The Puritans Day by Day, compiled by H J Horn, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 408 pages, £14.00, obtainable from the F P Bookroom.
The Puritans Day by Day contains Puritan quotations for each day of the year. The compiler of this book, Harry John Horn, was born in Poplar, London in 1868 and, after training in Cardiff Baptist College, pastored churches in
7D Silversides, The Free Offer, p 84.
1An extract from the author’s book, Capernaum. It is part of a chapter on “The Leper that Came to Jesus after the Sermon on the Mount”.
South Wales, Northamptonshire and London, before retiring from the ministry in 1935. He is described as a man of “forceful personality and courage”, as well as a “great Bible teacher” and an “enthusiastic seeker of souls for his Master”.
In a Foreword, a Principal W M Clow DD, who seems to have been a contemporary of Harry Horn, describes the volume as a “noble army of memorable aphorisms”, being a “unique selection from a wide range of reading”. These “have been found chiefly in the writings of Puritan worthies, who excelled in their power of deep insight, both in the Word of God and the heart of man, with the rare gift of quaint and distinctive expression”.
Each day has a subject title, below which is a relevant verse of Scripture, and then from six to nine quotations from a wide range of Puritans, several of which are less well known and several, such as Augustine and Luther, who could not strictly be called Puritans. At the conclusion of the book there is a list of the authors as well as an index of Scripture texts and subjects.
As an example of those pages, we find the following among the quotations for January 10, under the title, “The Cross” and the text, “The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14):
“The cross was the first general rendezvous in this world”
Thomas Goodwin.
“There is no tribunal so magnificent, no throne so stately, no show of triumph so distinguished, no chariot so elevated, as is the gibbet on which Christ hath subdued death and the devil”
John Calvin.
“The Church is heir to the cross”
Thomas Adams.
“He suffered not as God, but He suffered who was God”
John Owen.
“The doctrine of the cross of Christ is the substance of the gospel”
Stephen Charnock.
Clow concludes his Foreword with the advice: “Young preachers should keep this volume, with its careful ordering, and its full indices, lying at their right hand, and in days when the mind is dull and the spirit is weary, they will find it to be the brook in the way”. To that it could be added that we have here a book that no exercised Christian would fail to profit from, when reading and meditating on it, day by day.
(Rev) W A Weale