The Lives of Robert and James Haldane
by Alexander Haldane. Banner of Truth Trust. 701pp. £12.95.
This reprint by the Banner of Truth Trust gives a most interesting account of the lives of Robert and James Haldane, men who towards the end of the 18th and beginning 19th century exercised considerable influence in the evangelical world. Though belonging to the aristocracy, and men of considerable note, they, after their conversion gave themselves wholly to the advancement of Christ’s cause and kingdom in Scotland and further afield. Robert Haldane sold part of his estate to further the interests of the Gospel. Though unable to establish a mission in Bengal in India, yet he was greatly used on the Continent in exposing the hollowness of the religion that was current then in Geneva and elsewhere, and leaving behind him a number of young men who received the Reformed teaching and were influential in the Churches on the Continent in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ. Robert Haldane also took a prominent part in the controversy that arose in the British and Foreign Bible Society over the attempt to include the Apocrypha in the Bibles intended for distribution among Roman Catholics on the Continent. Out of this controversy there came the establishment of the Trinitarian Bible Society in England and the National Bible Society in Scotland. He also took part in other controversies. His ability as an expositor of Scripture is seen in his “Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.”
James Haldane was used greatly in bringing the Gospel to parts of the country where a dead ministry prevailed or where the people were denied the preaching of the Gospel through lack of supply. He made a number of tours throughout Scotland including the Highlands and the Orkney Islands. These preaching tours were owned of the Lord to the ingathering of many souls to His kingdom. Reference is made to certain areas in the North of Scotland as destitute of the preaching of the Gospel, which at that very time had faithful Gospel ministers. This erroneous view may have arisen from the fact that many areas were Gaelic speaking and with the Gaelic-speaking population the English speaking lowlanders would not have the same contact. Eventually James Haldane became pastor of a congregation in Edinburgh which was set up on Congregational and Baptist principles.
In summing up the author of the biographies has to say that Robert Haldane’s success at Geneva and Montauban, is a landmark in the history of Continental Protestantism, while of James Haldane he declares that it would be difficult to name one, since the days of Whitefield whose preaching was more signally blessed to the conversion of sinners.
There is a printer’s error on page 654 where the first two lines should be deleted. This no doubt arises from an earlier edition.
D.B.M.
Valiant for the Truth by J. H. Gosden. Gospel Standard Trust. 352pp. £7.50.
This volume in paperback is a reprint of the biography of Pastor J. K. Popham who was for fifty-five years Pastor of the “Galeed”, Brighton Strict Baptist Congregation, for thirty years editor of “The Gospel Standard,” and of the “Friendly Companion” for sixteen years. There is an introductory essay by J. R. Broome, while at the end of the book is inserted Mr Popham’s first and last sermon, and also some of his letters. Mr Popham died in 1937 in his ninetieth year.
Pastor J. K. Popham was well known to an earlier generation of Free Presbyterians who regarded him as a faithful servant of Christ. Reference is made at the beginning of Chapter 16 to a visit paid to him on his 89th birthday by four Free Presbyterian ministers. This was at the time of Rev. J. P. MacQueen’s induction to London. The author in referring to this makes the comment that “his predilection for the godly Scot was proverbial.” What may not have been known to the author was that he had some grounds for this. On a visit to the North of Scotland on one occasion when he was in great depths of soul depression he was delivered out of it under the preaching of Rev. J. R. MacKay, then a young man, at a service held in a school at Strathy in Sutherland. At that time he met many of the eminently godly who then inhabited these and other parts of the Highlands of Scotland. He himself preached in Halkirk F.P. Church and at a later date Rev. Donald Beaton was to preach in his pulpit in Brighton.
This volume covers the whole of Mr Popham’s ministry, both in Liverpool, where he first laboured, and in Brighton where he was to exercise a fruitful ministry in the ingathering of souls to Christ’s kingdom and in the edification of believers. He became a leader in the denomination to which he belonged. Much of the book is taken up with a record of his own experiences as a Pastor, and of his own soul’s experience. His discourses were eminently experimental delineating the experiences of the true children of God. As the title indicates he not only endeavoured in the strength of God’s grace to preach the doctrines of God’s Word but also was ready to defend the truth when occasion required. Yet he was a man of peace and not of war. His exercises in connection with the ministry and his calls to the Congregations in which he laboured and his continual exercise of soul with regard to those under his care show that he was a true undershepherd of the Great Shepherd of the sheep. He could say with the Apostle: “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” His end was a blessed one. He came to the grave in a full and ripe age assured in his last days that he was going to be with Christ. His death in 1937 left a great blank in the Gospel Standard Strict Baptist Churches which was afterwards filled to some extent by his son in the faith and biographer Rev. J. H. Gosden and other gracious pastors. Rev. J. K. Popham, as his adherence to the Gospel Standard Churches makes plain, was a baptist in outlook and also adhered to their denial of the free offer of the Gospel, which, they say, is to be proclaimed but not offered. Yet all who believe in the free offer of the Gospel will wholeheartedly agree with his assertion: “To tell all his hearers of God’s revelation to and concerning them; to affirm that it is their duty to believe that revelation, to reject it is their sin; to show them the sin of unbelief, is unquestionably the most solemn and even binding duty of an anointed minister.”
D.B.M.