With An Everlasting Love, Selected Sermons of Rev Hugh M Cartwright, published by Reformation Press, 219 pages, hardback £19.50, paperback £11.70. Here are 14 sermons from Mr Cartwright’s Edinburgh ministry, prefaced by a brief biographical sketch, based on the obituary which appeared in an earlier issue of this Magazine. The sermons include five which expound successive parts of the passage: 1 John 1:1-2:6, a further four on the “warrants to believe” from The Sum of Saving Knowledge, and finally the sermons Mr Cartwright preached on the last Sabbath he was able to conduct public worship.
It is an indication of how well the sermons published here were spoken originally that the publisher can state that they appear here with a minimum of editing. While the sermons contain much fine doctrine and exposition, there is also appropriate application.
The first sermon, which gives the book its title, is obviously based on Jeremiah 31:3. The divisions of the sermon are: “The Lord’s everlasting love for each one of His people”, “The Lord’s appearance to those He loves”, and “The drawing which expresses and confirms God’s love to His people”. The preacher stresses that people “cannot reason their way” to God “with their own intellect”. For “we cannot know God unless He reveals Himself”. Again he stresses that we will not come to God without being “drawn” as Jeremiah was. He adds, “That should be an encouragement to anyone who feels drawn to the Saviour – that feeling didn’t come from yourself, it wasn’t your own initiative, it’s the doing of the Lord. . . . People come because they are drawn. They don’t help themselves to come . . . they are drawn. Their desires, their endeavours, their prayers, their longings, are all expressive of the fact that they are being drawn to the Lord, by the Lord.”
Another sermon is headed: “Repentance causing joy in heaven”, on Luke
1The books reviewed here are available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
15:7. The preacher points out that repentance is “something that is wrought in the soul by God. The significant thing about repentance is that it is a turning to God – a turning to God from idols, a turning to God from sin. God becomes the great reality to the repenting sinner. The God who was despised, the God who was forgotten, the God who was rebelled against – He becomes God to the person. He becomes a reality to the person. And because of that, the sinner comes to see his sin in a true light.”
For his final sermon, entitled “How long halt ye between two opinions?”, Mr Cartwright took as his text 1 Kings 18:21. His concluding paragraph emphasises that we must not think “the Bible presents these things to us in an indifferent manner, as if it doesn’t matter really to us whether people respond believingly, obediently, or not. No, God is commanding sinners to repent. . . . There is an urgency in the matter. . . . When will you turn to the Lord in repentance? We have every encouragement in the Word of God to do so. God presents Himself in the most attractive of lights to sinners . . . revealing that He is a God of mercy, a God with whom there is forgiveness for sinners, a God who will receive those who turn to Him – however long they have been halting between two opinions, however long they have been walking in the ways of the world. But the Lord is putting that before us with a sense of urgency.”
These printed sermons expound the Word of God in a reverent, profitable and readable way. That will not surprise those who heard Mr Cartwright in the flesh. One wishes the book a wide circulation and hopes that it will prove, through the Lord’s blessing, profitable to many readers.
Sermons on Titus, by John Calvin, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 293 pages, £15.00.
As the translator, Robert White, brings out in his introduction, “Calvin’s first work on the Pastoral Epistles took the form of a commentary on 1 and 2 Timothy, published in 1548. A separate commentary on Titus appeared in early 1550. It was not until September 1554 that the Reformer, in the course of his regular preaching duties in Geneva, began to expound the first of the Pastoral Epistles, followed by the second in April 1555 and by the third – Titus – in August of that year.”
Those sermons, we are also informed, were all taken down in shorthand by Denis Raguenier, and all three sermon sets were published in one volume in 1561. The present volume of Calvin’s sermons on the Epistle to Titus has been newly translated from the French edition of 1561. After Calvin’s brief outline of the Epistle, there are 17 sermons, along with the preacher’s prayers before and after the sermon (each of these was the same prayer on every occasion).
In his Introduction, Dr White gives a helpful outline of the Epistle. He also helpfully explains that “the preacher frequently quotes Scripture from memory or else is content to paraphrase it, not always in the same form; in every case I have translated the text as he cites it”. The translator also states that he has “not attempted to soften the barbs directed by Calvin either at the Roman Catholic Church – chiefly its hierarchy – or other opponents who, to the Reformer’s chagrin, were sometimes to be found in Geneva itself”.
The sermons themselves, as one would expect, bring out the practical nature of Calvin’s teaching. By way of example, in commenting on what is required of preachers in applying the teaching of Paul to people in different stations in life, he says, “We must teach fathers how to control their children, and children, how to obey their fathers and mothers. We must tell husbands how to live peaceably with their wives, and wives, how to live peaceably with their husbands. Servants should learn that they are to be trustworthy in serving their masters, and masters should be restrained in case they feel free to do whatever they like, or to act cruelly and thus misuse that power. They should be content with the privilege of having authority over reasonable creatures. Thus the apostle briefly explains God’s teaching, in order to show that its purpose is not to tickle our ears but to build us up in all goodness. Let us keep that thought firmly in mind” (p 196).
In explaining how Paul, who lived such a strict life as a Pharisee, could say, “We ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Tts 3:3), Calvin explains, “Thus, despite the fact that Paul did not live a profligate life while he was an unbeliever and an enemy of the gospel, he was driven by many evil desires, as he confesses in the seventh chapter of Romans. There he says that he thought so highly of himself that he considered himself righteous, for he did not understand what the law meant when it said, ‘You shall not covet’ (Rom 7:7-9).
“He was content to have men’s esteem and to know that he had done no wrong or anything deserving blame. Yet he had not examined his conscience or probed his hidden sins; he was blinded instead by hypocrisy, being all the time puffed up and drunk with pride. It was on this that he based his righteousness. When he realised, however, that God’s law is more than an outward code of conduct sufficient to avoid men’s censure, but that it must reform all our thoughts and feelings, requiring perfect righteousness worthy of the angels, then the apostle saw that within him there was nothing but uncleanness. So he tells us that he forsook even the righteousness of the law which he thought he possessed” (p 240).
The Epistle to Titus is of course a Pastoral Epistle and, as such, it has a
particular message for pastors but, as it has all to do with the glorious message of Christ which pastors were and are to deliver, it has relevance for all. And those sermons, which are presented in a clear and very readable manner, are recommended for everyone who desires a clear insight into this brief but very rich Epistle.
(Rev) W A Weale