A Review Article by Roy Middleton
Seven Leaders: Pastors and Preachers, by Iain H Murray, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 293 pages, £15.00, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
Iain Murray’s latest book provides interesting and useful sketches of the lives and witness of seven pastors and preachers. He has already written full-scale biographies of three of them and edited the diary of a fourth. The majority of the sketches printed in this book were given as addresses to students for the ministry at the Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne. Another was given at the Crieff Fellowship in 2009 and the remainder were written specifically for this volume. In his introduction Mr Murray states,
“While my hope is that this book will assist younger men called to the ministry of the gospel, it is not meant for them alone. All Christians ought to be able to pass on what ‘we have heard and known and our fathers have told us’ (Ps 78:3). When history is forgotten, it is the later generations who suffer. The past is rich in wisdom and will never be out of date” (p xii). The seven leaders whose witness is detailed in this book are John Elias, Andrew Bonar, Archibald Brown, Kenneth A MacRae, D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, William J Grier and John MacArthur. Due to space considerations, even in a review article, we will only consider the three who are perhaps the least known.
John Elias (1774-1841).1 The first of the leaders Mr Murray deals with is John Elias, the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister, who belonged to the second generation of Methodist leaders. Howell Harris, Daniel Rowland and William Williams were dead before Elias emerged as a preacher in 1794. By then the leadership of Calvinistic Methodism had devolved on men like Thomas Charles (1755-1814) of Bala. Though Elias preached throughout Wales, he was a minister on the Island of Anglesey; following Thomas Charles’ death he became the leader of the Calvinistic Methodists.
Mr Murray stresses his outstanding gifts as a preacher in times of revival. He writes, “His solemnity was intense. No sermon of his would ever include a light word or anything that would induce a smile” (p 15). However, alongside his preaching to awaken sinners was the appeal of the gospel. Mr Murray adds, “Men felt the compassion of Christ in what Elias preached. Those who heard him have said that he was never more animated than when he was magnifying the love of God” (p 16). A contemporary, Edward Morgan, said of him: “In all my journeys throughout Wales, I have not heard of any one minister whose preaching has been so universally blessed to the conversion of sinners”.2
The power of Elias’s prayer and preaching is nowhere better illustrated than when, in 1802, he brought to an end the Sabbath-breaking Rhuddlan fair and market in Flintshire. Harvest time was approaching, and some of the roughest in the land were looking for part-time work; while for others it was just a day for pleasure and alcohol.
R Tudur Jones details how Elias, standing on the steps of the New Inn, dealt with this blatant Sabbath breaking: “Elias took out his Bible and read a portion, as only he could. Then he engaged in prayer, a prayer of thankfulness to God that He had not destroyed the sinful world in his wrath, and a
1For fuller accounts of John Elias, see Edward Morgan, John Elias: Life, Letters and Essays, Banner of Truth, 1973; John Morgan Jones and William Morgan in The Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales, Banner of Truth, 2008, vol 2, pp 633-753.
2Morgan, John Elias, p 123.
prayer of intense intercession for those who were desecrating the Sabbath that day. And as he prayed for them, his tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Then he took as his text, Exodus 34:21: ‘Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest’. It was a well-chosen arrow aimed right at the heart of that fair. As he developed his theme, the significance and the sanctity of the Sabbath rest, the tension of the sermon mounted until he reached a crescendo with the accusation, emphasised by his outstretched arm and bitter tears, ‘You thieves! You thieves! You thieves! You have stolen my God’s Sabbath! You have taken the day of my Lord!’ One who was present reported that these words ‘struck the crowd like a thunderbolt and filled every mind with fear and trembling’. And the results were startling: ‘I heard many of those who were present saying that they would not for all the world go there or anywhere else to seek hire on a Sunday; and such a fair was never held there afterwards nor anywhere else in Flintshire’.” Tudur Jones adds, “It is . . . a matter of wonder that one preacher, facing a mob bent on pleasure and more than a little drunk, could destroy the institution of the Sunday fair in a whole county with one sermon. It is a remarkable proof of the power of the preached word in 1802 and of the stature of the preacher.”3
During the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, Wales was the scene of considerable controversy regarding the atonement. It was a time when Calvinistic belief was being challenged. Elias took a prominent part in the second phase4 of these debates between 1811 and his death in 1841 when the controversy was amongst those claiming to be Calvinists. He defended the doctrine of particular redemption, that was embodied in the Westminster Standards, against those who were wishing to change the testimony of Calvinistic Methodism in the direction of Amyraldianism.5 Elias was involved in drawing up the 1823 Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists. In the eighteenth article, that dealt with redemption, a section of which is printed below, he insisted that the text in brackets was included with the explicit intention of excluding Amyraldianism:
“In an eternal decree and council between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for the redemption of sinners, the Son was chosen to be the Redeemer, and it was ordained that he should assume human nature, in order to become
our kinsman, with the right to redeem His brethren. It was ordained that His Person should stand in the stead of those persons (and those only) who had been given Him to redeem.6
Mr Murray deals very ably with this controversy (pp 27-38) and helpfully points out that caution is needed when reading Owen Thomas’s book on The Atonement Controversy. Thomas was sympathetic to John Elias’ opponents who wished the New System to prevail as they thought the older Calvinism hindered evangelism. In order to defend their Amyraldianism, Thomas incorrectly asserted that Elias was prone to Hyper-Calvinism (pp 28-29).7
Archibald G Brown (1844-1922).8 Archibald Geikie Brown was the son of a wealthy Evangelical London banker. He was converted at the age of 16 through the influence of his Sabbath School teacher, Ann Bigg (whom he later married) and a Church of England lay preacher, Stevenson Arthur Blackwood. His father was attached to the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and, as soon as the Metropolitan Tabernacle was opened, in March 1861, he took a whole front pew in the lower gallery. A year later his 18-year-old son went to Spurgeon’s vestry, after a Thursday evening service, and asked him about entering the Pastor’s College. Spurgeon agreed and he was one of the youngest men accepted for ministerial training. At that time classes were held in the basement rooms of the Tabernacle.
Whilst he was still just 22, in consequence of Spurgeon’s recommendation, Brown was called to Stepney Green Tabernacle in 1867. It could seat 800 but when Brown went there were 76 members. Brown was to witness an awakening under his ministry; soon multitudes were attending his preaching and a new building was necessary. This was opened in 1872 and was called the East London Tabernacle; it was capable of holding 3000. Mr Murray provides a stirring account of his life, in which there was blessing on his ministry; 5800 were to join his church over his 30 years at the East London Tabernacle.
Simultaneously with his pastoral ministry he led mission work among the poor, being described by The Daily Telegraph newspaper as possessing “a
6The History, Constitution, Rules of Discipline and Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales, Mold, Third Edition, 1840, pp 56-57
7Owen Thomas, The Atonement Controversy in Welsh Theological Literature and Debate 1707-1841, Banner of Truth, 2002. John Aaron, the translator of the book, in his introduction points out Thomas’ sympathy with Elias’ opponents. Mr Murray also explains that John Morgan Jones and William Morgan in The Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales followed Owen Thomas’ incorrect interpretation on the issue in dispute. In consequence there has arisen a literature containing a misrepresentation of John Elias which has been commonly accepted.
8Iain Murray’s 400-page account of his life is Archibald G Brown: Spurgeon’s Successor, Banner of Truth Trust, 2011.
larger practical acquaintance with the homes, and the social horrors of the foulest corners of the East of London than anyone who could well be cited”. Yet these were also years of personal sadness in his home due to the successive deaths of three wives. His second wife, Sarah Hargreaves, died in childbirth; she was 25 and he was just 31. His mother took care of his six children from his first marriage. Four days later Brown wrote, “Broken with sore grief, I went over to the Metropolitan Tabernacle, I could not preach but I thought I could worship, and how amazed I was to find he [Spurgeon] had prepared a sermon for me”.9
Archibald Brown stood side by side with Spurgeon during the Downgrade Controversy of the late 1880s, which, in many ways, was the English Baptist equivalent of the Declaratory Act movement, that led to the formation of the Free Presbyterian Church. It will be of interest to Free Presbyterians that both Brown and Spurgeon were opposed to the use of instrumental music in public worship.10 When Spurgeon died in 1892 Brown, his closest friend, was called on to read the Scriptures at the funeral service at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and to speak at the cemetery to the 1200 that had gathered. Brown was in the first of the 39 carriages that took the leading mourners to Norwood Cemetery. Speaking of Spurgeon and Brown, Mr Murray observes, “They both stood for convictions which were already a minority position in the religious world of 1892. A general departure from biblical Christianity was occurring in Britain. . . . By the time Brown died in 1922 he belonged to a remnant. But it was a remnant which shared the conviction Spurgeon expressed in the words, ‘I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years, but the more distant future shall vindicate me'” (p 75).
William J Grier (1902-1983). William James Grier was born on 18 November 1902 and grew up on a farm in County Donegal, Ireland. Whilst he was a Classics student at Queen’s University Belfast, he came to see the necessity of a changed life, through the witness of a Christian student friend who spoke to him of his need of a saving knowledge of Christ. Mr Grier was to date his conversion to a mission meeting in October 1922. He studied theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, between 1923 and 1925 under J Gresham Machen, Robert Dick Wilson and Geerhardus Vos. Also studying at Princeton at that time was John Murray, then a Free Presbyterian student.
9The sermon was preached on 24 September 1876 and is printed in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol 22, no 1316, pp 541-552. Spurgeon’s text was Revelation 7:14. The title of the sermon was, “Why the heavenly robes are white”. The first sentence reads, “Our curiosity enquires into the condition of those newly entered heaven. Like fresh stars they have lit up the celestial firmament with an added splendour.”
10For details see Iain Murray, Archibald G Brown: Spurgeon’s Successor, Appendix 3, pp 375-391.
At Princeton, Grier witnessed Gresham Machen’s fight for the Reformed faith within the Northern Presbyterian Church in America. On returning for a compulsory year at the Irish Presbyterian College in Belfast he had to engage in the same fight that he had seen in America – for the gospel, against unscriptural teaching in the college. After three weeks in the classroom, listening in silence to things he knew were wrong, he began to challenge one of his professors, James Ernest Davey.
He later became the chief witness for the prosecution in an attempt by an older minister, James Hunter, to discipline Davey for heresy. When the charges against Davey were defeated by a vote of 707 to 82 in the General Assembly, Mr Grier regarded the verdict as a declaration of institutional unorthodoxy by the Church and resigned. He then became one of the founding ministers of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Ireland and ministered in what became the Stranmillis congregation. In addition, he managed the Evangelical Bookshop in central Belfast and edited the Church’s Evangelical Presbyterian magazine. After a ministry of almost 52 years, he retired in 1979 and died on 6 August 1983.11
Mr Grier’s bookshop in Belfast was an institution. Iain Murray wrote at the time Mr Grier died that in the 1950s his bookshop was practically the only agency in Britain that was vigorously advocating the importance of Reformed literature. A decade later when the reviewer, along with other young Christians in the early 1960s, wanted books published by the Reformed publishing houses in America, it was to Mr Grier’s bookshop at 15 College Square East that we went. Our debt to him was considerable. Mr Murray concluded his 1983 obituary of James Grier with these words: “Finally, we think of the words of A A Hodge which more than once we heard urged by Mr Grier: ‘We shall not meet together here anymore. Let us pledge one another, as we part, to reassemble in heaven.'”12
Iain Murray’s biographical and historical writings are invariably both interesting and edifying. Accordingly, we recommend this book to our readers. The accounts of the three lives I have highlighted, along with sketches of Andrew Bonar, Kenneth MacRae, and D M Lloyd-Jones, will be
11It is pleasing to see this account of James Grier and the stand he took for biblical Christianity in Ulster. Iain Murray acknowledges his debt to the recent history of the denomination of which Mr Grier was a founding father, Ernest C Brown, By Honour and Dishonour: The Story of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Bookshop-Belfast, 2016. Brown’s account gives more details of Mr Grier’s involvement than his own history of the denomination: W J Grier, The Origin and Witness of the Irish Evangelical Church, Evangelical Bookshop, Belfast, 1945.
12Iain Murray, “A Greatly-loved Christian Leader Goes Home”, Banner of Truth magazine, issue 241, (October 1983), p 5.
appreciated. The final biographical sketch is of John MacArthur and seems a little out of place in this group. He is the only American and the only living subject. Doubtless Mr Murray has included him due to his contemporary stand for the integrity and the inerrancy of Scripture. As ever the book is produced to the high standards we have come to expect from the Banner of Truth. The notes to the text are endnotes rather than footnotes. Due to the importance of much of the material in Iain Murray’s notes this appears to the reviewer to be a mistake.13