Topic Archives: History & Biography

When Philip Henry’s mother lay dying of the consumption that was to remove her from this life on the 6th March 1645, she said to those around her, ‘My head is in heaven, and my heart is in heaven; it is but one step more, and I shall be there too.’ It was a sentiment […]

You could not ignore or overlook Rowland Hill. He was not that kind of person. To most of his fellow-Anglicans Rowland Hill was a rogue elephant or a bete noire, to Evangelical Anglicans like Charles Simeon of Cambridge University an embarrassment, to Baptists an object of suspicion as he often treated them with disdain, but […]

Under God the Haldane brothers began a remarkable spiritual movement in Scotland at the close of the eighteenth century. With Robert‘s wealth and drive and James’s preaching abilities, and with a talented band of enthusiastic colleagues, they made evangelistic tours, founded tabernacles and independent churches on Congregational lines and established a seminary that sent out […]

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born at ‘Grasmere’ near Lexington, Kentucky, on 5th November, 1851.1 There flowed in his veins the blood of the staunch English Puritans who withstood the oppression of the Stuart kings and the blood of the Ulster-Scotch who first settled in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania and in the up-country of Virginia. […]

Luther stood before church and emperor at Worms and his words cannot be forgotten: ‘Here I stand; I can do no other; God help me.’ Calvin invited an infuriated mob to shed his blood. John Knox rebuffed the queen and her court in Scotland. Courageous actions by courageous men — for courage is one of […]

Thomas Jolly is representative of the large number of Puritan pastors who left no books by which posterity might be reminded of them, but who were neverthe­less in their own day eminent in spirituality and preach­ing power. We need to remember that the literary remains of Puritans which have been reprinted only represent a comparatively […]

Fifty years or so ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone who could recognize the name John Owen. Today, he is regularly quoted from pulpits and in articles as though his name were a household word. This is even more surprising because almost everybody who mentions him adds, ‘But he is not light […]

David Brainerd was an 18th Century American missionary of Reformed beliefs. We say American but Brainerd lived before the Declaration of Independence and so, like his contemporaries, thought of himself chiefly as an Englishman. The struggle between the colonial powers of England, France, and Spain raged throughout his lifetime. In his short life, he travelled […]

It is the centenary of the end of the First World War. Let us remind ourselves of that fearful period in British history of valiant courage, self-sacrifice, unimaginable suffering and death. What can we learn from it? Five of the Causes that Triggered the War 1. Mutual Defence Alliances Countries throughout Europe made mutual defence agreements […]

Jacques Lefevre has been variously called ‘The Pioneer of the Reformation in France’, ‘The Patriarch of the Reformers in France’ and ‘The Founder of the French Reformation’. Why then is so little written and known about a man to whom such titles are given by historians? There are two probable reasons. Firstly, the dreadful persecutions […]

The arrival of the Autumn season, with the month of October in particular, ushers in a host of events, decorations, recipes—even scents—for occupants in the Northern hemisphere. Many prepare their homes both outside and in, eager for what the season will entail, while reflecting on what past Autumns have brought. This is especially true for […]

Augustine, the son of a Roman official, was born at Tagaste in North Africa in A.D. 354. Endowed with brilliant talents, strongly motivated by vain glory and the desire of praise, he was by the age of nineteen studying and teaching rhetoric in the ancient city of Carthage. Here, with his mind bent on the […]

I met Dick  in September 1961 when he took part in the opening exercises in Philadelphia of Westminster Theological Seminary’s academic year.  He prayed for the almost 300 students who were  the sum total of the student body at that time. He had driven there from his first congregation, Sixth Reformed Church in Paterson New […]

At last ‘Banner’ have published an edition of this greatly valued Christian classic, and have done so in a format worthy of the lasting spiritual value of the work. John Bunyan (1628-1688) wrote voluminously, his collected making three portly volumes in the definitive nineteenth-century edition (available in facsimile reprint from the Banner of Truth Trust). […]

It’s impossible to measure the influence of Richard Baxter over four centuries. His works remain in print and are widely read, which shouldn’t surprise us. J. I. Packer considers him ‘the most outstanding pastor, evangelist, and writer on practical and devotional themes that Puritanism produced,’ listing Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor (1656) as one of the top five books that have influenced him […]