The Blessing of God, previously unpublished sermons by Jonathan Edwards, edited by Michael D McMullen, published by Broadman & Holman, hardback, 400 pages, obtainable at £17.99 from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
Here is a collection of 22 sermons, on a wide variety of subjects, copied from manuscripts preserved in Yale University. They begin with a discourse on Jacob wrestling with the angel, entitled, “The way to obtain the blessing of God is not to let Him go except He bless us”. The final sermon is on “Behold, I stand at the door and knock . . . ” (Rev 3:20), with the title: “Nothing else is required of us in order to our having an interest in Christ but that we should . . . be willing that Christ should be ours and we His”. “His knocking at our hearts”, Edwards explains, “implies His seeking”. And again: “Our opening the door to Him implies our being willing to be His, a giving up ourselves to Him as . . . sometimes . . . at the first inauguration of a king”.
Evidently a great deal of effort was involved in deciphering Edwards’ handwriting, with its many abbreviations. It is good that the preacher is very much left to speak for himself, though one feels a little sensitive editing would sometimes have been helpful. There are a number of slips in the production – for instance, “to wash their slops in butter” (p 257) should have been identified as a reference to Job 29:6, where the word is steps, not slops.
However, in spite of such blemishes, these sermons are no doubt typical of those which were blessed to such a remarkable extent in Edwards’ Northampton congregation in eighteenth-century New England. May they again be blessed in our very different world in the twenty-first century!
The Hand of God: The Comfort of Having a Sovereign God, by Frederick S. Leahy, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 223 pages, £6.00, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
Professor Leahy, a minister and theological professor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland, died on the evening of the day in January 2006 when he posted the manuscript of this book to the publishers. It was his aim in his last published work “to show that the sovereignty of God, as revealed in Scripture, is a comforting truth”. Rev Geoffrey Thomas, in his foreword, classes this volume among those “books that make the great truths of Christianity accessible to contemporary people without triteness”.
Explaining that “God speaks to us in our own language in a manner we can understand – just as we speak as simply as possible when communicating with a young child”, Professor Leahy concludes that “when we read in the Bible of God’s ‘hand’, ‘arm’, or ‘countenance’, we are to think of God Himself” (pp 1,2). More precisely he asserts that, “when we read of God’s hand
in the Bible, we are to think of His invincible sovereignty in action” (p 169). In 10 helpfully-subdivided chapters he considers the sovereignty of God under the image of the hand that creates, governs, provides, redeems, keeps, guides, chastens, blesses, enables and judges.
While a sound Reformed theology underlies and comes to expression in these chapters, they are written in a popular and practical style, perhaps somewhat discursive, and are extensive rather than intensive in their approach. They are easily read even by those who may be weary and need the pick-me-up which they are intended to provide.
Three brief appendices underline the author’s commitment throughout the book to the Genesis account of creation and his repudiation of “the baneful influence of evolutionary theory” and of the “open view of God” which “distorts and undermines the doctrine of God’s sovereignty”, as in the writings of Clark Pinnock, who asserts that “the all-powerful God delegates power to the creature, making Himself vulnerable”.
Illustrative quotations are drawn from over 70 different sources. There is constant appeal to the Word of God. It may be unlikely that our wish that the publishers would make consistent use of the AV in their publications will be granted, but there is no harm in repeating it!
While personally inclined to question a few points which come up incidentally, such as the dogmatic assertion of the prospect of “a purged and renewed earth” (p 16) and the particular way in which the matter of the old man and the new is disposed of (p 53), we have no hesitation in commending this book. As Mr Thomas suggests, it provides “simplicity without banality . . . respect for the immensities of the divine revelation of God without impenetrability . . . an affection of tone without sentimentality and a directness without offence” (p xi).
HMC