Tag Archives: Sermons

Review: Deliverance to the Captives

Karl Barth (1886–1968) was a Swiss Protestant theologian, known for his involvement in the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, as well as his commentary on Romans and his multi-volume work of systematic theology, Church Dogmatics.

Deliverance to the Captives (1959; Eng. tr., 1978) is a collection of sermons preached at Basel Prison in Barth’s later life. It is one of several small collections of spoken addresses and prayers by a man much better-known for his theological writings. Though Barth mostly wrote, preaching was no small part of his life-work. Those of his spoken addresses that I can find in English are the following:

A Unique Time of God: Karl Barth’s WWI Sermons (2016; sermons preached in 1914)
The Early Preaching of Karl Barth (2009; preached 1917–1920)
Come Holy Spirit (1933; preached 1920–1924)
The Word of God and the Word of Man (1928; lectures given c. 1922)
The Word in This World (2019; preached in 1934)
Prayer and Preaching (1952; seminars given 1947–1949)
Deliverance to the Captives (1978; sermons preached 1954–1959)
Call for God: New Sermons from Basel Prison (1967; preached 1959–1964)

Of these, two slender volumes contain Barth’s preaching to the prisoners at Basel Prison from 1954 to 1964: Deliverance to the Captives (German, Den Gefangenen Befreiung) and Call for God (German, Rufe Mich An = Call on Me).

Barth preached at Basel Prison 27 times, usually on holidays such as Christmas or Easter. Those who knew him wrote that he relished these opportunities, and that the prisoners listened with gratitude. He was in his seventies when most of these were preached.

The sermons savor less of academia than many that I have heard on a Sunday. They are fresh and encouraging in their outlook, and they display what Barth himself called his “solidarity” with these prisoners. The sermons are evangelical in tenor and frequently include invitations to trust in Christ.

Themes prominent in his theology come out in the sermons from time to time, but he does not have many theological axes to grind.

The sermon “God’s Good Creation” gives us a brief look at Barth’s theology of creation, based on James 1:17.

“Teach Us To Number Our Days” was the most interesting with respect to theology. It outlines his explanation of the work of the atonement as God’s No to sin and death and God’s Yes to life.

What happened in the death of Jesus did not happen against us, but for us. What took place was not an act of God’s wrath against man. Quite the opposite holds true. Because in the one Jesus God so loved us from all eternity—truly all of us—because he has elected himself to be our dear Father and has elected us to become his dear children whom he wants to save and to draw unto him, therefore he has in the one Jesus written off, rejected, nailed to a cross and killed our old man who, as impressively as he may dwell and spook about in us, is not our true self. God so acted for our own sake. In the death of Jesus he has cleared away, swept out and let go up in flames, smoke and ashes the old man in us, that we may live a life of freedom. That he may himself say to us his divine ‘yes’, valid once for all and unconditionally, to this old companion who has no traffic with our true self, to our old ways and byways, and he did say ‘no’, unmistakably, in the death of Jesus as the substitute for us.
Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives, p. 122–123

Lancelot Andrewes’ Devotions, Sermons and Lectures

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Lancelot Andrewes oversaw the translation of the King James Version of the Bible and was extremely influential in the academic and religious life of the United Kingdom. In the Victorian era, interest in Andrewes was revived by the translation of his private devotions into English. Christy Wilson’s biography of Samuel Zwemer contains a passage about the role Andrewes’ writings played in the life of the pioneer missionary:

Together with the Bible, Zwemer himself used The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes. While at Bombay he secured in 1905 a copy edited by Alexander Whyte [the 2nd ed. is linked below]. This was used over the course of many years and as the cover wore out was rebound again and again. Andrewes was the Court Chaplain of James I of England and one of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible. His devotions were written for his private use and not intended for publication. … Scarcely anything aside from the Psalms can offer such depths of confession and sorrow for sin as revealed in these pages. As Zwemer remarked, “Andrewes goes deep. …”
On the pages of this devotional book are dates and entries and brief references which record the deepest spiritual experiences of the world traveler and missionary to Muslims. Sometimes the notes are in English, then again portions are in Arabic. They record the prayers and tears of a broken heart as well as the record of spiritual triumphs in widely separated times and parts of the globe. The markings on the pages also show how intently the mind and heart of the worshipper had entered into the very soul of the devotional passages as he prayed.
J. Christy Wilson, Apostle to Islam: A Biography of Samuel M. Zwemer. Pioneer Library, 2017, p. 304–305

Andrewes has a few other works—they’re listed here—but several have only been printed in Latin, and none of them are devotional or homiletical. The following, though, may be of some use today in following Christ. It is exciting to uncover such a trove of devotions and preaching by one of the masterminds of the King James Version.

Private Devotions (or ‘Preces Privatae’; first published in 1648; from mss. in Greek and Latin)

1839 translation by Peter Hall
1848 translation by (Cardinal) J. H. Newman
1896 edition by Alexander Whyte
1901 translation by Dean Stanhope

Ninety-Six Sermons (1629; reprinted 1841–1843)

Volume 1
(Sermons of the Nativity, Preached upon Christmas-Day (1–17); Sermons of Repentance and Fasting, Preached on Ash-Wednesday (1–8))

Volume 2
(Sermons Preached in Lent (1–6); Sermons Preached upon Good-Friday (1–3); Sermons of the Resurrection, Preached on Easter-Sunday (1–13))

Volume 3
(Sermons of the Resurrection, Preached on Easter-Sunday (14–18); Sermons of the Sending of the Holy Ghost, Preached on Whit-Sunday (1–15))

Volume 4
(Sermons of the Conspiracy of the Gowries, Preached on the Fifth of August (1–8); Sermons of the Gunpowder Treason, Preached upon the Fifth of November (1–10))

Volume 5
(Certain Sermons Preached at Sundry Times, upon Several Occasions (1–12); A Funeral Sermon; Nineteen Sermons upon Prayer in General, and the Lord’s Prayer in Particular (1–19); Seven Sermons upon the Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness (1–7))

Lectures

The Morall Law Expounded (1630; reprinted in 1642)
(Lectures on the Ten Commandments)

ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΜΑΤΙΑ Sacra (1657)
(Lectures on Genesis 1–4; Lectures Preached upon Several Choice Texts, Both out of the Old and New Testament)

Review: Job (People’s Bible, Book 12)

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Rating: ★★★★

Author: Joseph Parker was a famed Congregationalist preacher of late nineteenth-century London. His People’s Bible is a monumental series of over 1000 sermons from the perspective of biblical (or narrative) theology.

Overview:

Joseph Parker’s preaching style is especially suited to Old Testament wisdom, and had already published a volume on Job (Job’s Comforters: Scientific Sympathy, 1874) more than a decade before his magnum opus, The People’s Bible, was begun.

As usual, almost every sermon in this volume includes generalizations about the book as a whole, relating it to New Testament truth. However, unlike many books written about Job (e.g., Morgan’s The Answers of Jesus to Job), he doesn’t skip over the dialogues of Job’s friends. Parker goes chapter by chapter, following the dialogue in narrative chunks, but usually not verse by verse.

Meat:

Job’s friends are a topic that Parker pays special attention to, as he did in his previous book on Job. In the course of his sermons, he points out two key errors that can be made about Job’s comforters:

We may cite them as Scripture, without differentiating them from Job himself, or paying due notice to the narrative.
We may pay them no notice because of the divine verdict rendered against their words (in Job 42:7).

Parker steers away from both, treating Job’s friends (and Elihu) as serious debaters and theologians, with mostly correct—but incomplete—view of God’s providence.

History is not a succession of accidents, but the outworking of a sublime philosophy, the end of which is the coronation of righteousness, the enthronement of purity and nobleness. Such comforters are sent to us as from the very presence of God.

Paul Anleitner’s Deep Talks podcast on Job treats Job’s friends in much the same way; they are correct in observing that, in general, the righteous prosper and the wicked perish (Prov. 11:10, 29:2, etc.); this, however, is simply not the whole picture.

The general doctrine is founded in truth; its fallacy lies is in its application to Job’s peculiar case.

I should add, Chesterton’s wonderful 1902 article on Robert Louis Stevenson rather turns this topic on its head.

Bones:

The shortcomings of this book are not different from the shortcomings of The People’s Bible as a whole; namely, Parker is a “big picture” preacher and doesn’t often answer detail-oriented questions about the text. This book should not be read at a study desk. Rather, his sermons need to be approached in armchair with a large cup of tea.

Quotes:

“Good behaviour founded upon a philosophy of fear is only vice in a fit of dejection.”

“No man could see himself and live.”

“May we not have argued about providences when we ought to have prayed respecting them?”

“If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is able to lay a wounded hand upon God, and a wounded hand upon man, and to bring God and man together in righteous and eternal reconciliation.”

“How if it should turn out at last that our very punishment has been meted to us in mercy? What if at the end it should be found that adversity was a veiled evangel sent from heaven to bring us home?”

On meaningless suffering:

“We must often suffer, and not know the reason why: we must often rise from our knees to fight a battle, when we intended to enjoy a long repose: things must slip out of our hands unaccountably, and loss must befall our estate after we have well tended all that belongs to it, after we have securely locked every gate, and done the utmost that lies within the range of human sagacity and strength to protect our property. These are the trials that we must accept. If everything were plain and straightforward, everything would be proportionately easy and proportionately worthless.”

On immortality:

“God, who has made so much out of nothing, means to make more out of so much: the very creation means the redemption and salvation and coronation of the thing that was created in the divine image and likeness. Creation does not end in itself: it is a pledge, a token, a sign—yea, a sure symbol, equal in moral value to an oath, that God’s meaning is progress unto the measure of perfection. This is how we discover the grand doctrine of the immortality of the soul, even in the Old Testament—even in the Book of Genesis and in the Book of Job. What was it that lay so heavily upon Adam and upon Job? It was the limitation of their existence; it was the possible thought that they could see finalities, that they could touch the mean boundary of their heart’s throb and vital palpitation. When men can take up the whole theatre of being and opportunity and destiny, and say, This is the shape of it, and this is the weight, this is the measure, this is the beginning, and this is the end, then do they weary of life, and they come to despise it with bitterness; but when they cannot do these things, but, contrariwise, when they begin to see that there is a Beyond, something farther on, voices other than human, mystic appearances and revelations, then they say, This life as we see it is not all; it is an alphabet which has to be shaped into a literature, and a literature which has to end in music. The conscious immortality of the soul, as that soul was fashioned in the purpose of God, has kept the race from despair.”

Review: Hosea: The Heart and Holiness of God

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Rating: ★★★★★

Author: G. Campbell Morgan was a British Congregational preacher, active from 1883 to 1943, mostly at Westminster Chapel in London. Nicknamed “the Prince of Expositors,” Morgan’s accessible expository preaching gained him a wide audience on both sides of the Atlantic. During his long life of ministry, he published more than 60 books, many of which were sermons.

Overview:

Hosea: The Heart and Holiness of God (1934) is a masterful exposition of the prophecy of Hosea. Morgan’s style of exposition is not verse-by-verse, but rather utilizes thematic verses that summarize the key points of a chapter.

As implied in the title, his summary of Hosea is that it is about the union of God’s compassion and his holiness. G. Campbell Morgan is able to paint such a beautiful picture of God because he learns the brushstrokes from the Bible itself. In this book he will stretch your heart and stretch your theology as you see the suffering heart of God, longing to see his redeemed people walking in holiness, walking with him. But as always he exposits the Word with reverence and simplicity.

The first couple of sermons deal with Hosea’s suffering as prophet. There are many in the middle dealing with the defection of the people and its causes and course. The last few sermons were in my opinion the best as he talks about the love of God for his people, how he cannot give them up to a life without Him, but sent His missionary Son to pursue His straying lover, His prodigal son—His people.

Meat:

Morgan’s sermons are almost always simple, readable, applicable, and committed to the biblical text.

In much of his exposition, Morgan dwells long on the themes of God’s grief in Hosea, a prominent topic that is often shied away from because of its doctrinal difficulties. See for instance, the chapter entitled “The Difficulty of God”, on Hosea 6:4; while such language entangles systematic theologians in a thicket of complications, Morgan resolutely and simply discusses its meaning as it stands. He also does so without making God sound spineless or desperate. It illustrates Morgan’s commitment to the text, and vindicates him as an important preacher and writer for those interested in doing practical, biblical theology (as opposed to “systematics”).

Bones:

Morgan’s strength is how he deals with the text, but if he has a weakness, it would be in spiritualizing what were meant to be historical events in the text.

Review: The Solitary Throne

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Rating: ★★★★★

Author: Samuel M. Zwemer was a pioneer missionary among Arabs along the Persian Gulf. His later career was spent writing, teaching and mobilizing for missions among Muslims while he was based in Egypt for many years, and later at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Overview:

As the original cover shows, this book is composed of five addresses given at the Keswick Convention in 1937, “on the glory and uniqueness of the Christian message.” Their actual content is a little less focused than that, but more devotional and less apologetic than the subtitle implies.

Meat:

I have finished only a few of Samuel Zwemer’s books, but I have perused the lot of them enough to know that this may be his very best work. “The Glory of the Impossible”—a title also given to a chapter of Zwemer’s 1911 book The Unoccupied Fields and in an article by Lilias Trotter in the Missionary Review of the World—is a timeless and inspirational theme that resonates especially for apostolic missionaries. “His Ministers a Flame” was an equally compelling chapter on a disturbing but oft-neglected New Testament metaphor.

Zwemer was a voracious reader, and has a marvelous knack for compiling fascinating and rare illustrations and quotations from every imaginable source: history, biography, fiction, hymnology, poetry, and elsewhere. Several of the best are quoted below.

Bones:

The fifth chapter, “The Hinterland of the Soul,” fell a little flat for me because of its imperial language. I am rather certain than when it was written, this language was meant to be mainly spiritual; but here in the 21st century, it resonates more like a call to be united with fallen power structures of this world—an unequal yoke that the crucified Christ never called us to. Nonetheless, if I can take Zwemer’s call to “rule the world for Christ” in a spiritual sense, then I can see its merit.

Quotes:

The Solitary Throne:

Napoleon on St. Helena said: “I know men, and Jesus was no man. Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, and I, founded great empires upon force, and here is One who founded an empire upon love. And now I am alone and forsaken, and there are millions who would die for Him.”

Jean Paul Richter, of Germany, in a wonderful passage, said: “O Thou who art mightiest among the mighty, and the holiest among the holy, Thou with Thy pierced hands, hast lifted empires off their hinges, and turned the tide of human history!”

Jesus Christ is the only religious leader Who came to destroy all race barriers and class hatreds.

His Ministers a Flame:

You cannot keep your wood pile, you cannot keep your coal in the cellar, if you would have a fire on the hearth.

The very presence of Jesus always demands decision.

The Roman Catholic Church believes in Purgatory hereafter. We believe in Purgatory now.

I love to go to the University Library in Princeton. Over the fireplace in the library of that Graduate School there are carved these Latin words from the Vulgate Psalter: “In Meditatione mea exardescet ignis.” “While I sit meditating, the fire burns.”[See Psalm 39:3.]

Once I was to preach a sermon at an anniversary in a Methodist Church; there were a great number of ministers present, and I was greatly honoured to be allowed to preach there. We met in the vestry. And the sexton, whose work it was to take care of the comfort of the preacher, said to me: “Would you like a glass of water in the pulpit?” I said: “No, I would like a bonfire.” He smiled. That is what I felt that day.

Let us often read the Acts of the Apostles. It is a neglected Book amongst those who ought to be leaders of the Church of Christ.

May we never glibly pray the prayer that we may be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Photophobia:

Believe me, the principle of unbelief is not primarily intellectual, but moral.

This groping after the Light was the promise of full enlightenment. It always is, as we missionaries on the foreign field know; and our hearts leap with joy when some Nicodemus comes to us by night, saying: “Sir, we would see Jesus,” whether it be a penitent publican or an irreproachable Pharisee. Those who seek find; to those who knock, the door is opened.

There is no tragedy more real and more moving in all history, and in our own lives, than the deliberate rejection of Christ; because it is due, not to any extraordinary wickedness in the Jews, or the Romans, or the people of New York, or the people of London, but to the ordinary motives of men.

If you are neglecting your morning watch, if you are omitting your daily Bible study, if you are forsaking the assembling together of the saints as the manner of some is, you may be sure that all of these things are early symptoms of photophobia, and will end in spiritual blindness.

The Glory of the Impossible:

In 1923 I spoke on the patience of God in the evangelisation of Mohammedan lands from the text: “Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing. Nevertheless, at Thy word I will let down the nets.”

The history of Missions in every land is the story of the achievement of the impossible.

One of the saintliest of British missionaries, Miss Lilias Trotter, of North Africa, wrote just before her death in Algeria; “We who are engaged in Moslem work live in a land of blighted promises. That is a fact that none of us who love its people best can deny; and the deadly heart-sickness of hope deferred, sometimes makes even the most optimistic of us almost despair of seeing abiding fruitage to the work.”

We need once again to face the glory of this impossible task. . . . There is only one thing that is impossible—it is impossible for God to lie.

It is daybreak, not sunset in the Moslem world.

The Hinterland of the Soul:

In the eighteenth century the future belonged to John Wesley; it did not belong to those influential ecclesiastics who crowded him out of their churches and forced him, against his own inclinations, to preach in the open fields. Now to whom does the future of the twentieth century belong save to those Christians who are already looking beyond the horizon, who can read the signs of the times, and who makes bold adventures for God?

Review: Whyte’s Bible Characters

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Rating: ★★★★

Who: Alexander Whyte (1836-1921), Scottish preacher and prolific author. He published a variety of sermons and biographies, but his most famous books since his death have been his Bible Characters.

Overview: Each of these sermons is usually a brief and balanced treatments of a biblical character; for some characters—such as Moses or Paul—there are several sermons, dealing with the chapters of Scripture in which that person is found. If the character is controversial, he will weigh the positives and negatives before expressing his conviction and the lesson that he gains from the character’s life.

Meat: Whyte is an excellent writer. Like F. W. Boreham and A. J. Gossip, he drew on the best English and Classical literature, not just to pepper his sermons, but to illustrate biblical truth in the most meaningful way. He held many prestigious positions and was no mean scholar.

Many of these sermons were cited by scholars as authority for many decades after Whyte’s death. If you found a biblical character confounding, it was always a helpful plan to visit Whyte and see, first, what was his opinion of the character, and second, what lesson did he glean from their story. On a controversial character like Jephthah, for instance, he will weigh the interpretations and then pursue a definite course, which you may or may not agree with.

His sermons have value as a pastor’s resource, but they are also great devotional reading. I really enjoy being able to pick it up on a whim and have a solid sermon on almost any prominent Bible character, whether from the Old or the New Testament.

Bones: I enjoyed many of these sermons, but some of them were absolute duds. The sermon on Eve, while it was interesting, seemed to quote line after line of John Milton. While I love Milton, I was much more interested in understanding the basics of Eve’s story. A few were dull and moralistic; the sermon on Esau, for instance, takes on the sin of gluttony—an unexpected turn, to say the least. I will, however, continue to consult this set of sermons when I am studying Bible characters, because it is unmatched in that regard.

Related: Herbert Lockyer has similar works like All the Men of the Bible, All the Women of the Bible, etc. These works are exhaustive in their inclusion of characters. The individual entries are usually brief, but still directed towards a devotional application.

Whyte’s sermons on Bible Characters were originally published in six volumes, but they are now available cheaply in one large volume, or free as an PDF (in separate volumes).

Texts That Made History

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The Texts That Made History series is a series of biographical sermons by F. W. Boreham. Each sermon deals with the impact of a single Scripture text in the life of a famous person. We are not surprised to see the impact of the Bible in the lives of reformers, preachers, and pioneer missionaries. However, Boreham broadens his vision to take on explorers, authors, statesmen, and even a few fictional characters.

In the introduction to the fifth volume, the author explains that several years ago he was musing on what to announce for his next teaching series. He had been studying the impact of a single Scripture on the life of Martin Luther—guiding towards the Protestant Reformation—and wondered if he should teach on the Bible’s impact in biographies. Then Boreham tells us he “astonished himself” by announcing that he was commencing a series entitled The Texts That Made History:

At the close of the service, one of my most trusted officers came to me in great delight. ‘That’s a noble idea,’ he explained enthusiastically; ‘it will be the best series that you ever preached!’

It has certainly been the longest, and the most evangelistic, and the most effective. And it has been the series in which I myself have found the most delight.

Boreham wrote over 1500 biographical articles over the course of his life, making him for many decades the most prolific author in Australian history. He read one book every week over the course of most of his long life. It is no wonder, then, that he is well qualified to handle his theme.

Four out of the five books in this series are already available as ebooks, and we hope to put all four of them back into print in the coming months.

Texts That Made History

Review: Proving the Unseen

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Rating: ★★★★

Who: George MacDonald, 19th-century Scottish preacher, poet, and novelist. He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and many others.

Overview: This book is a rare glimpse into the spoken sermons of George MacDonald. Proving the Unseen was arranged and edited by William J. Petersen from sermons published in Christian World Pulpit in MacDonald’s lifetime. The sermons are reasonably short and have the same subject matter found in most of MacDonald’s books: The Fatherhood of God, the resurrection of Jesus, and the obedience of faith.

Meat: This book’s strength is that it is significantly easier to read than Unspoken Sermons, which many—unlike me—find too abstract. MacDonald’s spoken ministry as found here is surprisingly straightforward, and yet, the material has the same depth and spiritual sharpness. I especially enjoyed the titular sermon, “Faith, the Proof of the Unseen,” and “Alone with God.”

Bones: The sermons here are pretty short, so you may get the sense that MacDonald could say a lot more on each topic.

Quotes: “Often the very things that lift us up nearer to God are viewed by us as misfortunes. ‘How sad,’ we say, and console one another on the means that the Father of our spirits is using to cleanse our souls and to make us the very children of his heart.” (p. 61)

Review: Five Great Affirmations of the Bible

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Rating: ★★★★★

Who: W. A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, later president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Overview: In 1958, Criswell preached and published Five Great Questions of the Bible, and in 1959, he followed up with a similar series, Five Great Affirmations of the Bible. The book deals with foundational truths of the Bible: the reality of God, the sonship of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the second advent of Jesus.

Meat: As in its prequel, Criswell’s chosen headings are doctrinally centered, but the outcome is stirring, devotional, and evangelistic. The third sermon has a great way of dealing with the resurrection of Christ in a way that shows to what lengths God went to remove any shadow of a doubt regarding the truth of his bodily resurrection. The sermons are simple and accessible.

Review: The Hope of the Gospel

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Rating: ★★★★

Who: George MacDonald, 19th-century Scottish preacher, poet, and novelist. He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and many others.

Overview: MacDonald wrote only five books of sermons: Unspoken Sermons, Series One (1867), Miracles of Our Lord (1870), Unspoken Sermons, Series Two (1885), Unspoken Sermons, Series Three (1889), and finally, The Hope of the Gospel (1892). I give the dates because there is a progression between them. MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons are profound, meditative, and exploratory; Miracles of Our Lord is more expository, systematic, and devotional; in his fifth and final book of sermons, it seems that MacDonald wanted to clearly delineate a theology of salvation while treating foundational Scriptures. Five of the texts are chosen from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

MacDonald was almost 70 when this book was published. While his views stayed the same through the years, they had grown firmer and are expressed most boldly here in The Hope of the Gospel.

Meat: MacDonald’s theology of obedience is preached or mentioned in almost all of his sermons—all his books, to be honest—but this book allows us to really chew on it; we see it here in relation to foundational concepts of the New Testament. The first two sermons develop this theology with special clarity.

(A quick summary: In MacDonald’s theology, all other aspects of salvation are subordinate to obedience. There is no “imputed” righteousness apart from obedience; there is no salvation apart from obedience. MacDonald doesn’t say that obedience causes salvation, but that it accompanies it.)

My favorites were “Sorrow the Pledge of Joy,” “The Yoke of Jesus,” and “The Salt and the Light of the World.” MacDonald is at home in the Gospels, and his comments on Jesus’ words here are illuminating and expository.

Bones: MacDonald is at his best, like any preacher, when he sticks to the text. And MacDonald at his best is quite fantastic. But in developing his theology of salvation, he is sometimes distracted by a chance to suppress interpretations that he sees as unspiritual and uninspired. In “The Hope of the Universe,” he spends nearly thirty pages grinding a theological axe about the immortality of animals, an idea which, even if I found it enlightening—and I don’t—is certainly secondary or tertiary to Paul’s discourse in Romans 8. (Certainly “the manifestation of the sons of God” is more important than the “earnest expectation of the creature,” whatever is meant by “creature”!)

For these reasons, I would rank any volume of Unspoken Sermons above The Hope of the Gospel; and I would put Miracles of Our Lord above them all for its tact and expository insight. As Roland Barthes said, it is when the author “dies” that the reader is most illumined. The same applies to preachers.

Quotes: “Joy is in its nature more divine than sorrow; for, although man must sorrow, and God share in his sorrow, yet in himself God is not sorrowful.” (“Sorrow the Pledge of Joy,” loc. 801)

“None but the pure in heart see God; only the growing-pure hope to see him.” (“God’s Family,” loc. 968)

“The relation of the Father and the Son contains the idea of the universe.” (“The Yoke of Jesus,” loc. 1303)

“Starts thy soul, trembles thy brain at the thought of such a burden as the will of the eternally creating, eternally saving God? ‘How shall mortal man walk in such a yoke,’ sayest thou, ‘even with the Son of God bearing it also?’ Why, brother, sister, it is the only burden bearable—the only burden that can be borne of mortal!” (“The Yoke of Jesus,” loc. 1357)

“Light unshared is darkness.” (“The Salt and the Light of the World,” loc. 1417)

Related: Unspoken Sermons, Miracles of Our Lord, God’s Words to His Children (posthumous), George MacDonald in the Pulpit (posthumous)