In 1914 Scots preacher and scholar George S Duncan wrote that "the minister's library is his chest of tools." "How very essential tools are!" he says "Every worker, mental or manual, must have them".(1)
In the first volume of his biography of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), Iain Murray describes how when he began his first pastorate in Sandfields, Aberafan, South Wales, in 1927, the 'middle room' at 57 Victoria Road, in Sandfields, Port Talbot, a room ten feet by twelve at once became the study, where the 300 to 400 books which he had brought with him from London soon lined the walls. In a real sense that room was to become the centre of the work, not only as the place where young converts were to visit him in the years ahead, but more as his place of retreat where prayer, study and preparation for the pulpit occupied the best part of the hours of each day.(2)
Today at The London Seminary in leafy Finchley, North West London, adjacent to the main lecture hall, there is a slightly larger room, about 10 feet by 20 feet, with glass fronted lockable bookcases on three sides, that is known as The Dr Lloyd-Jones Library. The Library has been housed at the seminary, though not in this room, for many years and was moved to this room in 2009. To add to the atmosphere the walls are adorned with framed photographs of Lloyd-Jones and the exterior and interior of Westminster Chapel, London, where he went on to minister from 1939-1968.
Some caveats
It has been said that "you can learn a lot about a man by looking through his library". If that is true then here is an interesting vantage point from which to consider the towering figure of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
Having said that, some prior caveats are necessary. Firstly, this is technically not Lloyd-Jones's library but the Lloyd-Jones family library as handed on to the seminary. So, for example, there is a copy of The Agricultural Community in South-west Wales at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by David Jenkins, a present to his wife in 1971, inscribed "To Bethan with all my love Martyn x". He writes "A reminder of our origins and the places where we both spent so many happy days together". Also, some few of the volumes here, such as The Collected Writings of John Murray and other Banner of Truth publications did not appear until after Lloyd-Jones's death.
Further, we know that he was given a set of the Works of John Owen - not found here - and he surely had a set of Matthew Henry commentaries, again conspicuous by their absence. Although there are some secular volumes here, one assumes there were others now dispersed to the four corners. John Buchan and Walter Scott novels for example, which we know he enjoyed. I did hear someone once suggest that all the Doctor's medical books and journals were here but that is not the case.
Even the books that were his were never, of course, found in this form. The books have been arranged according to the library cataloguing system used at the Seminary. The first 42 items in the collection are Bibles and Testaments and similar material which are no more likely to have sat together like that in Lloyd-Jones's time than the more than 80 hymnals that come a little later in the collection.
It should also be remembered that Lloyd-Jones was a great user of libraries. Iain Murray describes how, in 1932, Lloyd-Jones discovered B B Warfield in the library of Knox Seminary, Toronto and his fascination with the Beinecke Library at Yale on a later trip across the Atlantic.(3) His daughter Elizabeth Catherwood, in a lecture given in 1982, says he had read everything by the historian Owen Chadwick, but only one volume is found here (the one on The Reformation).(4) She also mentions him reading the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung but there is again only one volume here (What must remain in the church).
Iain Murray's second volume of biography refers to his enjoyment in retirement of the Sion College Library (now subsumed by the Lambeth Palace Library).(5) He was introduced to that Library by his friend Philip E Hughes. (6) In one of the volumes (the 1975 work Perspectives on Charismatic renewal edited by E D O'Connor) there is a note from Sion College asking for the return of the book Jesus and the Spirit by James Dunn (also published in 1975) dated 21.10.76.
His championing of the Evangelical Library and his instrumentality in bringing it to London is fairly well known. The Library was always very good to the Doctor about borrowing volumes and when his own library was transferred to the Seminary, there was some confusion over whether some volumes had been his or had belonged to the Library.
First impressions
There are nearly 3000 volumes in the Library altogether. One notices immediately the variety of spines – some dust wrapped and quite modern, others leather bound and ancient. The multi-volume sets are noticeable – a five volume Hastings Bible Dictionary; The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia; The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge; word studies by Kittel, Robertson, Vincent, Vine and Wuest; several commentary sets (Alford, Calvin, Ellicott, Hawker, Kitto, Lange, Poole, Scott, Trapp, etc); Alexander Whyte's Bible Characters in six volumes.
There is also Annals of the American Pulpit in nine volumes; Nelson's Encyclopedia in 25 small volumes; Neale's History of the Puritans; Stoughton on The History of Religion in England and six volumes on the early Methodists.
As for Puritan and other evangelical works, there is a nicely tooled 23 volume edition of Baxter, a ragged three volume edition of Bunyan and a modern six volume edition of Flavel. Also, multi-volume sets of Thomas Brooks, Thomas Charles, Thomas Goodwin, Oliver Heywood, John Angell James, John Newton, B B Warfield, George Whitefield and John Wesley.
At the very end of the collection there are seven or eight shelves of books chiefly of Welsh interest. Many, perhaps half of these, are in the Welsh language, which both Dr and Mrs Lloyd-Jones spoke and read fluently.
Kenneth Kirk on The Vision of God
Lloyd-Jones would keep larger volumes for holiday reading. Here you will find, for example, Kenneth E Kirk's 1928 Bampton Lectures The vision of God. Iain Murray tells us that the Doctor found the book "absolutely seminal". He regarded it as one of the greatest books he had ever read.
Emil Brunner's Divine Imperative
Elizabeth Catherwood describes her father with the family sat on the beach at Borth, near Aberyswtyth, some time in the thirties. As the family went about more traditional beach activities, the Doctor, in grey three piece suit and hat, was leaning against a rock and reading the 1937 volume The Divine Imperative by Emil Brunner. The book is in the Library. I have checked it for grains of sands and found none.
The Works of Edwards
More gratifying, however, is to see among the works two large volumes of Jonathan Edwards. (Another tatty six volume edition is next to it). This must be the set Lloyd-Jones once described finding. The New England preacher was the Doctor's favourite author. He discovered Edwards' name in Protestant Thought Before Kant by A C McGiffert. Lloyd-Jones wrote
After much searching I at length called at John Evans’ bookshop in Cardiff in 1929, having time available as I waited for a train. There, down on my knees in my overcoat in the corner of the shop, I found the two volumes of the 1834 edition of Edwards which I bought for five shillings. I devoured these volumes and literally just read and read them. It is certainly true that they helped me more than anything else. If I had the power I would make these two volumes compulsory reading for all ministers! Edwards seems to satisfy all round; he really was an amazing man.7
Interestingly, the first volume has the pencil mark “2 vols 6/-”. That suggests Lloyd-Jones, a good Cardiganshire man, managed to beat down the price!
Commentaries
Knowing that Lloyd-Jones preached extensively on Romans, one expects to see a good supply of commentaries on that book and one is not disappointed. There are some 40 volumes from Barth's tome that appeared in English in 1933 to G B Wilson's little digest of 1977 via Haldane, Murray, etc, compared with only a quarter that number on Galatians. Similarly, there are about twenty volumes on Ephesians, another subject for an early series of published sermons.
History and biography
It is no surprise to see large sections of church history and biography. Perhaps it is similarly unsurprising to see large sections on the Holy Spirit and revival and on healing and speaking in tongues – areas of interest to him as a medical practitioner and pastor and areas over which controversy raged in the 1960s and 1970s. Volumes here include the one by Henry Frost for which he wrote an appreciation. His name can be found in this copy.8
Better and fasting reading
One book that stands out because of its clear spine is How to read better and faster by Norman Lewis published in 1960. This is the volume that Lloyd-Jones apparently sent for after seeing an advertisement for it. He was frustrated that he was a rather slow reader. There is no evidence that the book helped him to get any faster.
Inscriptions
Most of the books appear to have no identifying marks. In some the Doctor has written his name - perhaps books he lent to others. A few have been given as gifts.
So for example there is a very nicely bound two volume set of Luke Tyerman on Whitefield, a gift from Peter Golding, a member of the Westminster Fellowship.9 The Doctor first read the Tyerman biography in the summer of 1969. David Otis Fuller has inscribed a copy of his 1961 volume Valiant for Truth: a Treasury of Evangelical Writing.(10) (He has written Martin instead of Martyn. This was something Dr Lloyd-Jones had lived with since childhood. A book in the Library is a prize from Tregaron County High School and also spells his name incorrectly.)
From 1952 Lloyd-Jones began to commend the writings of the American A W Tozer and in 1956 they met for the only time, sharing a conference in Toronto. Inside the 1964 biography of A W Tozer by D J Fant it says "To D M Lloyd-Jones with best wishes, Leonard Ravenhill".(11)
A volume called Ysgrifau Beirniadol vol viii (Critical writings 8) edited by J E C Williams has a typewritten inscription in Welsh signed by J Elwyn Davies. It is intended to recall a get together (Encil) in Bryn-y-Groes, Bala and thanks Lloyd-Jones and his wife for their Christian love and kindness.(12)
Cornelius Van Til
Lloyd-Jones was a great admirer of Cornelius Van Til and in 1964 he wrote a review of Van Til's Barth and Christianity for The Westminster Theological Journal.13 His copy of the volume is inscribed "Martyn Lloyd-Jones with warm regard C Van Til". Still between the pages are two pieces of paper with typewritten notes headed Disseminated sclerosis. On the reverse are some scrawled notes in pencil that have been written for the review. In the Library the earlier Van Til volume Has Karl Barth become Orthodox? can also be found.
Marginalia
One would need to go through each individual book page by page to discover what exactly is hidden away here. Certainly some of the books are well marked. The 1975 book by Thomas Smail (1928-2012) Reflected Glory The Spirit in Christ and Christians is full of pencil marks, mostly disagreeing with the author. On page 44 where Smail says "The Holy Spirit is central" Lloyd-Jones adds a firm "No!" in the margin. Again, to Smail's contention that the second blessing obscures the centrality of Christ we have another emphatic "No!"
Similar pencil written "No!"s can be found in the book Fundamentalism by James Barr (1924-2006), published in 1977. He objects to Barr's idea that Scripture was given divine status merely because it was written down and he is very unhappy with the idea that fundamentalists have not studied what non-conservatives say. The library itself would suggest that Barr is wide of the mark with regard to Lloyd-Jones certainly.
Further study
The purpose of this short article is to do two things. Firstly, to alert people to the existence of the Library. Any future work on Lloyd-Jones ought to be aware of this resource for the study of his life and work. Who knows what might be buried in the pages to be found here?
Secondly, here is a reminder to pastors, of the importance of reading. Thomas Murphy writing for pastors in the 19th century says
It will be taken for granted that the pastor will read much, and that most of his reading will of course be on religious subjects. The importance of this should be very deeply impressed upon the mind of every minister. (14)
In our own day, the American Presbyterian pastor Ligon Duncan III has lamented that
Protestant pastors don’t read or study very much these days, and most churches don’t encourage them to do so. There are fewer pastor-readers than ever before (and surfing the web, dabbling in this oddity and that, doesn’t count!).(15)
He quotes Spurgeon on 2 Timothy 4:13 who notes what a rebuke it is to those who do not read.
He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!(16)
As in so much else, Dr Lloyd-Jones is an example to us. In his Library of a diligent pastor who gave himself to reading.
This article appeared in Reformation Today
1 The Biblical World Vols 43 and 44, Chicago 1914
2 David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: the first forty years, 1899-1939 Iain Murray, Edinburgh 1982, 154
3 Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield 1851–1921 Professor of theology at Princeton Seminary 1887-1921
4 Martyn Lloyd-Jones: the man and his books, F and E Catherwood, London and Bridgend 1982
5 David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The fight of faith, 1939-1981 Iain Murray, Edinburgh 1990, 710
6 Philip Edgcumbe Hughes 1915-1990 Anglican clergyman and New Testament scholar born in Australia, who spent his formative years in South Africa, was ordained in England and died in the USA
7 David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: the first forty years, 1899-1939 Iain Murray, Edinburgh 1982, 253, 254
8 Miraculous Healing: Why does God heal some and not others? Henry Frost, originally published 1931
9 The Westminster Fellowship is the ministers fraternal begun by Lloyd-Jones in 1942
10 David Otis Fuller 1903-1988 was an American pastor in Atlantic City then Grand Rapids, USA
11 Aiden Wilson Tozer 1897-1963 American pastor, author and magazine editor. Leonard Ravenhill 1907-1994 Evangelist and author who focused on prayer and revival. Why revival tarries is his best known book
12 J Elwyn Davies 1925-2007 was a leading minister in Wales, a founder of the Evangelical Movement of Wales
13 Cornelius Van Til 1895-1997 Dutch Christian philosopher and Reformed theologian credited as the originator of modern presuppositional apologetics.
14 Pastoral Theology: The Pastor in the Various Duties of His Office, Thomas Murphy, Philadelphia 1877, 141
15 See http://t4g.org/2006/02/pastors-studying-and-reading-1/ accessed June 7 2018
16 Spurgeon Sermon #542 "Paul - His Cloak And His Books" in Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 9 (1863), 668, 669
