‘Eminent Christians’ Category

One of the most remarkable Baptists of twentieth-century Ontario was a woman, Caroline Holman, the widow of C.J. Holman, a prominent Baptist lawyer. Her husband played an important role in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, but died not long after. She lived into her nineties, dying in 1962. She was a staunch supporter of missions and prolific writer of Christian articles, and served as the first president of the Women’s Missionary Society, formed in 1926 during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy as the former Women’s Baptist Home Missionary Society of Ontario West divided that year. She was one of the few people who publicly disagreed with T.T. Shields (1873–1955)—which she did in the early 1930s—and maintained his respect afterwards. See The Regular Baptist Call: A Testimony, 36, no.9 (September 1962), for a remembrance of her life and service. A biography of Mrs. Holman is a desideratum.

If, as Jonathan Edwards maintained in his Religious Affections (1746), “the essence of all true religion lies in holy love,” then Andrew Fuller’s Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce, A.M. (1800) is a biographical demonstration of this proposition, for, as Fuller asserted, “the governing principle in Mr. Pearce, beyond all doubt, was holy love.”

I just posted the schedule for our 6th annual conference. The theme this year is “Andrew Fuller and His Friends.” As usual, a stellar line-up of speakers are slated to speak on a range for interesting topics related to our conference them. Please watch this website for more details about the conference, including registration details.

Information about and audio of previous conferences are available here.

Two quotes from Oliver Hart (1723–95), the first Baptist theologian of the South, that deeply resonate with me:

 “Grant, O Lord!… [w]hen I go to thy house to speak for thee, may I always go full fraught with things divine, and be enabled faithfully and feelingly to dispense the word of life…. Teach me to study thy glory in all I do.” (Oliver Hart, Diary, entry for August 5, 1754)

“If I had not been willing to endure the scoff of the world, I should never have made an open profession of the religion of Jesus; much less should I have become a preacher of his much-despised gospel.” (Oliver Hart, Dancing Exploded [1778])

In many ways, C.H. Spurgeon’s ministry was nothing less than amazing: the crowded auditories that assembled to hear the “Cambridgeshire lad” in the 1850s and that continued unabated till the end of his ministry in the early 1890s; the remarkable conversions that occurred under his preaching and the numerous churches in metropolitan London and the county of Surrey that owed their origins to his Evangelical activism; the solid Puritan divinity that undergirded his Evangelical convictions-something of a rarity in the heyday of the Victorian era during which he ministered for that was a day imbued with the very different ambience of Romanticism; and finally, the ongoing life of his sermons that are still being widely read around the world today and deeply appreciated by God’s children.

What accounts for all of this? Numerous reasons could be cited, many of which may indeed play a secondary role in his ministerial success. For example, in a fairly recent biography of Spurgeon, Mike Nicholls emphasizes the importance of Spurgeon’s voice to his success as a preacher.  He possessed, Nicholls writes, “one of the great speaking voices of his age, musical and combining compass, flexibility and power.”(1) Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), the son of one of Spurgeon’s fellow Baptist pastors and who served as the Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916, testifies to this fact. Birrell records that when he went to hear Spurgeon preach once, the only seat he could find was in the topmost gallery, in what the English call “the gods.” He was squished between a woman eating an orange and a man sucking peppermints.  Finding this combination of odours unendurable, he was about to leave, when, he said, “I heard a voice and forgot all else.”(2) But Spurgeon himself looked to quite a different source for the blessings that attended his ministry.  In a speech that he gave at a celebration held in honour of his fiftieth birthday in 1884, the Baptist preacher forthrightly declared that the blessing he had enjoyed in his pastorate “must be entirely attributed to the grace of God, and to the working of God’s Holy Spirit… Let that stand as a matter, not only taken for granted, but as a fact distinctly recognized.”(3) In other words: behind Spurgeon’s successes as a minister of the gospel was his walk with God.

1. C. H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot, Oxfordshire: Baptist Historical Society, 1992), 37.
2. Cited E.J. Poole-Connor, Evangelicalism in England (London: The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, 1951), 226-227.
3. C.H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, compiled Susannah Spurgeon and J.W. Harrald (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), IV, 243.

Lavenham parish church is reckoned to be one of the most beautiful Anglican church buildings in the entire county of Suffolk, something that I can attest from personal experience, having visited the church last September. For a hundred years, from 1578 to 1679, the church was served by a succession of Puritan pastors, the last of whom was the famous William Gurnall, the author of The Christian in Complete Armour (1661).

Now, the first Puritan leader in the Suffolk town was Henry Coppinger, Lavenham church’s longest-serving pastor, who was there from 1578 to 1622. When his father, also Henry Coppinger, was dying, he asked the younger Coppinger, one of eleven sons, what course of life he would follow. When the latter told him he intended to be a minister of gospel, the elder Coppinger was immensely pleased, for he said, “what shall I say to Martin Luther when I shall see him in heaven, and he knows that God gave me eleven sons, and I made not one of them a minister?”

PS One of the great joys at Southern, where I teach, is serving with Dr Mark Coppenger. Drafting this mini-post I was obviously struck by the similarity of his name with that of Henry Coppinger (a difference of an i/e, easily accounted for). Maybe I am serving with a descendant of this Puritan leader who helped prepare the way for the great Gurnall!

Broadman & Holman have been publishing a new series of monographs on the history of Baptists entitled “Studies in Baptist Life and Thought.” These monographs explore Baptist life together and Baptist thought, and are vital reading for anyone who loves the truths that Baptists have lived and died for. Given the many significant changes that the world is undergoing in our day, Baptists are being tempted to divorce themselves from their theological and spiritual roots. Behind this series is the conviction that such would be suicidal and that the volumes in this series will provide a way in which Baptists can learn from the past how to live faithfully for God in the present.

The latest volume in the series is Paul Brewster’s Andrew Fuller: Model Pastor-Theologian, has just been released. Brewster, pastor of Ryker’s Ridge Baptist Church in Madison, Indiana, and a PhD from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, examines Fuller as a pastor and theologian and the way in which he was able to frame a theological perspective in the midst of a very busy pastorate.

In recent years, with the upsurge of interest in Reformed theology, there are a number of theologians who have been the focus of attention, Edwards, for example, or some of the Puritans like Owen. But when it comes to a solid model of Baptist ministry, who do we have? Spurgeon, without a shadow of a doubt. Well, after Spurgeon I would suggest that Fuller is a prime example of what a pastor-theologian looks like. Read Brewster’s book and see for yourself!

You can order from Amazon.com for $16.49.

Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin was recently interviewed by Paul Butler on Moody Radio’s Prime Time America about the “Calvin for the 21st Century Conference” sponsored by the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI, August 27th – 29th.  The part with Dr. Haykin begins at about the 1:50 mark.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Dr. Haykin serves as co-editor, along with Joel Beeke, of the Reformation Heritage Book series “Profiles in Reformed Spirituality”.  The newest volume in the series is by Thabiti Anyabwile and focuses on the piety of Lemuel Haynes.  To promote this volume and the series of which it is a part, Reformation Heritage Books is randomly giving away five free sets today to those who sign up at Challies.com.

This is a great set.  The volumes are multifunctional. That is, they are the perfect, non-intimidating introductions to people, doctrine, and practice of the reformed tradition. They make excellent short readings for stimulating thought and devotion. They are also good for class texts for giving students an affordable entry point into a given person and time period both primary and secondary treatments in one small book.

If you don’t win the set, You can order the complete set or individual volumes at Reformation Heritage Books.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Soldiers of Christ:  Selections from the Writings of Basil Manly, Sr. & Basil Manly, Jr. was edited by Southern Seminary professor Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin, in conjunction with Dr. Roger D. Duke and Dr. A. James Fuller.  Soldiers of Christ focuses on the writings on the father and son duo without whom, as current SBTS President R. Albert Mohler, Jr. notes in his Foreward, Southern Seminary would not exist.  This work was published by Founders Press and is available from order now from Reformation Heritage Books.

FROM THE BACK COVER:

Basil Manly, Sr. and his son Basil Manly, Jr. played vital roles in shaping a number of the central institutions of the Southern Baptist community in its formative years in the nineteenth century, including the influential Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Undergirding their churchmanship was a vigorous Calvinistic Baptist piety that was expressed in sermons and tracts, hymns and confessional statements, letters and diaries, all of which are represented in this timely volume of selections from their writings. Here we have a wonderful window onto the vista of nineteenth-century Southern Baptist life with all of its glorious strengths as well as its clear failings.

COMMENDATIONS:

“The introductory and biographical essays on the lives of Basil Manly, Sr., and Basil Manly, Jr., as well as the carefully selected collections from their writings found in this volume are wonderful and much-welcomed additions to Baptist studies. I am quite pleased to recommend Soldiers of Christ.”
— David S. Dockery, President, Union University

“The publication of these writings is long overdue and is most welcome, and the editors have done their work well.”
— Gregory A. Wills, Professor of Church History, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Michael Haykin, James Fuller, and Roger Duke have done us a service by introducing the Manlys to a new generation.”
— Nathan Finn, Assistant Professor of Church History, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“A fascinating, moving, and shocking look at piety among Southern Baptists in the middle two-thirds of the nineteenth century.”
—Tom J. Nettles, Professor of Historical Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“A superb collection of well-edited primary sources by two of the most formative shapers of Southern Baptist life in the nineteenth century.”
—Timothy George, Senior Editor of Christianity Today

FROM THE FOREWARD BY R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR.

“Humanly speaking, the formula is easy: no Manlys, no Southern Seminary. This year, as The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary celebrates its sesquicentennial, our indebtedness to the Manlys of South Carolina is increasingly clear. As an institution, our history is inextricably tied to the lives and ministries of Basil Manly, Sr. and Basil Manly, Jr.”

PUBLICATION DETAILS

Published by Founders Press.  240 pages.  Paperback.  2009.

Order here from RHB for $18.00 $12.00 (34% off)

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.