Monthly Blog

Special? Yes! This is about the person who has given his name to Christmas, Jesus Christ. It will only take you a few moments to read. A single word, special, sums up why you shouldn’t grudge the time. Special person Had you seen Jesus him after he was born in Bethlehem special is not the word that would have sprung to mind. Judging by appearances he was as ordinary

The oldest of the three Bonar brothers Sunday 15th May 1881 was a memorable day for the congregation of St. Andrew’s Free Church, Greenock (a town on the south-west coast of Scotland). Almost two years had passed since they vacated the building that had housed them for the first forty years of their history and now, at last, their new building was ready for use. It had seating

[The following article was published some time ago in the Banner of Truth Magazine. I had forgotten about it until a recent reading of Genesis 13 reminded me of its existence. I am happy to say that the decision to post it as our blog piece for October is not because of any tensions or strife in the North Preston congregation] Something was making it difficult for Abram and Lot to

At the age of fifteen, Margaret Stewart, a native of Perth, Scotland, was sent to a Christian residential school in the English city of Newcastle. She had not been there long when one of the teachers, a Miss Smith, put a startling question to her: “Miss Stewart, do you know that you must either be a child of God or a child of Satan?” She was not to forget

The man who would not run on a Sunday If you have seen the film Chariots of Fire you will know about the British athlete Eric Liddell. At the time of the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France, he was one of the fastest men in the world and a favourite to win the gold in the 100 metres sprint. Then the news came out: the preliminary heats were going to be

As David Sandeman lay dying in China he was asked if he had any message to leave for his friends. This was his reply: “Tell my mother I thought of her, because she taught me the way to Jesus”. His mother’s name was Margaret Stewart Sandeman. She was born in Perth, Scotland, in February 1803 and died in the same town the day after her eightieth birthday

The world of Genesis 1 is a world God finished by making man: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness’…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (vs.26-27).  And with that the work of creating was done. It was now the sixth

T.J. Crawford The God who knows everything about himself has by no means told us all.  There are many things that remain a secret, known only to himself. Much, we may be sure, has been passed over in total silence. And when he has spoken, he has told us only a very little. The mysteries of Christianity which form the subject of this book arise from this latter fact

The story of Mary Hamilton1 You have a book in your hand, one of the volumes of the Banner of Truth edition of John Owen’s Works, and you open it at the title page. You see how it reads: The Works of John Owen Edited by William H. Goold. How many readers of Owen, I wonder, have paused to ask who his editor was? A word or two of

A message for Easter Think about someone being selected and sent to do an especially difficult job. Some major crisis has arisen, or some massive problem needs to be tackled, and it requires the knowledge, the experience, the skill-set, the leadership that they so remarkably possess. It was like that with Jesus. Entrusted to him by God the Father was a work more demanding than any ever attempted in all

To most readers the name James Grierson will be quite unknown. So too the village of Errol, the scene of his pastoral ministry. But if you have read Andrew Bonar’s Memoir of Robert Murray M’Cheyne you will in fact have heard of both for they are mentioned several times. Errol is only a few miles from Dundee, the scene of M’Cheyne’s ministry, and

The great strength of this book lies in its commitment to the biblical portrait of the Person of Christ. There is a very full interaction with theologians ancient and modern and at the time of writing the author was clearly abreast of contemporary trends in Christological thinking. But his conclusions are in harmony with the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian Church and reflect his deep conviction that in the

A message for Christmas 2023 Here’s something that happened just over seven hundred years ago. On the 24th of June 1314 a famous victory was won by the Scots over the English at a place called Bannockburn. I mention it not because I am a Scot and Bannockburn is one of the outstanding events in our national history but rather as an illustration of a special ability that we

The Banner of Truth has just published a book of daily readings. It is called From Day to Day and was written by Robert Macdonald. There is a link to it at the end of this article. It was my privilege to write an introduction both to the author and his book. What follows is the text of that introductory sketch. Robert Macdonald was born in Perth, Scotland, on the 18th

The emotions of God God has been described as a being with “a profound emotional life”, and the Scriptures – particularly the Old Testament – certainly bear that out. We ourselves are emotional creatures. We know what it is to have love, joy, peace in our hearts. We have felt anger, jealousy, grief, pity, disgust, hatred, compassion. We are familiar with a whole range of feelings. God is portrayed

A heart for the lost After the death of Catherine Marsh in December 1912 Handley Moule, Bishop of Durham, wrote of the “great gift” it had been “to have known such a Christian woman, and to have seen Christ so magnified in her”. That gift has not been completely withdrawn. Through her writings and through a biography written by her niece, Lucy O’Rorke, The Life

[The following review originally appeared in the August 2023 edition of Evangelical Times]        Why the Reliability of Every Word from God Matters                             Question Three of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What do the Scriptures principally teach?” Here is the first part of the answer: “The

Sam Alberry is eager for his readers to grasp what he calls “the positive vision the Bible gives us of singleness”. “When I started this project”, he says, “my initial aim was to write about the goodness of singleness. It is often maligned or demeaned in the church today. I wanted to redress that”. If this positive vision of singleness is to be ours, however

John McLaren was the minister of the United Presbyterian congregation of Burnbank in the Cowcaddens area of Glasgow. He was its first minister and in the five years of his ministry the congregation experienced remarkable growth. Sadly, on the 21st of June 1859, after an illness of several months, McLaren died. He was just a few weeks short of his thirty-third birthday. In early February of that year he wrote

The Lord our Shepherd - Douglas MacMillan The name of Douglas MacMillan will not be familiar to most of you. He died in 1991 at the relatively young age of 58. In the mid-80s, when I was a student at the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh, he was Professor of Church History. I owe him a great deal. I’m not sure how much history I learned

Captain Hedley Vicars A Christian soldier Robert Murray M’Cheyne, minister of St Peter’s Church in Dundee, Scotland, died in March 1843 at the early age of twenty-nine. When Captain Hedley Vicars died in March 1855, twelve years later, it was at much the same age. Writing of the similarities in their experiences an eminent contemporary, William Arnot, says the following: “Upon both, in diverse spheres

A book for Easter Words from the Cross by Ian Hamilton                                                            

From darkness to light Some very distinguished ministers of the Scottish church began their ministry in spiritual darkness. Alexander Henderson was one. Thomas Chalmers a second. A third was an older contemporary of Chalmers, Alexander Stewart, successively minister in Moulin, Dingwall, and Edinburgh. It is with Stewart’s story that our interest lies. Alexander Stewart became parish minister of Moulin near Pitlochry, Perthshire, in 1786. He was twenty-two years

John Aaron The name Thomas Charles of Bala had been familiar to me for many years and I knew that he was an eminent evangelical Welsh minister of a bygone day. But beyond that, I confess, I knew next to nothing about him. If any reader of these lines has to make the same admission let me encourage him or her to make Thomas Charles’ acquaintance. He is well worth