Book Excerpts

We have heard with our ears, O God, Our fathers have told us, the deeds You did in their days, In days of old. —Psalm 44:1 (NKJV). The early years of the Free Church of Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century produced literature of enduring value for the Christian church. Much of that emanated from the […]

The following constitutes chapter 14 (pages 333–362) in J. C. Ryle’s Knots Untied:  Being Plain Statements on Disputed Points in Religion, From the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman   Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.—Exod. 20:8. THERE is a subject in the present day which demands the serious attention of all professing Christians […]

The following is from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1541 ed.), Chapter 3, ‘The Law’, and the section on the Fourth Commandment. Note also the addendum, featuring a selection from Iain H. Murray’s booklet Rest in God: And a Calamity in Contemporary Christianity which notes how Calvin’s thinking on the Sabbath developed from […]

The following is taken from William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour, pages 119–121. There is a law in wrestling which must be observed. If a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strive lawfully, 2 Timothy 2:5. He alludes to the Roman games, to which there were judges appointed […]

The following excerpt is from George Newton’s exposition of John 17:24 in the volume George Newton on John 17. DOCTRINE: It is the will of Jesus Christ that all that are his own by the donation of the Father shall be in heaven where he is. There are two things in the doctrine which I […]

The following excerpt is from D. C. Macnicol’s book, Master Robert Bruce: Minister in the Kirk of Edinburgh. THE public life of Master Robert Bruce in the city of Edinburgh was cast in troublous times. His ministry in the Church of St Giles had an influence which was quite unique, and the voice which found […]

The following is the text of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s address at the 1975 Puritan Conference, entitled ‘The Christian and the State in Revolutionary Times’: The French Revolution and After. This address appears in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors.   Our object in studying this subject of the Christian and the State in Revolutionary Times […]

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 2 of Iain H. Murray’s The Forgotten Spurgeon (pages 46–64). Mr Spurgeon is a Calvinist, which few of the dissenting ministers in London now are. He preaches salvation, not of man’s free will, but of the Lord’s good will, which few in London, it is to be feared, […]

The following excerpt is from Chapter IV of Robert H. Ireland’s Light from Calvary: The Seven Last Words of Jesus, first published in 1873 and out this summer in a Banner edition.   And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, […]

The following excerpt is from C. H. Spurgeon’s Pictures from Pilgrim’s Progress: A Commentary on Portions of John Bunyan’s Immortal Allegory, forthcoming in summer 2024. WHEN Christian and Hopeful left the Delectable Mountains to pursue their way towards the Celestial City the shepherds bade them ‘Beware of the Flatterer.’ They learned afterwards, by sad experience, […]

This is the text of an address delivered at the Leicester Ministers’ Conference, 28 April, 2012. It is included, along with four other addresses, in Iain H. Murray’s Evangelical Holiness and Other Addresses. J. Gresham Machen once wrote: ‘If we are going to avoid controversy, we might as well close our Bibles; for the New […]

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 2 of Archibald Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience. That conviction of sin is a necessary part of experimental religion, all will admit; but there is one question respecting this matter, concerning which there may be much doubt; and that is, whether a law-work, prior to regeneration, is necessary; […]

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 2 of Archibald Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience. It is an interesting question whether now there are any persons sanctified from the womb. If the communication of grace ever took place at so early a period of human existence, there is no reason why it should not now […]

There is a great lack of clarity on the subject of the place of God’s law in the life of the believer. One man who sought to address this topic was Ernest Kevan, whose biography the Trust publishes. The following excerpt from the book describes how Kevan brought a Reformed view of God’s law to […]

The following summary of Ernest Kevan’s book The Grace of Law: a Study in Puritan Theology is an appendix in Paul E. Brown’s Ernest Kevan: Leader in Twentieth Century. THE PUBLISHED VERSION OF Dr Kevan’s thesis is a volume of just under three hundred pages. With its many quotations and footnotes it appears quite formidable. […]

To assert that the message of the cross is wholly one of divine love (as some have done) is to destroy its meaning. For it is only in the recognition of the holiness of God that the sufferings of Christ, which brought forth the cry, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me,’ can […]

The following is the first part of Sibbes’s sermon The Tender Heart, which is published with three other sermons as Josiah’s Reformation in the Puritan Paperback series. “And as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, so shall ye say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel […]

The following excerpt is from The Mysteries of Christianity: Revealed Truths Expounded and Defended, ‘Lecture 6: The Trinity’. This post is the second part of the chapter, and it is recommended that the reader begins with the first part, on the mystery of God’s unity. Having made these remarks on the unity of God in […]

The following excerpt is from The Mysteries of Christianity: Revealed Truths Expounded and Defended, ‘Lecture 6: The Trinity’. ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.’ —Deut. 6:4. ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ —Matt. […]

The following excerpt is the text of Chapter 5, ‘How to Meditate on Heavenly Things’ in Spiritual-Mindedness, a Puritan Paperback by John Owen which has been abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law. The unabridged text of this treatise, originally entitled The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded, is contained in […]

The following excerpt is from George Smeaton’s Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement (pp. 157–160). The third exclamation of the conscious sin-bearer was the cry, “My God, My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46.) It was like all His sayings, according to truth; and it becomes us carefully to investigate its import and significance. […]

The following is taken from Thomas Brooks, The Secret Key to Heaven: The Vital Importance of Private Prayer (Puritan Paperbacks). After detailing the great privilege of private prayer, and why it is of the essence of the true Christian life, he anticipates and answers several common objections to its practice: First Objection. But many will […]

The following excerpt is Chapter 2, ‘The Spirit of God’, in The Holy Spirit by John Owen. This Puritan Paperback title is abridged and made easy to read from Owen’s Pneumatologia or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, which is 650 pages in the third volume of Owen’s Works. The Holy Spirit has many names […]

The following address, published in Knowing the Times: Addresses Delivered on Various Occasions, 1942–1977, was given at a conference of leaders of the Crusaders’ Union, Sion College, London, on 7 February, 1942. The presentation of the gospel is a subject which is always important. It is always important because of the eternal consequences that depend […]

The following was given as a radio address for the BBC in Wales, 25 June, 1944 and is featured in Knowing the Times: Addresses Delivered on Various Occasions, 1942–1977. Nothing is more significant of the great change which has happened in the field of theology during the past twenty years than the place now afforded, […]