Those once in a lifetime purchases

This article appeared in European Christian Boostore Journal in 1992

Reference works are important and Christian booksellers need to find room for their display and should know the range available. It is important to remember that in many cases the customer will be making a once in a lifetime purchase. No-one likes to waste money and no bookseller wants to lose customers. Therefore a little time and care, and some research if necessary, will pay its own rewards. I still remember being sold a study Bible as a teenager that I later discovered was not what I wanted at all. I did not hurry back to that shop!

What sort of person is the customer? Well educated? Of average intelligence? Is he a serious reader? What is his theological position? What versions of the Bible does he use most? Where exactly does he want help? How much does he want to spend? A bit of thought with such questions in mind will be worthwhile.

Concordances

The oldest known concordance was completed in Paris in 1252 using the work of Hugo of St Caro, the first Dominican cardinal. Assisted by an army of monks, he had completed a word index to the Vulgate in 1230. In 1536 Thomas Gybson produced the first English concordance of the New Testament and by 1550 there was a concordance for the whole Bible.

Three particular concordances have enjoyed immense popularity down to the present day. The oldest of these is that of Alexander Cruden (1699-1770). His Exhaustive Concordance to the Holy Scriptures first appeared in 1737 but has undergone constant revision since then. James Strong (1822-1894), an American Methodist professor, published his Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible in 1890. It truly is exhaustive including an appendix of 47 less important words such as 'a' or 'and'. It is sometimes supposed that Strong's work "drove him mad". In fact it is Cruden who suffered with bouts of apparent insanity. The other major concordance is the work of Robert Young (1822-1888). Like Cruden, Young was also a Scot involved in printing and bookselling. Young's Analytical Concordance of the Bible was first published in 179. Like Strong's, this concordance enables the English reader to get back to the words in their original languages.

All these use the KJV. This is not as widely used as it once was. Each new translation means the need for a new concordance. It is important to have the right concordance for the right version. The advent of the computer means compilation is not quite the Herculean task it once was and all the major new versions have their own concordances. The computer is also coming into its own in another way. A number of software packages are now available, mostly from the States providing all the benefits of the concordance plus much more. At present these are expensive but now doubt growing popularity will lead to lower prices.

Bible Atlases

As for Bible atlases, until recent years there was little of a distinctly evangelical stamp. In 1985, IVP and Lion combined to produce the New Bible Atlas and there arc now other similar works available from American publishers. Maps and articles in Bible dictionaries will be sufficient in most cases for the general reader. Nevertheless, a good Bible atlas may well be of use to some. One excellent and inexpensive little gem in this field is Simon Jenkins's Bible Mapbook, published by Lion.

Dictionaries & Handbooks

Then there are a host of other works such as the Bible dictionary, encyclopedia or handbook. These are reference works that give information about biblical terms, names, doctrines, history and culture. Some such books are prepared with the more academic in mind but others are written very much for the general reader.

The first Bible encyclopedia appeared as early as the 4th century. Translated into Latin by Jerome, Eusebius's Greek Onamasticon only survives in part, but it lists and remarks on towns and rivers mentioned in the Old Testament and Gospels. It was thus quite limited in scope. Augustine is found in one place longing for a much bigger work. We had to wait until the Reformation before such works became common.

The first Complete Christian Dictionary in English seems to have appeared in 1612 and was by a Thomas Wilson (1563-1622). The first truly great work, however, was the translation of the French of Augustin Calmet. A three volume work, publishing began in 1732 but was not completed until 1847! Meanwhile, in 1768, one of the most frequently reprinted works appeared for the first time. This was by John Brown (1722-1787) of Haddington.

Because of increasingly accurate knowledge of Bible geography and culture a large number of such volumes have appeared since then. Increasingly, these have been the work of teams of scholars rather than individuals. They also cover more and more ground. We note the five volume Hastings Dictionary of the Bible started in 1905, but revised and reissued, Unger's Revised Bible Dictionary and the IVP New Bible Dictionary.

Although non-technical and pictorial works had appeared before, in 1973 there was a major leap forward with the publication of the Lion Handbook to the Bible. This was followed, in 1978, by a supplementary Encyclopedia of the Bible covering more traditional Bible dictionary material. Similar books continue to appear.

It is important to note the dissatisfaction with some of these works amongst very conservative readers. Peter Jeffery is one author seeking to remedy that. The popularity of American authors such as Henry Halley or Robert Gromacki, no doubt for similar reasons, ought not to be overlooked either.

Never mind the width, feel the quality (on readiing)

Considering the number of books which many of ns own, shouldn't we be better Christians? Gary Brady takes a fresh look at reading habits.

More is not necessarily better is an oft forgotten adage when it comes to the subject of books. If Solomon wrote, 'Of making many books there is no end,' and 'much study wearies the body', nearly three thousand years ago, what would he say today! What is the result of our embarrassment of riches? Does the number of books currently available to the average British believer - way in excess of anything previous generations have known - make him a better Christian? With more books on prayer, do we pray any better? With more books on holiness, are we any holier? With far more teaching available, are we any wiser?

Honesty compels us to answer in the negative. How often do the lives of Christians from less affluent cultures, or less affluent times, put us to shame? Where are we going wrong?

UCCF and IVP have recently expressed concern about a rising generation of students who do not read! Obviously, all the books in the world will be of no help if no-one buys them, or if we buy them but do not read them. Back in the sixties, the author Anthony Burgess noted that the owning of a book had become a substitute for reading it. A recent magazine for serious Christians had an article entitled Making an Assault on those Unread Books. Undoubtedly, some Christians are guilty of treating books like ornaments rather than resources, but I believe there is a more subtle problem which needs tackling.

TASTERS, SWALLOWERS OR CHEWERS?

In one of his Essays the Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon made an oft quoted remark: 'Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested'. The problem, it seems to me, is that there is far too much tasting and swallowing, but very little chewing and digesting. In days gone by many believers, and some ministers, had very few books - The Bible, Pilgrim's Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs formed the complete Library for some. (This was the reason for Mrs Spurgeon's Book Fund. A tradition carried on by the Banner of Truth and others, especially overseas where similar circumstances still prevail.)

When you have slender means you usually take greater care over purchases, and make greater use of what you have. This means that in the past people often bought the best books they could and read them again and again. Books like Luther's Bondage of the Will, and Matthew Henry's Commentary, got into the blood of devout believers, strengthening and blessing them enormously. They, in turn, were a great blessing to others. Yes, previous generations (and our contemporaries in certain parts of the world) did miss out on the tasting and the swallowing leading to greater breadth, but what about the depth? Surely they excelled (and do excel).

COLLECT THE CLASSICS

Ruskin divided books into two classes, 'Books of the hour' and 'Books of all time'. Christian publishers confirm that newly written works tend to sell well for the first six months or so, then fade. A few classics go on selling month after month, year after year. This is encouraging - the classics continue to sell. The important thing, however, is that they are thoroughly read.

How can we ensure that we are not guilty of substituting ownership for readership? What about the following procedure:

1. Draw up a list of 10 'classics,' that all believers should read at least once. Some candidates for inclusion: Augustine's Confessions; Pilgrim's Progress; The Mystery of Providence; John Owen on Mortification; The Autobiography of Spurgeon, or someone similar; D'Aubigne on The Reformation; Ryle on Holiness; The Screwtape Letters, Hallesby or Bounds on Prayer; Packer's Knowing God.

2. Make a specific reading plan that will get you through those books on your list of classics, but which you have not yet read, in two years.

3. Once they are all read, re-read one every six months

4. Read a small portion of one of these classics every day.

5. Ration yourself to just one or two new books every six months. Remember that some new books will become classics, and others are reprints of those that already are. Packer's new book on the Puritans and Volume 2 of the life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones look like being contenders. Be flexible.

When taking up a new book, try to decide if it is for tasting, swallowing or chewing. We are too civil to books. 'For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages' (Emerson). How much time is wasted trying to chew what is only fit for swallowing or trying to digest what was only intended to tickle our taste buds. Publishers, how about labelling your books, taste, swallow or chew?

PRUNE YOUR COLLECTION

My wife is welcome to make any new addition to her wardrobe, provided it replaces something already owned. In fairness, I ought to do the same thing with my library. Pepys, the diarist, determined the size of his library and, once it was full, bought no more. He was obviously more interested in the look of his shelves than in the state of his mind. His policy could be adapted, however. Set a size for your library and determine, once that size is reached, to get rid of a book you already own every time you purchase a new one. This will refine your collection. There may be some regrets perhaps but deal slowly with the tasters, and eventually the volumes only meant for swallowing, will give way to those you will want to return to again and again. Less can have more value and small can be exquisite. Time, money and energy are God-given resources and our books consume large amounts of each. We have a responsibility to ensure that these resources are invested wisely and not just frittered away.

The Life of David Brainerd by Jonathan Edwards

Marking the anniversary of the birth of David Brainerd in 1718

David Brainerd was an eighteenth 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 over 12,000 miles on horseback in that vast north eastern sector of what we now know as the USA.

Expelled from Yale College as a young man for making disrespectful remarks about a tutor, he became a pioneer missionary to Native Americans and was a man of great earnestness and prayer. He died from tuberculosis before he had reached the age of 30. This year sees the 300th anniversary of his birth.

His name was immortalised by the pen of the great Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), in whose home he died. When we think of the life of Brainerd we are really thinking of at least two things. On one hand, there is the life of David Brainerd 1718-1747. On the other, there is Edwards' Life of the Late Rev David Brainerd (1749 to the present). That is to say, there is the actual life of Brainerd but there is also Edwards' An Account of the Life of the Late Rev David Brainerd published in 1749 and subsequent versions of the story that have continued to have an impact down to the present day.

We draw here chiefly on the work of John A Grigg on this subject. (1) He quotes Andrew F Walls, who says, “David Brainerd became the principal model of early British missionary spirituality.” (2) Grigg demonstrates this.

William Carey and the BMS

When the Baptist Missionary Society was founded in 1792 a major catalyst for its founding was a book by William Carey (1761–1834). Carey had come to a Baptist church in Leicester in 1789 and that had brought him into closer contact with a circle of Calvinistic Baptist ministers who encouraged him to write about the need for concerted missionary effort. This led to the publishing of An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.

The book was inspired by a number of missionaries, including Brainerd. An objection to mission it deals with is the “uncivilised, and barbarous way of living” of the target audience. Such a consideration, Carey declared, “was no objection to an Elliot [sic] or a Brainerd.” (3) In fact, he argued, the “uncivilized state of the heathen” should “furnish an argument for” sending missionaries. Indeed, he noted,

such effects [civilisation] did in a measure follow the afore-mentioned efforts of Elliot [sic], Brainerd, and others amongst the American Indians.

Carey also invoked Eliot and Brainerd to counter another objection: fear of death at the hands of those to whom one was preaching. He suggests that most acts of brutality reported against Europeans may have originated in “some real or supposed affront [to local peoples], and were therefore, more properly, acts of self-defence, than proofs of ferocious dispositions.” To support his argument, he notes that “Elliot [sic], Brainerd, and the Moravian missionaries, have been very seldom molested” and insists that most native peoples had “principally expressed their hatred of Christianity on account of the vices of nominal Christians.”

In concluding his Enquiry, Carey reminds readers that they are “exhorted to lay up treasure in heaven,” and a great reward must await Paul, Eliot, Brainerd and others who “have given themselves wholly to the work of the Lord.”

For Carey, Brainerd exemplified the missionary life. John Ryland (1753-1825) spoke of Brainerd's diary as “almost a second Bible” to him. Portions of a diary Carey kept, when he arrived in India, apparently in conscious emulation of Brainerd, have survived, and his respect for Brainered comes out there. On one occasion, he acknowledged being “much humbled by Brainerd - O what a disparity betwixt me and him; he always constant, I unconstant as the wind.” A little humorously, he complains on one occasion that he could not pray in the woods like Brainerd “for fear of tygers”!

David Bogue and the LMS

In 1795, the London Missionary Society was founded. Its roots are complex and disparate, but at least two of those who contributed to its foundation urged people to look to Brainerd’s example.

In his 1794 Letters on Missions Melville Horne (1761-1841) declared that the “labours of a Brainerd and an Elliot [sic] deserve to be had in everlasting remembrance.”

David Bogue, addressing the LMS founding meeting, also invoked the spirit of Brainerd. Refuting the claim that it was not yet time for the conversion of the heathen, he pointed to what had “already been effected by the preaching of the gospel among the heathen” by men such as “Brainard [sic], [Azariah] Horton [1716-1777] and others.”v(4) He went on to remind his audience that the Indians were “converted by the power of the gospel: and the same glorious truths confirmed by the holy lives of our missionaries, and accompanied by the energy of the Spirit, will, I trust, still produce the same effects.”

From 1793, with Andrew Fuller and others, Bogue sponsored the quarterly Evangelical Magazine. Part of every issue was set aside to document the “progress of the Gospel throughout the kingdom” and the magazine soon became a voice for mission promoters. Bogue published a preliminary appeal for missions in the September 1794 issue, and there were frequent reports on the LMS.

The fourth volume, in 1796, featured an excerpted version of Brainerd's life, totalling about 25 pages across three issues. The editors noted that “few lives are more interesting than that of Mr. Brainerd.” They hoped readers would “perceive how easily God can provide instruments for his work” and that his success, “in circumstances most discouraging,” would provide “the clearest demonstration that those difficulties which, to us, appear insuperable, instantly vanish at the presence of the Almighty.” The Anglican periodical Missionary Register did something similar in 1816.

When missionary training institutions began to spring up they most frequently turned for instructional inspiration to the writings of the Moravians and the Life of Brainerd. David Bogue’s academy at Gosport, which turned out 40% of all LMS missionaries in the period, included lectures that were mainly based on Bogue's reflections on the lives of past missionaries such as Brainerd. Of only five books in the Gosport Library, one was the life of Brainerd.

The Church Missionary Society's library was similar. Samuel Marsden (1765-1838) worked with the CMS in Australia and on the voyage from England he read “of Mr Brainerd’s success among the Indians,” and determined that the “same power can also effect a change upon those hardened ungodly sinners to whom I am about to carry the words of eternal life.”

Student-led mission societies at Scottish universities encouraged their members to read the Life of Brainerd (along with those of other missionaries) and even to present papers on their readings.

Brainerd was frequently cited and referred to by the mission boards. CMS candidates expected to be asked if they had read Brainerd’s Life, and, by the 1820s, the LMS Committee of Examination required candidates to read it, along with several other biographies. William Crow was judged to be a good candidate after his initial examination and was subsequently given a copy of the Life and a month to read it and write an essay on his perspective on the “character, difficulties, and privations of a Christian Missionary.” There are also frequent references to Brainerd in the writings of missionaries and mission candidates. Often, these men were challenged by Brainerd’s example of the ideal Christian.

Samuel Pearce

The men who "held the ropes" for Carey – Ryland, John Sutcliff (1752-1814) and Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) were as enthusiastic for Brainerd as he. At the end of 1781 Sutcliff wrote to Fuller to know if he can borrow Edwards' Life. Fuller has to disappoint him not having a copy. Sutcliff obviously did get to read it eventually as it became top of his recommended reading list when anyone asked about missionary work.

In May, 1780, at the annual meeting of their association, The Northamptonshire Association it was agreed to recommend the book to all who “love evangelical, experimental, and practical religion, and especially to our younger brethren in the ministry”.

When Samuel Pearce (1766-1799) another godly man who died young, read part of the biography in 1793 he wrote that “the exalted devotion of that dear man almost made me question mine. Yet” because “at some seasons he speaks of sinking as well as rising” he felt that while lacking Brainerd's “singular piety” he too knew the same “feelings, prayers, desires, comforts, hopes, and sorrows” and that could at least be followed. Carey's son Samuel Pearce Carey, dubbed Pearce “The Baptist Brainerd” when he wrote his biography. The official memoir was put together by Fuller. He too saw Pearce as another Brainerd and, according to Michael Haykin, “clearly modelled” it on Edwards' life of Brainerd. He wrote, like Edwards, “out of the conviction that telling the stories of the lives of remarkable Christians is a means of grace for the church.” (5)

Henry Martyn

Yet another missionary who died young was Henry Martyn (1781-1812). He too wrote warmly of Brainerd. On arriving in Calcutta in 1806 he wrote

most abundantly encouraged by reading D Brainerd’s account of the difficulties attending a mission to the heathen. Oh, blessed be the memory of that beloved saint! No uninspired writer ever did me so much good.

On another occasion he wrote

thought of David Brainerd, and ardently desired his devotedness to God and holy breathings of soul.

Shortly before his departure for India, he noted that a reading of Brainerd had led him to a time of prayer “for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom, and that I might be sent to the poor heathen.”

Aspiring missionaries either wanted to, or quickly learned that they were expected to, incorporate lessons from Brainerd in their applications. William Miller, in his written application to the LMS, declared that he desired the “ardent love and compassion which [Brainerd] manifested toward those who were ignorant and far from God,” as well as Brainerd’s “exquisite tenderness of conscience and deep abhorrence of sin.” Similarly, BMS missionary John Chamberlain declared, “I long to be like [Brainerd]. Surely, if ever I arrive at the heavenly world, I shall be eagerly desirous of seeing him.”

Jim Elliot

One final example of a missionary who died young who was inspired by Brainerd is the martyred Jim Elliot (1927-1956). In August 1949 he wrote of being in a

spiritual stir over reading David Brainerd’s diary. If I were honest, my writing would be more in anguish as his is. But how cold I have grown, and how careless about it all.

Some months later, he wrote that he desired that he might

receive the apostle’s passion, caught from vision of Thyself, Lord Jesus. David Brainerd’s diary stirs me on to such in prayer.

The writing of the book

Edwards, John Thornbury tells us, was not the first to make use of Brainerd's diaries.(6) As well as his personal diary, Brainerd composed a journal in which he chronicled the story of his ministry among the Indians. In this he explained in detail Indian customs and manners, what he preached to them and the difficulties and successes he knew. He prepared the Journal for the leaders of the missionary society from whom he received financial help. In 1746 William Bradford (1663-1752) in Philadelphia published these portions for The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in the Highlands of Scotland and in popish and infidel parts of the world. The extracts deal with his work at Crossweeksung June 19-November 4, 1745; November 24, 1745-June 19, 1746. The account of great revival became an important instrument in stirring up interest elsewhere in missionary work among native Americans. Both in America and in Britain many eagerly read it.

It was the private diary, however, that formed the basis of Edwards' Life. His edition became the standard one, although over the years it has been published many times with various editorial notes and alterations.

A complete edition appeared in 1765 in Edinburgh and an abridged American edition was published in 1793. In 1822, Edwards' great grandson Sereno Edwards Dwight (1796-1850) edited and published the life and diary entire, with letters and other writings. In 1843 the Presbyterian Board of Publications printed an abridgement entitled The Missionary in the Wilderness or Grace displayed among the heathen. John Wesley (1703-1781) included the Life in abridged form in Volume 12 of his collected works (Bristol, 1771-1774). The abridgement was partly to remove the Calvinism. A complete edition was printed in London in 1851 in the Christian's Fireside Library series. The diary continues to be in print in various forms. In 1884 a more thorough revision was prepared by James Manning Sherwood (1814-1890) in New York. It is the 1902 edition of this that was reprinted by The Banner of Truth in 2007. (7)

By 1749 Edwards was already a well-known writer. His first publication in 1731 was God Glorified in Man's Dependence on 1 Corinthians 1:29-31. Others followed, such as A Narrative of Surprising Conversions (1736) dealing with the Great Awakening; his famous Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1742) and Religious Affections (1746). Edwards was about to set to work on his treatise Freedom of the will when these materials came to hand. (Freedom of the will did not appear until 1754). It seems the Brainerd project took priority because Edwards saw it as providing an excellent example of the sort of qualities extolled in his previous book The Religious Affections (1746). Perhaps no book by Edwards was to be more significant than his one on Brainerd.

Edwards rewrote parts of Brainerd's testimony and diary, which can be tedious in its repetitions. He also omitted phrases he deemed unsuitable for the Christian public. The book contains a preface (10 pages); Brainerd's edited papers interspersed with Edwards' narrative in eight parts (378 pages); further 'remains', mostly letters (33 pages); reflections and observations (42 pages); the funeral sermon (12 pages). (8)

It has been said that Brainerd is the phantom in the background of other works by Edwards. The Life gave a flesh and bones example of the sort of thing that Edwards was commending. In the Yale edition Professor Norman Pettit has written that

If it is true that his treatises were too abstruse to make an impact on the spiritual life of the ordinary person, then his Life of Brainerd represents an effort to reach a larger audience and to teach by example.

He draws attention to similarities between Brainerd's conversion and that of Edwards' wife Sarah, described anonymously in Some thoughts concerning the revival of religion in New England (1742). He also points out that though the text of Edwards' biography is largely Brainerd's “the volume as Edwards conceived it belongs to him”. Brainerd's journal provided not only his own example but that of other conversions, all judged according to the criteria laid down in Edwards' Distinguishing marks of 1741. Brainerd in turn undoubtedly influenced Edwards, who spent most of his last seven years working among Native Americans in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

The Book's Impact

It is perhaps no surprise that the life of Brainerd, one that exemplifies spiritual intensity and zeal for the salvation of souls, had such a profound impact on all who read about this brief but powerful ministry. The historian William Warren Street (1818-1959) remarked

Indeed, David Brainerd dead was a more potent influence for Indian missions and the missionary cause in general than was David Brainerd alive.

Iain Murray in his life of Edwards goes as far as to say that “No book did more to create concern for wider missionary endeavour than Edwards' Life of Brainerd.” He mentions Gideon Hawley (1727-1807), Edwards' assistant at Stockbridge, as the first in a long line of Calvinist missionaries to benefit from the book. He carried it in his saddle-bag as he pioneered among the Iroquois. (9)

The Welsh revival leader Howell Harris (1714-1773), we know, was one who was reading an edition of Brainerd's life in 1761. In England Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) had read Edwards' work much earlier and was among the first in England to do so. “I have been reading the life of excellent Mr. Brainerd,” he writes, “and it has greatly humbled and quickened me.” He recommended it widely and went on to publish parts of the diary.

John Wesley once said

Find preachers of David Brainerd's spirit, and nothing can stand before them, but without this what will silver or gold do?

He also asked “What can be done to revive the work of God where it is decayed?” His answer? “Let every preacher read carefully over the life of David Brainerd”. Methodist preachers in those days were all required to carefully read Edwards' Life. Later, at Princeton Seminary too, the Life was often commended, but without Wesley's cautions about Brainerd's failure to understand Christian perfection.

When Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) read the Life of Brainerd, he wrote that he could not “express what I think when I think of [Brainerd]. Tonight, more set upon missionary enterprise than ever.”

M'Cheyne's friend Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) wrote a preface commending the work in 1851. He warns there against supposing Brainerd’s life a perfect example and points out some few defects. He goes on to commend him, however, as a protest “against the easy-minded religion of our day.” His hope was that the book would quicken consciences and urge people forward in the “same path of high attainment” leading to “unspeakable blessing.” The example of Brainerd’s “life of marvellous nearness to … God, which he lived during his brief day on earth,” continues to inspire Christians, says Bonar. “His life was not a great life, as men use the word,” but “a life of one plan, expending itself in the fulfilment of one great aim, and in the doing of one great deed - serving God.”

When in 1881 Horatius's brother Andrew Bonar (1810-1892) visited America at the invitation of D L Moody (1837-1899) one of the things he made certain to do was to visit Brainerd's grave. Though an admirer, Bonar felt that Brainerd should have looked more to Christ and less to himself.

One could go on. Two more statements to close. In 1924 the preacher Frank W Boreham (1871-1959) wrote

Have a good look at him. He is a man in a million; he did more than any other to usher in the world's new day.

More recently the American preacher John Piper has written

Brainerd’s life is a vivid, powerful testimony to the truth that God can and does use weak, sick, discouraged, beat-down, lonely, struggling saints, who cry to him day and night, to accomplish amazing things for his glory.

We worship God not men but here is a reminder of how one life, and more specifically one book on that life, can have a profound effect in the providence of Almighty God.

1 John A Grigg The Lives of David Brainerd: The Making of an American Evangelical Icon (Religion in America Series) New York, Oxford 2009

2 A F Walls “The Evangelical Revival, the Missionary Movement, and Africa” eds Noll, Bebbington and Rawlyk Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990 (Religion in America Series) New York, Oxford 1994

3 John Eliot 1604-1690 was a pioneer missionary to native Americans.

4 Horton was another pioneer missionary to Native Americans

5 Michael Haykin in Andrew Fuller Complete Works Volume 4, Memoirs of Rev Samuel Pearce Berlin, Boston 2017

6 John Thornbury David Brainerd: Pioneer Missionary to the American Indians Darlington 1996

7 “His story,” wrote Sherwood of Brainerd “has done more to develop and mould the spirit of modern missions, and to fire the heart of the Christian Church, than that of any man since the apostolic age.”

8 Page numbers refer to the Yale Edition which reinserts missing entries

9 Iain H Murray Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography Edinburgh 1987

This article first appeared in In Writing

The Dr Lloyd-Jones Library

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

Libraries and their value Part 4 (Conclusion)

This is the last part of the article/lecture

Value

Having spoken about libraries for a while let me conclude by addressing the question of their value. In days gone by The Evangelical Library Bulletin would invariably carry the slogan Preservation information circulation. These words highlight very helpfully what it is about libraries that makes them valuable. Let us think about libraries under these headings.

Preservation

Libraries are valuable because they preserve books and their contents. One of the great things libraries do is to preserve treasures from the past. To use a picture, we can think of the books produced down the ages, a figure something over the 135 million mark, as akin to the multitude of species of flora and fauna with which God populated the world in the beginning. We know that many of the species are now extinct but great efforts are being made to keep any more from being lost. This is being done on the basis that we do not know fully how useful each may be in days to come.

Librarians are engaged in part in a similar task – like so many Noahs they are seeking to preserve in readable form, the books that have been written. We should be thankful that such work goes on. Many books have been lost. The Bible refers to some, such as The Book of Jasher or The Visions of Iddo the Seer. (See 2 Samuel 1:18 and 2 Chronicles 9:29, etc.) There are many, many more of these, especially from ancient times. On rare occasions one is found tucked away somewhere or on the reverse of a palimpsest. To know such works exist is tantalising.

There are also some cases where only one or two copies of an original book survive. Thankfully, if one good copy survives, more can easily be reproduced and often are.

Information

Libraries are valuable further because they inform people of the existence of these preserved books and what they contain. Once books have been preserved people can be informed of their existence. Library catalogues are a fascinating source of knowledge that inform us firstly of what types of book exist and then of the books themselves.

Imagine someone seeing that there is a classification biblical hermeneutics or systematic theology, for example. That may be the first thing to alert them to the existence of such items. I recall a time when I did not know what a thesaurus was. The moment I discovered what it is was a great moment for me. Something similar happened with systematic theology. The first one I was aware of was that by Augustus H Strong (1836-1921) and the first one I began to read was that by Louis Berkhof (1873-1957). Reading Berkhof, to quote Keats, made me feel “like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he star'd at the Pacific”. (See On first looking into Chapman's Homer.)

Once you know a certain type or genre of books exists you can begin to find out who has written in that area. I remember a friend when I was in seminary who would deliberately scan the library shelves finding out what existed. Of course, one can take advantage of electronic search methods these days. What a help that is.

If the question is raised as to what advantage libraries have over bookshops, let me illustrate. Say I want books on the priesthood of all believers. If I go to the Amazon store and search what books they have on this subject I can find at least twenty possible titles though several are no longer in print. If I go, on the other hand, to the OCLC (Online Computer Library Centre)'s World catalogue there are a lot more books listed – hundreds. I can see that as far back as 1521 Jerome Emser (1477-1527) wrote on the subject in German. I thus have a potentially more thorough grasp of what has actually been written.

(See

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords= priesthood+of+all+believers and

https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_bks&q=priesthood+of+all+believers&fq= dt%3Abks.

Both accessed March 2017.)

Circulation

Libraries are valuable finally because they circulate news of the books they have preserved and their contents. Circulation goes on not only by means of books being picked up and read but also by them being quoted or footnoted or listed in bibliographies. It is sometimes not until a book appears in that context that some people realise it exists.

I read recently Iain Murray's new biography of J C Ryle Prepared to stand alone. In one of the footnotes I saw a reference to a book by Penelope Fitzgerald on The Knox brothers (1997) a biography of her father and his three brothers. Now I chose to download the book in electronic form rather than using a library but it was Iain Murray's footnote that alerted me to its existence. (Footnotes can be misleading, of course. I heard of a man once who read an interesting article on the Psalms that included a reference to a book in German called Die Psalmen by Berthold Seemann, the Psalms. When he got hold of the book, it turned out to be called Die Palmen by Berthold Seemann, and was actually all about palms!

Application

I am a preacher so it is right that we at least end with an application. What do we do about libraries?

1. Do support them, especially Christian ones. As you can imagine, they are constantly in need of funds. Join the Evangelical Library. Even if you do not use it, you are still helping support it.

2. Use libraries. Use their catalogues (many are online these days). Find out what is available. Do not remain in ignorance.

3. Gather your own library if you can and help others build theirs. I was most gratified to hear one of my sons say recently that now he is off to University he wants to start forming his own library.

4. Pray for them. Andrew Bonar (1810-1892) really appreciated the collection of books in his study. Indeed at times he was concerned that he thought too much of them. He realised their usefulness. He noted in his Diary on Monday 12 November 1855

Led to-day to notice that all my books, my many suitable and profitable books that come to help my study and suggest what I might preach, as well as those papers, and the like, that stir up the soul, are all part of God’s calling of me. By these He carries on what He began, and so by every verse of Scripture which He gives me the heart to feel. (Andrew Bonar Diary and Letters Marjory Bonar in loc cit).

Be thankful for your own library and for others like the Evangelical Library and the Dr Williams. Give thanks to God for them. Pray they will be provided for and be used in a way that will bring glory to God.

Libraries and their value Part 3 (Specialist Libraries)

Specialist libraries

There are all sorts of specialist libraries. Obviously our interest is theological and Christian. ABTAPL (The Association of British Theological And Philosophical Libraries) was originally formed to be the UK member of an international Association of Theological Libraries set up in 1954, following a meeting convened by the WCC under UNESCO auspices.

They provide an online directory that lists some 53 such libraries here in London and another 400 elsewhere in the British Isles.

(https://www.newman.ac.uk/abtapl/database/contents.html Accessed March 2017. There are 30 in Oxford, 20 in Cambridge, 29 in Scotland, 17 in Ireland and 8 each in N Ireland and Wales.) Some of these are of lesser interest (University libraries, local public libraries, Roman Catholic ones and others to do with other religions and sects.) but some are worth mentioning

• The London Library (with a million volumes all told)
• The Huguenot Library in nearby Gower Street
• The Lambeth Palace Library, which since 1996 has included the bulk of the largely Puritan Sion College Library
• The Bible Society Library, Oxford
• The Angus Library and archive for Baptist history, Oxford
• Tyndale House Library, Cambridge (42,000 volumes)
• The Gospel Standard Baptist Library, Hove
• The Gladstone Library, Hawarden, North Wales
• The various Wesley libraries in Bristol, London and Oxford 

(http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/

http://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/library-and-archive.html

http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/

https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/about-us/our-history/archives-at-cambridge/

http://theangus.rpc.ox.ac.uk/

http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/library

http://www.gospelstandard.org.uk/Library/

https://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/ The Gladstone Library is residential)

Dr Williams Library (For more on Dr Williams's Library see http://dwl.ac.uk/)

To look at two more libraries in a little detail, you probably know that the library in which this lecture is being given was established by the will of Welsh born Presbyterian Dissenter Dr Daniel Williams (1643-1716). After serving in Ireland he became a leading London nonconformist minister. When he died he left instructions to his trustees to turn his private collection into a public library available for nonconformist ministers, tutors and students in the City of London. The library first opened in Red Cross Street, Cripplegate in 1730, largely due to the selfless efforts of his trustees who contributed and raised the necessary funds to build and equip a separate library building.

The collections were greatly enlarged over the years with many important gifts of books, manuscripts and portraits, so that the original 7600 books now form only a small part of the library which goes well beyond Puritanism to cover all sorts of biblical subjects, church history and more.

In 1865 the Metropolitan Railway bought the Red Cross Street premises and after a temporary stay at No.8, Queen Square, there was a move to a new building in Grafton Street in 1873. In 1889 the then Trustees acquired University Hall, Gordon Square, where the Library opened in 1890, where it has been ever since. The Congregational Library is also housed there. Last year, 2016, marked the tercentenary of the Trust and a new history was prepared by Dr Williams's Research Fellow, Dr Alan Argent.

(The building's designer was the winner of an architectural competition, Thomas Leverton Donaldson (1795-1885), Professor of Architecture at University College, London. It was built in 1848-49 as University Hall to mark the passing of the 1844 Dissenters' Chapels Act. The premises were shared by Manchester New College from 1853, which acquired the lease in 1882. When the college (now Harris Manchester College) moved to Oxford in 1889, the building was acquired from its trustees by Dr Williams's Trust)

The Library currently has about 250,000 volumes and about 150 periodical runs. It adds about a thousand volumes a year and 80 periodicals. Special collections include a 17th Century French Protestant theology one.(There are also Unitarian collections under the names Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) and Joseph Priestley (1733-1804); Christopher Walton's Theosophical Library; Norman H Baynes' Byzantine Library, the G H Lewes & George Eliot Library and the New College, London Library.) There are also manuscript collections, including those of Roger Morrice (1628-1702); the Westminster Assembly minutes; Richard Baxter's letters and diaries, etc and mss of George Herbert (1593-1633).

The Evangelical Library (For more on The Evangelical Library see http://evangelical-library.org.uk/)

It has been my privilege to be on the board of the Evangelical Library many years, latterly as chair. The Library's founder was London Strict Baptist businessman Geoffrey Williams (1886-1975) who founded it as the Beddington Free Grace Library in 1933. His vision for the library began with the accumulation in his Beddington home, 12 miles from London, of a private collection of Reformed and Puritan evangelical classics but he soon developed a vision fuelled by a double realisation. First, the anomaly that a Protestant nation that by then possessed a variety of specialist information libraries yet lacked a national repository for the best Protestant evangelical literature. At the same time, there was the growing realisation that many excellent evangelical works were fast disappearing from the public domain. Puritan and Reformed literature was being banished from theological libraries and ministers studies with alacrity.

So Geoffrey Williams set himself the task of reclaiming as many volumes as possible as a heritage for future generations. The silver lining in it all was that at the time original works, some very rare, were turning up on barrows in street markets and similar places at rock bottom prices. Williams systematically scoured the length and breadth of the country pursuing a wide range of important books for the collection. His tireless efforts were richly rewarded and today from the acorn of that original collection a rich oak has grown. 

A crucial moment was when in 1938 Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was made aware of the Library. (This happened through a Welsh speaking Calvinistic Methodist minister Eliseus Howell (1893-1969))

He immediately saw how it tuned in with his own burning desire for what we may call the three R’s: Restoration of God's Word at the heart of the Christian community, Reformation of the church that teaches that Word and, ultimately, Revival of the people brought about by a personal relationship with Christ.

Lloyd-Jones was keen to bring the Library to central London and in 1944, even though the country was still at war, this happened. The first location was Gloucester Road, South Kensington but in 1946 the Library was installed in an old school building on Chiltern Street near Baker Street Tube. An attractive location in many ways, it was possible to have use of the building on very attractive terms. As the years went by problems became apparent, however, with draughts and leaks and great difficulties heating the place. The second and third floor location was also a problem for some although it was possible to install a lift latterly.

Eventually, it was agreed that a move was necessary and after several options were explored a move was made near the end of 2009 to a brand new double unit with parking spaces in North London, near Bounds Green Tube Station. The new location has proved a great asset, maintaining the London connection but escaping damp conditions, a potentially unsympathetic landlord and the congestion zone.

The Library currently has about 80,000 volumes and about 60 periodical runs, including a complete run of the now defunct Christian Herald magazine. It adds volumes as and when it can (about 500 annually) and takes in about a hundred periodicals. There is a small manuscript collection that includes letters from A W Pink (1886-1962), letters to George Whitefield (1714-1770) and what appear to be sermons by Philip Henry (1631-1696). There is also an interesting portrait collection. The Library now houses the archive of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity and has recently agreed to house The Strict Baptist Historical Society collection of 5000 books, several periodicals and 350 church minute books, account books, etc. from over a hundred churches. We hope shortly to receive a collection of about 5000 books originally kept in Grove Chapel, Camberwell but that have been in Australia for over 25 years.

Libraries and their value Part 2 (Categories and Personal Libraries)

NLW Aberystwyth

Categories

One can think of various types of library – public, private, mobile, national, school, church, specialist, personal, etc. 

I have had experience of most of these - from the mobile library that used to come to our housing estate in the sixties (Where I learned to devour the William books of Richmal Crompton (1890-1969) and first discovered detective novels) through being a school librarian in a comprehensive school (Here I discovered Punch magazine and the Tin Tin comics of Georges Remi (1907-1983). I used to like to close the library with the phrase “time gentlemen please”) to the Hugh Owen Library, Aberystwyth University, as an undergraduate, which I confess was not visited enough.

Then there are the national libraries in Wales and London. The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (another copyright library) is an excellent resource. (It was in that Library that one day I discovered that there are not only bibliographies but bibliographies of bibliographies. One inevitably wonders if there are bibliographies of bibliographies of bibliographies (there are! Aksel G S Josephson (1860-1944) was the pioneer here.) 

As for the British Library two reminiscences (a fourth copyright library – the other two are in Edinburgh and Dublin.) I once went to consult The intercession of Christ by 19th century Reformed Presbyterian Thomas Houston (1804-1882) of Knockbracken. The copy was largely uncut. I had to send it back to the librarians to deal with. It struck me as rather sad to think of a book sat in the Library since 1882 or whenever (over a hundred years) and never read. It was a little exciting too to be reading it for the first time, as old as it was. (When a book is bound, trimming is the final thing done (or not done) so its leaves can be turned. A sheet folded in quarto has folds at the spine and across the top, so the top folds must be trimmed. A signature (a section that contains text) folded in octavo or greater may also require that the other two sides be trimmed. Deckle Edge or Uncut books are sometimes of special interest to booksellers.)

Another time, who should I sit next to but well known polymath and atheist Jonathan Miller. As I researched the life of a 19th Century Baptist called James Harvey (1826-1893) in From Suffolk Lad to London Merchant - his conversion, how he served the Lord in part by arguing with rationalists, etc, next to me sat a notorious atheist. I wanted to point out the irony but resisted. (It also took some self-control when he wandered off not to take a pencil and write in his notebook “There is a God”, “God is great” or “Eternity” - those were the alternatives I considered.)

I should also say something about church libraries, a mixed blessing in my experience. We had one in my home church in Wales. I remember borrowing a two volume Gospel Standard set Sermons of J K Popham (1847-1937). (James Kidwell Popham was the 19th century High Calvinist pastor of Galeed Strict Baptist, Brighton who wrote against Moody and Sankey. The church I attended was not at all Hyper-Calvinist.) I recall helping to catalogue the Library. My pastor used to say certain books we were given were for “the poison cupboard”. I recall The Jesus of history by T R Glover (1869-1943) being one put in there. (Glover's book was first published in 1917. Terrot Reavely Glover, a classics lecturer, was a Baptist and an Anti-supernaturalist.)

We have a church library in Childs Hill, that is used only from time to time. Just recently a former member came back to London from Nigeria eager to read. She fished out by herself the peerless Holiness by J C Ryle (1816-1900) which she soon finished and More than conquerors on Revelation by William Hendriksen (1900-1982). Last Sunday she asked for a good book on eschatology. I was able to locate a rather grubby copy of a little book from 1970 The Momentous event by W J Grier (1902-1983) – not approved by everyone perhaps but one that explains the Amillennial position very well. (Holiness was first published in 1877, More than conquerors in 1939 and The Momentous event in 1970.)

Anyway, today I want us to think chiefly of the value of personal and specialist libraries.

Personal libraries 

A recent report by Aviva insurers suggested that around 6.5m people in Britain (1-in-10) do not own any printed books. In the 18-24 age range, the number increases to 1-in-5. Although the report sounds alarm bells, Sunday Times literary editor, Andrew Holgate, said he was not surprised at the figure and being positive declared that "at least that means 90% of homes do have books". (See article here http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/1-10-people-do-not-own-single-book-uk-households-have-8-web-connected-devices-1602428 Accessed March 2017.) It may also be the case that some are taking in their information by other means. 

I grew up in the sixties in a household with few books. The few books we did have made quite an impact. There was the 1958 Waverley Encyclopedia edited by Gordon Stowell, later supplemented by a Collins Modern Encyclopedia in Colour (1969) and an almost complete set of the multi-volume Children's Encyclopedia (one of the post-1943 sets) published under the name Arthur Mee (1875-1943). Religious books were few and far between so I remember well the Watchtower publication From paradise lost to paradise regained especially the pictures and W L Emmerson's Adventist work The Bible Speaks. (Not recommended these volumes from 1958 and 1949 respectively were accessed March 2017 in these locations:
http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/paradise/1958_From_Paradise_Lost_To_Paradise_Regained.pdf http://www.temcat.com/L-4-Topical-Library/Answers/The%20Bibl%20Speaks-Emmerson.pdf
I also seem to recall Uncle Arthur's Bedtime stories another Adventist title but aimed at children).

It was only when I was converted at the age of 12 that I discovered that both my parents both owned Bibles. 

Once I became a Christian, I began to gather my own personal library. The first Christian book I read was F B Meyer (1847-1929) on Paul A servant of Jesus Christ in a Lakeland Publications paperback. When I began to gather a personal library of good Christian books there was much talk about the importance of having hardbacks. These are more expensive, of course, but more durable. If you are not careful, some paperbacks can fall apart on a first read. 

I remember shelling out the extra cash to buy The Welsh Revival of 1904 by Dr Eifion Evans in hardback. I am glad I did that. It is a very enlightening book that I still have. (This appeared in 1969. The year before Brynmor Pierce Jones (1925-1999) who I later came to know had published The King's Champions. He always referred to Dr Evans' book, a little aggrieved, as “the official version” ie with the focus on Evan Roberts). But then pursuing my policy I went next for Yale scholar Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006)'s Spirit Versus Structure: Luther and the Institutions of the Church. I struggled through it but this academic work is not really for teenagers. 

I did better with paperbacks such as J C Ryle Five English Reformers (Published by the Banner of Truth Trust from 1961) and Brian Edwards' mid-seventies EP biographies of William Tyndale (1494-1536) and John Newton (1725-1807) God's Outlaw and Through many dangers. I also really appreciated a little book by Dr G Coleman Luck (1913-1976) The Bible book by book. (Dr Luck was a Moody Bible Institute professor and his book first appeared in 1955.) It is an introduction to Bible synthesis, which involves reading whole books of the Bible through at a time. It was when I started doing this as a University student that I recalled that I had just the book to help me. 

Throughout my student years I took advantage of Banner offers and such like and once I became a minister the church was happy to help me in securing the tools of my trade. Prior to the birth of my fifth son I was persuaded to move my library from the manse to the church. This has not been a happy arrangement. I most often work at home so I am not seeing my library on a daily basis and so lack the familiarity with it that would make it more useful. Further, as expected, it is not unusual for me to lose track of a book's whereabouts. Is it in the chapel or at home? Perhaps if I had begun with this arrangement it would be less difficult. 

In more recent years there has been a revolution in the online availability of good books and I am in a sort of halfway house where many of the books I consult I have only in electronic form – on esword, online or on my kindle. I have found it useful to maintain a virtual library at Librarything. I have only catalogued about 800 volumes so far but it means that I have an easily accessible record of books, religious and secular, that I own or once owned. (For e-sword see http://www.e-sword.net/ and for Librarything, https://www.librarything.com/ Kindle is an Amazon product https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0186FESVC. 

Christians who want to maintain a personal library today probably fall into three broad categories. Many, especially younger men, use Logos software or something similar so that most of their books are in electronic form. The advantage here is that such libraries are highly portable and easily searched. (See https://www.logos.com/) 

Everything printed from 1475-1700 can be accessed through Early English Books Online if you have the access (anyone in Wales can do this through the National Library). Most items from 1700-1800 are also available (ECCO). (See https://eebo.chadwyck.com/home and http://gale.cengage.co.uk/) There will always be a need for conventional books but for younger men this will increasingly be the way to go, making private (as well as public) libraries much less crucial than they were, though, I want to argue, still necessary. 

At the other end of things are those who deal almost exclusively in conventional books. My father-in-law, Geoff Thomas, has recently retired and moved out of the manse he occupied for over 50 years where he amassed a huge library of thousands of volumes. His story perhaps includes some cautionary advice for those who take the conventional route. The story often told by students of the library that is sinking due to the weight of its books is apparently an urban myth but books can cause structural damage, especially if stored in private homes. Most of my father-in-law's volumes were kept on the first floor and there does appear to be some structural damage. He also has the problem of where to house the collection next. Many have had to go into storage for now. S M Houghton (1899-1987) who was such a help to the Banner of Truth in its early days, had a library of 30,000 volumes. He had to resort to using chicken sheds in his garden to store them all! 

In George Orwell's novel Keep the aspidistra flying he refers to bookseller Mr Cheeseman whose favourite way of acquiring stock “was to buy up the libraries of people who had just died, especially clergymen. Whenever a clergyman died Mr Cheeseman was on the spot with the promptness of a vulture. Clergymen, he explained to Gordon, so often have good libraries and ignorant widows." (See Chapter 10 of the 1936 novel). Whether my old minister, Derek Garwood, was aware of that quotation or simply the fact, he made valiant efforts to overcome that problem before he died but to no avail. Thankfully, most of the books went to the Library now owned by Union in Bridgend. If we are looking at things with a financial eye, the truth is that personal libraries need to be dispersed before we die not after!

This is the transcript of the second part of a lecture given at the EFCC Conference 2017

Libraries and their value Part 1 (Definition, Bible, history)

Hereford Cathedral Library

Let me begin by thanking those responsible for giving me the opportunity to deliver this lecture. I must say that it is an honour to have my name associated with that of Alan Tovey. It is good to see his widow here, now Mrs Lucy Beale.

I understand that Alan was from Hafodyrynys, only nine miles away from where I grew up, although Cwmbran, it must be said, has a different feel to Hafodyrynys. As a boy we in Cwmbran and Newport used to refer to such places as part of “Welsh Wales”. (Welsh Wales has been defined as “post-industrial South Wales, epitomised by the coal mining valleys that fan out northward from Swansea, Cardiff and Newport”. Assembling identities, Sam Wiseman, Cambridge, 2014, 72.)

I recall being up in Welsh Wales with my dad one day when we passed a very compact little soccer field. “That's where we used to play” my dad said. My father was from Newport and was a keen footballer and a decent one. For a little while (at the end of his career I think, in the early fifties I guess) he was goalkeeper for the Hafodyrynys team.

Definition
And so to libraries. A library can be defined as “a place in which reading materials, such as books, periodicals and newspapers, and often other materials such as musical and video recordings, are kept for use or lending”. (Free Dictionary). The word can also refer to such a collection of materials, especially when systematically arranged. The word is sometimes used more loosely as in toy library, tool library, even seed library. 

Today we are thinking specifically of books, which the original word suggests. Library is from Latin librarium. It originally referred to a chest of books. It is interesting to note that the Latin word Liber can refer to a book or with different inflexion (Lee-ber) a free person (the two decline differently liber, libri, libro, etc and liber, liberi, libero, etc). There is also the adjective liber, libera, liberum. It is tempting to give an attractive but false etymology – Library, a place of freedom!

The Bible

The Bible itself is often spoken of as a library, as it contains 66 books by different authors, from different times and situations, using different styles and genres and originally addressing different audiences. The statement is open to abuse but if we maintain both that the Bible is a library and one book we will not be far from the truth.

In one volume in the Library, 2 Timothy, we read (4:13) Paul's words When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments. We are not sure what the distinction between scrolls and parchments may be. Clearly Paul wanted books, however. He did not look down on book learning but was keen to use books. It is a fair inference from the verse that reading is important for Christians, especially ministers, and that libraries are potentially a good and useful thing. John Calvin (1509-1564) says the verse refutes “the madness of the fanatics who despise books and condemn all reading and boast only of ... their private inspirations by God” and “commends continual reading to all godly men as a thing from which they can profit.” (John Calvin, NT Commentary Corinthians, Timothy, Titus and Philemon, eds S W Torrance, T F Torrance, California, 1960, 341.) Matthew Henry (1662-1714) adds that we should thank God that he “given us so many writings of wise and pious men in all ages” and seek “that by reading them our profiting may appear to all.” (Matthew Henry, Commentary on the whole Bible, in loc cit.)

In another volume in the Library, Ecclesiastes (in 12:12) is a well known verse that makes a different point of making many books there is no end. It is often quoted. Our location today well illustrates the point. The following phrase is often quoted too, usually with a wry smile, and much study wearies the body!

Church father Origen (184-253), in his commentary on John, says that it appears to indicate two things - “that we ought not to possess many books, and .. that we ought not to compose many”. (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume IX, Chapter 2). Conscious that he himself is composing a book he is aware of the irony, as others have been addressing the text. He suggests that it is a caution rather than a prohibition, which must be right Solomon himself was composing a book when he wrote as he did. John Gill (1697-1771) picks out the application well when he says on the place (John Gill, Exposition on the whole Bible, in loc cit.)

A man may lay out his money, and fill his library with books, and be very little the better for them; what one writer affirms, another denies; what one seems to have proved clearly, another rises up and points out his errors and mistakes; and this occasions replies and rejoinders, so that there is no end of these things, and scarce any profit by them; which, without so much trouble, may be found in the writings of wise men, inspired by God, and in which we should rest contented …

My subject is the value of libraries. I am happy to address it but by way of a disclaimer it is fair to add a caution. In a fallen world, fallen men and women can be harmed as well as helped by libraries. The experience of Richard Baxter (1615-1691) perhaps offers a graphic illustration of the need for caution. On one occasion we learn that as he sat in his study one day

the weight of his greatest folio books broke down three or four of the highest shelves, … and they fell down on every side of him, and not one of them hit him, except one upon the arm. Whereas the place, the weight, and greatness of the books was such, and his head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out his brains, or done him an unspeakable mischief. (Baxter's Practical Works, Volume 1, ix)

One shelf just above him apparently held the huge Polyglot Bible edited by Bishop Brian Walton (1600-1661), the complete Works of Augustine of Hippo (354-440) and several other weighty tomes. The story serves as a reminder that libraries can do harm as well as good.

History

(A good introduction to this subject can be found in The Story of Libraries, Second Edition: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age, Fred Lemer, London, 2009.)

It is apposite to attempt a very brief survey of the history of libraries. It is generally agreed that the earliest were collections of clay tablets gathered and catalogued in Mesopotamia by the Sumerians and their Akkadian and Persian successors. There may have been other early libraries that used less robust materials. If so, they have not survived.

The first explicit reference to an ancient Egyptian library dates back to 1788 BC. A stele exists on which King Neferhotep records his desire “to see the ancient writings of Atum” in the library of the temple at Heliopolis. A famous Egyptian library also existed in the time of Rameses II (d 1213 BC), possibly the Exodus Pharaoh.

It was probably not until the fourth century BC that individuals, such as the Greek philosophers Plato (427-337 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) began to amass personal libraries. A saying is attributed to Plato, though perhaps erroneously, that “a house that has a library in it has a soul”.

We know little about it but the most famous of ancient libraries is the Hellenic one at Alexandria dedicated to the Muses. Established in the third century BC by Ptolemy I (c 367-283 BC), it was part of the Musaeum there. Greatly reduced in the time of Julius Caesar (48 BC) and Aurelian (270 AD) it was tragically destroyed by fire in 391 AD and probably entirely lost when the Muslims invaded Egypt in 642 AD.

Roman Emperors commonly founded libraries and in the early years AD libraries were founded not just in Rome but all over the Empire. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD a library containing 1800 volumes was destroyed in the Villa of Pisones in Herculaneum. 

Christians were early aware of the usefulness of libraries. Bishop Alexander (d 251) founded one in Jerusalem before 250 AD and Origen did the same around the same time in Caesarea. Clement (150-215) used one in Alexandria to quotes from nearly 350 authors in his works. Christian Libraries were one of the targets of Diocletian (244-311) when he persecuted Christians. The one in Caesarea survived. We know that Eusebius (263-339) used it to write his Ecclesiastical History and Jerome (347-429) after him.

While the papyrus roll ruled for hundreds of years, by the first century AD, the use of vellum and parchment was coming in, the former being eventually supplanted. The other technological change, famously pioneered by Christians, was the codex or book. By the fourth century AD it had overtaken scrolls in popularity. (There is a hilarious sketch on Youtube where a mediaeval monk gets help with the new technology, which he does not quite have the hang of.See here (Accessed March 2017). 

In the mediaeval period libraries began to centre on monasteries and monks became famous for copying manuscripts. In the sixth century one of the first copyright disputes occurred in Ireland, when Columba (521-597) secretly copied a psalter, or perhaps a whole Bible, belonging to Finian (470-549). They took their dispute to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall (Dermot McKervil, d 565) who ruled against Columba, saying “to every cow belongs its calf and to every book its copy”. It was one of the reasons Columba left Ireland for Iona.

It was in this period that libraries began to chain their more valuable books in order to keep them from being purloined. One of the largest chained libraries, one that you can still visit today, is in Hereford Cathedral. Another, the first endowed for use outside an institution, is the Francis Trigge Chained Library in Grantham, Lincolshire, established 1598, a forerunner of later public libraries.

The invention of printing had its own impact, increasing the number of books and the ease with which they could be reproduced. Before 1602, The Bodleian Library was refounded in Oxford through Thomas Bodley (1545-1613). (Today one of six copyright libraries in the British Isles, ie one entitled to a free copy of every book published in the UK.) Other early libraries include Norwich City Library (1608) and Chetham's Library, Manchester, (founded through Sir Humphrey Chetham 1580-1653) which claims to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world (1653). Other early town libraries are Ipswich (1612) Bristol (1613-15) and Leicester (1632). The British Library was established 1753. (Another copyright library.)

This is the transcript of part of a lecture given at the EFCC Conference 2017