So Great Salvation, Select Sermons of Rev D B Macleod, published by Ettrick Press, hardback, 550 pages, £24.00, obtainable from the F P Bookroom.
This book was published earlier this year, with a very attractive cover. It depicts a colourful scene where the aged spires – emblems of Edinburgh’s past glory – recede into the distance, pointing as it were, in a mute appeal to heaven.
After biographical introductions on Mr Macleod and his wife, there are 36 of his sermons. He preached the whole counsel of God faithfully. He set life and death before his hearers with a warmth characteristic not only of his preaching but of his gentle demeanour. The structure of the sermons follows the practice common among the ministers who “gave the sense” of the text in its context, led their hearers into the principal truths in the text, and applied these truths to the hearts of the various companies in front of them. This he did in dependence on Him who said to the disciples on one occasion, “Give ye them to eat”; and on another occasion, “Feed My sheep”, and “Feed My lambs”.
Mr Macleod served the Church as a tutor in various subjects, including the study of preaching. The writer was in a class where Mr Macleod was emphasising the universal relevance of the doctrines of the glory and grace of Christ, in His Person and work. Asked what one does if Christ is not mentioned in a text, we were told to go over hill and dale until we found Him there. This was evident in His preaching.
Mr Macleod’s preaching did not “smell of the oil lamp”, as they used to say of discourses where preachers put on a show of learning in the pulpit. The Hebrew and Homiletics tutor did not enter the pulpit to preach without thorough preparation but having drawn on the resources of his learning, prayerfully, he preached with self-denying simplicity. We believe that under his preaching, sinners who were spiritually blind began to see; the lame who could not walk, in the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace, began to do so; spiritual lepers were cleansed; the deaf began to hear the joyful sound; the spiritually dead were raised to newness of life because, in his sermons, “unto the poor the gospel [was] preached” (Lk 7:22).
I wish to recommend this book to all our families. I have a picture in my mind of families gathering together on a Sabbath evening after the service,
and supper is over. One family member goes to the bookshelf and asks, Shall we read a sermon? (I am sure it is a common thing among our own families.) Read So Great Salvation and ask the Lord to bless the sermons of a student of the Word in the original tongues, of a sadly missed preacher, and a tutor beloved of his students.
(Rev) Roderick Macleod
The Shorter Catechism Illustrated, From Christian History and Biography, compiled by John Whitecross, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 243 pages, £16.50, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom. Whitecross was the father-in-law of John G Paton, the well-known Scottish missionary to what were then called the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu. In his preface, Whitecross, who was a school teacher, tells us that he had been in the habit of selecting an anecdote or two which would be suitable for illustrating the subject that he was to teach in the Sabbath school that he ran. He later gathered these anecdotes together and arranged them to illustrate the various answers to the Shorter Catechism questions, compiled by the Westminster divines.
When this book was first republished by the Banner of Truth in 1968, they took out about three dozen anecdotes “as of doubtful merit” and added “almost five dozen fresh narratives”. The book was first published in 1828, so of necessity the stories are at least two centuries old. Some of them may sound rather old-fashioned, but human nature has not changed; more importantly, the doctrines that they were intended to illustrate have not changed.
When the book was republished in 1968, a Free Presbyterian donor arranged for a copy of to be sent to all the children and young people within the Church. The reviewer trusts that parents will find this further reprint useful and that young people will enjoy it.
Following this review, there is an example of these anecdotes. It is intended to illustrate the answer to Question 62: What are the reasons annexed to the Fourth Commandment?
Answer. The reasons annexed to the Fourth Commandment are, God’s allowing us six days of the week for our own employments, His challenging a special propriety in the seventh, His own example, and His blessing the Sabbath day.
On the Jura mountains in Switzerland, where the winter is very long, and the summer very short, it is of great consequence for men to preserve their hay, and put it up in good order, for if they run out, their cattle must starve, as the snow lies so long and so deep, they cannot go to their neighbours to get any, even if they had sufficient to spare.
In this area lived an old man who had the love of Jesus and the fear of God in his heart, and kept the Lord’s day as the Lord commands His people to keep it. One Lord’s day, when the hay was just in the finest order for putting up, his sons came to him, and proposed to him to go and put up the hay: but he said, “Not so, my sons; this is the Lord’s day”.
However, his sons were tempted by the value of the hay, and the fineness of the weather, to prepare themselves for work, but the moment they put their forks into it, a storm broke over their heads, and the rain poured upon them in torrents – one of the most violent storms they ever had – and the hay was completely destroyed.
The old man addressed his sons: “Thou shalt do no work on the Sabbath Day. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. My sons,” continued the old man, “you have done a work to save your hay, and the rain has destroyed it. Learn from this to respect the commandments of the Lord.” His sons never forgot this lesson; and they never again did common work on the Lord’s Day.