Sermons and Addresses of George Smeaton

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1. 

   @diveindigdeep – September 8, 2022

   George Smeaton was a 19th-century Scottish theologian and scholar. Most known as Professor of New Testament Exegesis at New College in Edinburgh, this was my first time reading his outstanding sermons.

   The Holy Spirit

   His works on the Doctrine of the Atonement and the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit are what many consider to be his best books. In this collection of 13 sermons and addresses, I found his focus on sin and our Triune God to be reflective of this.

   I was most interested to see how Smeaton connects being filled with the Holy Spirit to having the will to do the work of Christ. In fact, a truly witnessing church must be filled with the Holy Spirit. Our work for God should come naturally as our eternal hope is secured. The greatest work would be to pray for the Spirit’s power, that God would be glorified.

   Faith

   I was most fascinated to read Smeaton’s short essay on Faith, as it appeared in The Imperial Bible Dictionary in 1866. Smeaton shows that faith contains the element of trust, and the Bible never backs away from this idea. He furthers that faith also contains the feelings of knowledge and assent, and he ties it to our experience of justification and our participation in the fellowship of Christ.

   The latter half of the book contains chapters around the pastor: The True Preacher, A Faithful Minister of Christ, and The Confessing of Christ before Men, and the Promised Reward. While he was a scholar and his legacy lies in his writings, it is clear that he had a heart for the church and her shepherds. Read this book and find a man of God filled with fervor, and extraordinary devotion to Christ.

   I received a media copy of Sermons and Addresses of George Smeaton and this is my honest review.

2. 

   Richard C Ross – February 27, 2025

   One has the impression that George Smeaton would have been a most delightful fellow to have met. There is a winsomeness that glows in all his writings, whether in the more formal style of his two great volumes on the Atonement or in the warmth and personableness of his sermons.

   This small volume of sermons and address is a mixed bag of the precious and the decidedly anachronistic. In the first category undoubtedly go the sermons. These evince the true pastoral heart of one who knows his own soul and has the spiritual skill to search the souls of his hearers or readers. The sermon on ‘The Lord’s Jealousy against Backsliders’ is an especial gem. This is a model of gospel preaching and a glorious exposition of the believer’s unimpeachable security in Christ.

   My appetite wasn’t so whetted by some of the ‘Addresses’. Here the vocabulary is less direct and clear than in the sermons, the method at times unnecessarily lumbersome and the form diffuse – for example the otherwise excellent piece on ‘Faith’. But it is a great pity that the longest item is the wholly anachronistic defence of the (indefensible) principle of ‘Establishments’ (an argument as anachronistic as the author’s facial hair). The argument is based on the premise that ‘The State, considered in its corporate character is a moral person’. If so, this ‘person’ is a Hydra. The case for Independency is nowhere seriously considered, the Scriptures are nowhere consulted and the case for Independency is high-handedly dismissed as a construct of ‘the untaught fanatical sects of the Commonwealth times’. He surely cannot be thinking of John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, John Bunyan, John Milton and co!

   Overall, a very nice little volume and, if it is a curate’s egg its good parts unquestionably predominate.