LETTERS OF HENRY VENN. Banner of Truth Trust. 594 pp. £12.95.
We welcome this hardback edition of the Letters of Henry Venn, one of the noted evangelical ministers in the Church of England in the second half of the eighteenth century. The note on the cover of the book states that these letters contain, on virtually every page, practical spiritual counsel of perennial wisdom applicable to a wide variety of situations. With that assessment we agree. The book also contains a memoir of his life which will be of interest to readers. But it is the letters themselves which will be relished by the exercised people of God. Like other books of letters it can be taken up and put down at will, as the letters are often quite distinct from one another, though in some instances a subject is followed through in more than one letter. Though not reaching the spiritually elevated tone of Rutherford’s Letters, which are in themselves unique, yet it compares favourably with Newton’s Cardiphonia, and other similar volumes of letters.
D.B.M.
AN EARNEST MINISTRY by John Angell James. Banner of Truth Trust, 295 pp, £7.95.
The Banner of Truth is to be commended for the re-issuing of this volume on the ministry. It’s full title is “An Earnest Ministry. The Want of the Times”. If John Angell James had reason to lament a century and a half ago the lack in his day of an earnest ministry how much more in our time. In this volume he points preachers to their high calling as ambassadors for Christ. Referring to the words in common use, “Be in earnest,” he says: “What distinctness of aim, what fixedness of purpose, what resoluteness of will, what diligence, patience and perseverance in action, are implied or expressed in these last three words.” If this is true in relation to ordinary employments, “how strictly does this apply to the ministry of God’s Word, which relates to the most momentous matters that can engage the human understanding.” After opening up the nature of earnestness he goes on to apply it to preaching and to the pastorate.
He gives examples of earnestness in the ministry and closes the book by showing how earnestness is to be obtained. It would be good if every minister in the nation would read this volume, and be stirred up to seek the earnestness of which John Angell James speaks and seeks to elucidate. We recommend the book highly.
D.B.M.