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The Old Evangelicalism This volume is a collection of conference addresses subsequently revised. Their common thrust is that "on a number of fundamental truths, the Evangelicalism of the last hundred years contrasts unfavourably with what went before" (p xi). The first three chapters have recurring themes. "Preaching and Awakening: Facing the Main Problem in Evangelism" makes the pertinent point that "a recovery of the fear of God, and of the greatness of His displeasure against sin, is the great need of our times" (p 31). There is a call for preaching the moral perfections of God, the law of God, the predicament of the sinner and his need to be convinced of his sin and of his obligation and yet inability to believe. There is a useful brief discussion of whether the time of the new birth can be determined. We agree that there is a legal conviction unrelated to regeneration which may or may not be followed by regeneration but we also believe that the conviction of sin and misery which issues in the sinner coming to embrace Jesus Christ is the fruit of regeneration and not merely the context in which regeneration takes place.In "Spurgeon and True Conversion", stress is again laid on the necessity of regeneration and of preaching the law to the unregenerate, "because it teaches them not what they can do but what they ought to do. Far from encouraging salvation by works, it demonstrates the impossibility of rendering the obedience that God requires. It brings home to the non-Christian that he cannot change his own nature, he cannot save himself" (p 52). "Christ our Righteousness - God's Way of Salvation" deals with the critical importance of the truth of imputed righteousness. It explains the natural man's self-righteousness by the fact that "he neither knows God nor himself . . . he has not seen his own depravity and has never experienced the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. . . . There is therefore nothing more adverse to man's highest interests than to hide from him his true condition and the wrath of God which he deserves" (pp 79,80,81). The fourth and fifth chapters present ideas propounded in other publications already reviewed in this magazine. In "The Cross - the Pulpit of God's Love", Mr Murray appears to defend the view that those who hold to a definite atonement, as he does, can only preach the gospel to all and invite them to know the love of God in their own experience if they can tell sinners that God loves them, even "if this love is not necessarily saving" (p 121). For a writer of unusual clarity, the treatment of this subject is confusing. The key to the truth is hinted at in his own statement that "it is not a doctrine either of special love or of general love that is to be offered to sinners; it is rather Christ himself" (p 122); and again, "Where is this love to be found but in the Saviour Himself?" (p 129). In gospel preaching, sinners everywhere can and must be invited and urged to come as sinners to Christ, as the One in whom they shall know that everlasting love of God for sinners as such which is expressed in election and redemption and regeneration - "the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:39). The chapter entitled "What Can We Learn from John Wesley?" presents views similar to those in Mr Murray's previously-reviewed volume, Wesley and Men who Followed. The chapter entitled "Assurance of Salvation" proceeds on the basis that, "next to the issue, how one becomes a Christian, there can be no question more significant than, how does one know one is a Christian". Mr Murray provides a biblical and helpful discussion of the relation, in the promotion of assurance, between "the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God", "the divine truth of the promises of salvation" and "the inward evidences of those graces unto which these promises are made" (Westminster Confession of Faith 18). John Colquhoun of Leith is quoted favourably: "If the disquieted Christian, then, would recover spiritual consolation, let him 'hold the beginning of his confidence, steadfast unto the end'. . . . Let him come frequently to Jesus, the Consolation of Israel, and come every time, as if it were the first time" (p 192). The final chapter, "Christian Unity and Church Unity", properly emphasises that the communion of saints transcends denominational and national boundaries. While we recognise that in the present situation the Church is more extensive than the denomination, we find Mr Murray's treatment of this subject defective, one-sided and basically Independent. The emergence of denominations has certainly complicated the situation since the seventeenth-century Scottish theologians expounded a biblical doctrine of the Church which recognised one Church in each locality and nation, whose unity was expressed in a common government; and we need a good statement of the bearing of that doctrine on the present ecclesiastical scene. While there is much to commend, this book reminds us to read all human works in the spirit of the Bereans, who "searched the scriptures daily, whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). We regret the continuing trend to abandon the Authorised Version of the Bible in quotation. (Rev) H M Cartwright
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