questions for putting to your conscience on the present occasion’. In speaking of what we would call stress, Chalmers writes, ‘It is a sad world surely, when one cannot bustle his way through it in pursuit of what is good, without the danger of being bustled out of all his spirituality. This I feel every day.’ The letter genre takes us deep within Chalmers’s heart and we find him at his most candid. This collection reveals the foundation of great preaching and a strong church. In a highly relevant observation he notes that ‘the doctrine of the atonement’ has to form ‘the main staple of all good and efficient pulpit-work’. These letters will also give us an insight into Chalmers’s reading, his family life, his views on issues as diverse as slavery and dancing (he opposed both), and ice skating and predestination (he approved of both!). Reading must be balanced and I recommend this to those who are too much in the 21st century. If we regard all that the giants of the past have written as merely antiquarian irrelevance, then we must repent! This is an easily accessible original source which is recommended to all. David C. Meredith, © Evangelicals Now - October 2007 |