Topic Archives: 19th Century

No one ever became a missionary by a journey across the seas. One shows that one has truly been called to be a missionary by how one lives and speaks where ‘one is at,’ today. Hudson Taylor was one of the greatest missionaries in the whole history of the Christian church. He was born in […]

Mary Moffatt was a remarkable woman. Wife of Robert Moffatt, mother-in-law of David Livingstone, she and her husband served as missionaries in Bechuanaland for 45 years. The early years were hard, their labours resulting in not a single convert. Yet Mary was undaunted. When a friend wrote, asking what useful gift could be sent from […]

I am the Lord—I will not give My praise to graven images—Sing to the Lord a new song—you islands, and all those who dwell on them. Isaiah 42:8-10 After King Kamehameha consolidated his power in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in the early 1800’s, he ruled with unbridled power. The Kapu religious system demanded human sacrifice […]

Charles Hodge (1797-1878) embodied the ethos of Old Princeton, whose two hundredth anniversary we celebrate this year [2012]. Hodge was not the passionate pulpiteer that Princeton’s first professor, Archibald Alexander, was. Nor did he enjoy the sheer brilliance of his celebrated pupil and successor, Benjamin B. Warfield. In the fifty-eight years that Hodge taught at […]

The death of B. B. Warfield in 1921 effectively marked the demise of the old Princeton Theological Seminary, for it was ‘reorganised’ in 1929 along liberal theological lines, but for 110 years its aim had been to produce godly pastors and faithful teachers of God’s Word. This volume* commemorates the efforts of the pious and […]

‘How did we get here?’ is a question that is always relevant and often illuminating. Yet contemporary evangelicals don’t ask it as often as they should. In his book Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858,1 Iain Murray tells a story that helps explain how evangelicals – Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and […]

Hodge lived from 1797 to 1878 and was one of the outstanding theologians of the nineteenth century. In a fragment of autobiography which forms the first chapter of the book, Charles Hodge provides recollections of his family background and early life. Much of the remainder of the book consists of letters and other documents collected […]

Mr. Murray has done the Christian world a great service by writing this biography of Archibald Brown. Mr. Brown was one of the great pastors and preachers of the late 19th and early 20th century yet today he is hardly known. This probably because up to now no complete biography of this life has ever […]

THE ANNUAL EVANGELICAL LIBRARY LECTURE, 2011 This year sees the 250th anniversary of the birth of the pioneer missionary William Carey. On Monday June 6 at the Evangelical Library around 40 people gathered for the Library’s Annual Lecture and to hear Pastor Austin Walker of Crawley give an interesting and stimulating paper on ‘William Carey […]

John Charles Ryle was born on 10th May 1816 at Park House, Macclesfield. His father was the owner of a local silk mill. His mother Susanna was the daughter of the manufacturer Charles Hurt and cousin of Sir Richard Arkwright, a famous industrialist and inventor. John Ryle came from a good Methodist family but he […]

Achill Island lies off the west coast of Ireland. It is a small place, now reached by a bridge from the mainland. In the mid-nineteenth century this island was the scene of a remarkable work of God’s grace in which hundreds of islanders were drawn to saving faith in Christ. The ethos of the island […]

I hope never to forget the night the Lord brought my soul out of bondage into the glorious liberty of the gospel. It was on a Lord’s Day evening. I went in the morning to the house of God in a very distressed state of mind, and remained so all day. The preaching only tended […]

William Knibb was not only a great preacher but he also played a great part in the abolition of slavery. In fact in 1988, on the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery he was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit by the Jamaican government. On 7th September 1803 William Knibb and his twin sister […]

John Milne (1807-68) was a pastor and evangelist who served the Lord in Scotland and India. He was also one of an outstanding group of ministers who God used to bring about a great awakening in Scotland in the early 1840’s. This account was written just after his death by his friend Horatius Bonar. Horatius […]

In 1821 a young clergyman’s son matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford. Amongst the cleverest of his generation, he knew nothing of the wisdom which can only be imparted by the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul. Just previously, another young man, of similar academic capabilities, had graduated with an unexpectedly low third-class degree. […]

Later this month (September 2010) it is expected that John Henry Newman (1801-90) who was made a cardinal of the Roman Catholic church in 1879, will be ‘beatified’ by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to England. That is, Newman will be officially ‘the Blessed…’ and on his way to sainthood, Roman style. This must […]

‘Consider it all joy’ William Carey, the father of modern world missions, was born into a poor family in Northampton, England in 1761. He had no formal education but taught himself to read and write and mastered Latin by the age of twelve. He began his trade in his early teens as a shoemaker and […]

I was born of godly parents on November 9th, 1843, in the village of Hankerton, Wiltshire. My father was a carrier and small farmer, and I was the youngest of nine children. My parents taught me that if I lived to be very old, and then died without repentance, I should go to hell and […]

I have been constrained to consider the crucial importance of humility in the life of the Christian leader. My friend James has been urging on me the value of meditating on the life of Brownlow North, a major evangelist in northern England, Scotland, and Ireland during 1858 and afterwards1. North was the great torchbearer of […]

It was the first day of July 1866. As John Kennedy stood ready to preach on that Sabbath, in the pulpit of his Dingwall church, he gave out as his text: ‘For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better’ (Phil. 1:23). […]

Summary of a 10-minute address at the Banner of Truth Leicester Ministers’ Conference, 2009. One hundred and fifty years ago the Irish province of Ulster came under the powerful influences of the Spirit of God. The spiritual life of churches was revived and their witness to the gospel strengthened. The unconverted were deeply affected by […]

In the spring of 1856 an English lady by the name of Mrs Colville came to Ballymena from Gateshead because she had ‘time and money to spend for God’. She began a programme of house to house visitation with a view to winning souls for Christ. In November she returned to England in low spirits […]

Although the name of Herman Bavinck may be unfamiliar to some readers, his labours have probably affected all those reading these lines. Bavinck’s legacy to the Reformed world, like that of his contemporary, Abraham Kuyper, was disproportionate to the size of his native Netherlands. I write these lines on the eighty-seventh anniversary of Bavinck’s death […]

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Bavinck’s Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the appearance in English of the final volume of his four-volumed Reformed Dogmatics1. The time is ripe, therefore, to get (re)acquainted with Bavinck. Bavinck’s Early Life and Education Herman Bavinck was born in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands, on December 13, […]

‘How Liberal Theology Infected Scotland’ is a deeply instructive short article1 written by R. A. Finlayson, the late professor of Systematic Theology in the Free Church College in Edinburgh. Finlayson attributed the nineteenth century infiltration of Liberalism into a confessional Church to wrong priorities by the leaders. He wrote: …not content with opening three colleges, […]