In this sermon, the preacher discusses the importance of pastors spending regular, daily time with God. He references 1 Timothy 4:11 and emphasizes the need for pastors to be converted and not prey to worldly distractions. The preacher also mentions the revival happening in his church but humbly admits that he feels unequal to the task and wonders if he has truly begun to preach. He warns against taking shortcuts in the spiritual life and compares it to the convenience of technology, emphasizing that there is no shortcut to spending time with God.

But before we look at Bonner, I thought it would be helpful and appropriate to look at something of Scottish Christianity, Christianity in Scotland, in the decades and even centuries before Bonner appears in the scene of history, his birthday being 1810, and he died in 1892, and thus his life spans much, if not most, of the 19th century. But I want to go back in quite a number of years to give you something of the shape and character of Christianity in Scotland before Bonner comes, and there are a number of reasons for doing this. One is because I suspect that Scottish Christianity is not as well known as it should be. The second is some of the key events in Bonner's life, namely what's called the Disruption in 1843, is not understandable if you don't have some idea as to what has been taking place in Scottish Christianity. Well, Christianity first came to Scotland in the 500s. It was Irish evangelists coming across from Ireland who planted the gospel in the early 500s on the Isle of Iona. If you ever go to Scotland, it is well worth taking a couple of days, and it does take a couple of days really, to go over to the west, to the Inner Hebrides, to take a ferry, most of them leaving from Oban, across to the Isle of Mull, and then a bus trip across Mull to another little ferry that goes about a mile at that, to the Isle of Iona, where Columba came in the 540s, and an island that was still within sight, apparently on a clear day. The one occasion when I was there was not as clear a day as it could have been, but on a clear day, apparently you can see Ireland. But it was there that Columba began to use the Isle of Iona as a kind of centre for propagating and evangelising, propagating the gospel and evangelising Scotland. Well, I'm sure you know that for most of the Middle Ages following those early days, and those early days were, if there was anywhere in Europe where the gospel was purely preached, it was in Scotland and very northern England and Ireland in the 500s and the 600s. By the time you move into the Middle Ages, those days were long past, and the Celtic Church, as it had been known in the time of Columba, had been emerged or swallowed up or taken over by the Roman Catholic Church. And the gospel does not appear with the sort of light that it should have until the 1500s, and then it's probably the name of John Knox that stands out. When Reformation comes to Scotland, mostly in the lowlands, not the highlands, but mostly the lowlands, with John Knox being gripped by the need of Scotland for the gospel. In fact, he spends some time in prison, then as a galley slave, he was imprisoned on a Catholic galley ship, and then eventually finds his way to Geneva, where he has a rich time of learning under John Calvin, and then comes back to Scotland where, against the overwhelming military odds, because Scotland politically, in her constitution and her alliances, was still very Catholic, he begins to preach the gospel. The Queen of Scotland at the time was the very well-known Mary, Queen of Scotland, who on one occasion said she feared John Knox's prayers in all the archies of Europe. And Knox's great cry to God, give me Scotland or I die, was a request that was granted him. And Reformation came to Scotland, and the way in which the Reformation Church took root in Scotland was that which we call Presbyterianism. And Presbyterianism and Scottishness seem to have been interwoven, because over the next centuries, it is very, very rare to find any other groups, but Presbyterian groups, active and flourishing in Scotland. There will be, for instance, Baptists who come in in the 1640s, but they never take deep roots. Presbyterianism, for some reason, appeals to the Scottish soul. And Scotland becomes, in many respects, at least in the lowlands, the highlands are a bit of a different story, so later, becomes a nation of Presbyterians. And this isn't forgetting, there are other groups, there are some Episcopalians and so on, but Presbyterianism takes deep roots in Scotland, and it is John Knox who stands at the end. In the early 1700s, there really was one Presbyterian Church. There were no chisms, there was one state church, it was the established church, the arm of the state, which was used to encourage men and women to go to church and support the ministry. There was a dark time in the 1600s, between the 1650s and the 1680s, when there was great persecution. The king of Scotland and England was Charles II, who sought to impose an Episcopalian or an Anglican model of church government and life upon Scotland, and it's that period in which we have much of the stories of Scottish covenanters, men and women who were determined to worship God as they read the scriptures, and many of them severely persecuted for their faith. By the early 1700s, with the impact of the age of reason upon Scotland, many of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland had lost their fire, and there were a number of periods of renewal and of revival in the 1700s, but not without schisms, and the first break in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland comes in the 1730s, and it is associated with two men, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, two of the most prominent evangelical ministers in Scotland in this period of time, and their great protest, it's one that will occur in Bonner's life as well, and their great protest was against the state authorities imposing on believing ministers upon congregations. When the Presbyterian Church was set up in the 1500s, it was intertwined with the state, such that the state basically had to approve appointments to church to churches. Those ministers were appointed, the churches were approved by the state, and the Erskines were distressed by the fact that some of the men who were appointed were unbelievers as far as they were concerned, men who were not gripped by the gospel in their heart and soul, and thus they protested against this but to no avail, and eventually in the 1730s there was a schism, the first schism within the Church of Scotland, and the men who went out with the Erskines became known as the Associate Presbytery, and today that group still exists in North America as the Associate Reformed Presbyterian. I mention this at some length because it will be an issue that will occur in Bonner's life as well, this whole issue of patronage, does the state have the right and the privilege to appoint ministers, and it will be an issue as I say that will occur in the 1800s. The other issue that the Erskines were deeply involved in was seeking to bring revival to Scotland and renewal to Scotland, and it was in this life that they invited the great preacher George Whitfield to come to Scotland, and Whitfield did come in the 1740s, and there were remarkable scenes of revival, especially a place called Camslang, which at that day in those days was a small village not far from Glasgow, and here in the summer of 1742, extraordinary scenes of 10,000, 15,000 on a regular basis going out to hear preaching of the gospel, and hundreds of conversions, some of them quite striking, as Whitfield and other Scottish preachers, Presbyterian preachers preached. One of those who went to hear the preaching was a Scottish minister by the name of John Bonner, a man who'd been ministering in that part of Scotland since 1693. He was an older man by this period of time, almost at the end of his ministry, but he made the journey of considerable distance just to see the sight of thousands sitting under the preaching of the word and the conversions that were taking place, and despite his age and infirmity, he made that journey and was blessed because of it, and would pass down in his family this great longing for revival, and he is the great grandfather of the man that we want to talk about today, Andrew Alexander Bonner, and so you have then in the mid-1700s a revival that comes to Scotland. It impacts not only the Erskines, but it also impacts the Presbyterian church in Scotland, which is still the main grouping. Only a few had gone out with the Erskines in the 1730s, but there were really two divisions in the Presbyterian church in Scotland, the state church. There were those who embraced the revival who were known as evangelicals. The others who rejected the revival and had problems with it were known as the moderate, and they were liberal theologically. There were men who had been impacted deeply by the age of reason, who because of the age of reason, which was the dominant worldview of the 18th century, had come to suspect scripture as not being inspired. They had suspicions in their minds about the deity and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had problems with the doctrine of the Trinity. They had problems with the miracles of Christ. They had problems with his resurrection and so on. In other words, they really were seeking to exercise Christian ministry outside the parameters that God laid down for such a ministry. It's not surprising that these two bodies within the church of Scotland found themselves at each other's throats, and illustrative of the power of the moderate are incidents that take place about 40 years before Bonner's ministry really takes off in the mid-1800s. In the 1790s, there were two men converted who had exercised a powerful ministry in Scotland, James and Robert Haldane. The Haldanes were very wealthy noblemen, and both of them were converted within the church of Scotland in the 1790s. They had enormous wealth at their disposal, and began to feel the constraints of the Spirit of God at work in their lives that they give this wealth to the furtherance of the gospel. In fact, Robert Haldane wanted to go as a missionary to India with William Carey, this well-known Baptist who had gone to India in 1793, but it didn't work out that way. Instead, they turned their attention to the Highlands. Now, the Highlands of Scotland, up until this point, had really not been impacted by either the Reformation in the 1500s, or by Evangelical Christianity and the revivals that served to foster that Evangelical Christianity in the 1700s. Much of the vibrant, reformed, Protestant, Evangelical life that we've been talking about is all in the Lowlands. It's not in the Highlands, the Gaelic-speaking area of Scotland. The Lowlands speaking really a variant of English, or at least a language known as Scots, which has roots similar to English. It's not at all like Gaelic. And the Gaelic-speaking Scotland had not been impacted by the gospel. In fact, there was no Gaelic Bible to speak of until the 1700s. And for whatever reason, the Lowland Scots Reformed Presbyterians, or Lowland Scots Evangelical Presbyterians, had not been able to give attention to the still largely Catholic Highlands. And thus it had been, for instance, in the 1740s and 1746, when the Roman Catholic Pretender to the Throne, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charles Edward Stuart, had landed in Northern Scotland, in the Highlands. Most of the clans that rallied to his cause were Highland Catholic clans. There were some Anglicans as well, but they were not the Presbyterians. And so there was a division in Scotland. But the Haldanes began to realize that right in their own backyard was a huge mission field. So they didn't have to go to India to be missionaries. There was all of the Highlands. In those days the Highlands were still fairly populated. Today they are being depopulated for a variety of reasons, but still large populations in many of the Highlands. And so James Haldane in particular, every summer, he became a minister in Edinburgh. But every summer he would take off, and his church gave him leave to do this, and take preaching tours up in the Highlands, in the Orkneys, those cluster of islands even further north, and the sea above Scotland, and the Outer Hebrides, places like Lewis and Skye and Harris. Places today where, if there is anywhere in Scotland where evangelical Christianity is deeply rooted, it is in the Outer Hebrides. But in those days it was not so. And God blessed their ministry, and churches were planted in this area. A considerable number of churches planted in what had been a bastion of Catholic and Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. But there were many in the Presbyterian Church who had problems with the Haldane's ministry, and these were the moderates. And in fact there was a huge debate in the very late 1790s, 1799, running into the early 1800s, that eventually, eventuated in the Haldanes leaving the Church of Scotland and becoming Congregational. And it gives you some idea that there was a very strong party within the Presbyterian Church of Scotland that had little interest in the things that had gripped the heart of men like Knox, and the Covenanters, of whom probably the most famous would be Samuel Rutherford, and the Erskines, namely the importance of the preaching of the word and the winning of souls to Christ. And many of these men had been so impacted by the age of reason that they had lost hold of the central truths or verities of the gospel. And for them a church life was more of a social affair than something that had to do with Now this is the context in which Andrew Bonner was born in 1810. A context in which there had been driven out to some degree some of the finest evangelicals in the Church of Scotland, men like the Haldanes who had become Congregational. A context in which moderatism, the moderates were exercising a very powerful influence in the Church of Scotland that dampened the fire of evangelicalism. It's interesting that in the year that Bonner was born was the year that a man named Thomas Chalmers was converted. Chalmers, C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S, had been like many of the ministers I've been describing who we call moderates. He was born in 1780, he had gone through for the ministry, had become a Presbyterian minister without a saving knowledge of Christ. It had been a social thing for him, a way of attaining social prominence and so on. And then in 1810 at the age of 30, after a number of years already in the ministry, he was converted. And he now saw his whole life in a very different perspective, saw his ministry in a whole different perspective. And in Edinburgh began to exercise a very powerful ministry. Eventually would be called to be Professor of Theology at the University of Edinburgh where Bonner would sit under his ministry and be strongly shaped by that ministry. Well that's something of the shape of Scottish Christianity prior to Bonner's life and it's a very quick overview and we did it in 15 minutes and a lot more could be said. Now Bonner is remembered today as the author of probably one book that he authored is probably the one that most remember him as the author of and it's this one, The Life of Robert Murray McShane. And McShane died at the age of 29. Bonner as you could see from the note died at the age of 82, 50 years later. And Bonner never forgot his friend and not long after his friend's death, McShane's death, he wrote this Life of his friend which became a bestseller and became a spiritual classic. And The Life of McShane has never been out of print. It's one that has made a deep impress upon many as they've read of this man, McShane, a commitment to Christ. Bonner wrote a number of other books but probably his best remembered work besides The Life of McShane is the one that he never published himself but his daughter published and it is this one, The Diary and Life of Bonner which actually complies with two books and we're going to use much of it in what we want to talk about today. Comprises two books, one his life and letters and then another his reminiscences and one writer said it reads like a treatise on prayer. These were never intended to be published. It's his own private diary in which he recorded how God impacted his life and ministry over roughly about 45, 50 years. Never intended to be published but it records very well the inner life of a man of God and we want to spend some time looking at that. I have a blow up of the picture there. I'm not sure how well that can be seen back there. How well can you see that David? Not well at all probably. Okay. Well maybe in the second hour with the break we can pass this around. Depicts Bonner in his, probably in his 70s towards the end of his ministry. Now Bonner as I said had, was born into a family of evangelicals and his great grandfather John Bonner had gone to see the revival that was taking place at Cairns Lang under the ministry of George Whitfield in the 1740s and was a minister for 54 years and that was near the end of his own ministry because his own ministry ended in 1747. His son also called John Bonner had also had a ministry, an evangelical ministry for a number of years until he died prematurely. Leaving a widow with a large family to move to Edinburgh and seek to struggle through life in a context in which there were often no social assistance, no social web to help widows. And among her children was James Bonner, the seventh son in that family and James Bonner was Andrew's father. He also was a very strong evangelical and became eventually an elder in a church in Edinburgh. Now Andrew Alexander Bonner is the seventh son of James Bonner. James marrying a woman named Marjorie became his wife and they had 11 children, three of whom did not survive infancy, eight of whom did and there were five sons. Four of the five sons became ministers in the church of Scotland. The other one whom you may know very well is Horatius Bonner and you may know Horatius Bonner from his hymns. Andrew Bonner never wrote hymns it would appear but Horatius Bonner wrote probably around three or four hundred hymns of which some are still sung. Andrew entered high school at the age of 11. The educational system was a bit different in those days. He was reported that during his teens here at high school in Edinburgh high school he was one of the best Latin scholars that the school had ever had. But he is not converted until he was 20. He had been appreciative of the gospel from a very early age and records that he was impressed by the gospel but he was not converted until he was 20. It was in the year 1830 he wrote when he was 82. It was in the year 1830 that I found the saviour or rather he found me and laid me on his shoulders rejoicing and I have never parted company with him all these 60 and so now having encountered what we would describe as conversion Bonner was ready to pursue preparation for ministry and he went to seminary in Edinburgh and began his theological studies there at the University of Edinburgh and the key theological influence of the university was Thomas Thomas who was a professor of theology. He had enormous influence over Bonner not only Bonner but also Horatius Bonner who went with his brother and among the men that Bonner met there was Robert Murray and I want to spend a few moments talking about McShane and Bonner's friendship with McShane. Chalmers gave Bonner a great theological repository. He gave him the theological knowledge necessary and foundation necessary to exercise a powerful ministry over the next 50 or so years. It was friendship though with McShane that left Bonner with a hunger for holiness and the impression that McShane made upon those who met him was not so much anything he ever said but was his character, his person. Bonner would later describe McShane's impact this way. The impression left was chiefly that there had been among us a man of peculiar holiness. Some felt not so much his words as his presence and his holy solemnity as if one spoke to them who were standing in the presence of God. It was McShane who would say in words that Bonner would quote in his life of McShane that the thing that God looks most for in a minister is not great learning or great gifts but is holiness and that he felt that what his people who sat under his ministry in the ministry he exercised at St. Peter's Presbyterian Church in Dundee what they needed most was a holy man and McShane was right and it indicates I think problems within evangelicalism broadly speaking in North America today that often when we look for to call a minister or a pastor that we look for a great pulpit, a speaker or we look for one with administrative abilities instead of recognizing that pastors and ministers they are primarily to be men of God. That what we as congregations need is a man who spends time in God's presence and in his words. Administration can be done by another but it is that which is what is greatly needed. Bonner records, also records the testimony of Isabel Dickson. Isabel Dickson was his future wife and she was not a Christian when she sat under the ministry of McShane and she later told her husband this there was something singularly attractive about McShane's holiness. It was not his manner, the things he spoke about necessarily nor his manner that struck me it was just that he was a living epistle of Christ. A picture so lovely I thought I was given all the world to be as he was and it was to Bonner's great blessing that he became one of McShane's closest friends. What he liked about McShane was McShane's transparency and honesty in his friendship. Bonner often recalls how McShane would faithfully warn him if he felt Bonner was in danger of something and that he was not afraid to tell Bonner things that maybe Bonner didn't want to hear but McShane knew were good for Bonner's soul. Now by 1838 after a number of years of study and preparation all of the circle of men around McShane including Bonner had found churches and there were a number of these men and we don't have time to go into them all men like for instance William Byrne who would go as a missionary to China and have an incredible ministry in China over the years. But Bonner was settled in a village called Colisee and it's a little village which is roughly between Perth and Dundee. You know where the first of fourth is and Perth on that and then if you go up the east coast of Scotland you'll come to Dundee. Well roughly halfway between these two towns is Colisee. C-O-L-L-A-E-E. A little village in those days. And Bonner would be there from 1836 to 1858. He came as an assistant minister to a man who was a moderate. A man who was not a converted individual and it was one of Bonner's great prayer requests that this man's soul would be touched by the gospel. But it never appears that he was ever converted. Bonner in his diary and he refers to him a number of times in his diary never mentions his name but simply calls him the old minister. And his relations with his senior minister were not cordial because his senior minister did not like at all Bonner's evangelicalism. Nonetheless he was minister with this man for a good number of years. At his ordination, Bonner's ordination, it was his prayer that he would have one, affection for the people in the church. Secondly, he would always have an anxiety about the old minister's soul. Those were his exact words. And as the diary unfolds, the relations as I say with this senior minister were very frosty and they never seemed to have warmed. The man remained aloof from anything that Bonner was involved in. Even when revival came to the church, revival came to the church in 1839, 1840, and 1843, when the church began to be packed out. By the end of Bonner's ministry there, there were five or six hundred communicant members, that is members who received the Lord's Supper at the quarterly celebration of the Supper as it was done in those days. And yet the senior minister wanted nothing to do with it. Quite remarkable. Despite the fact the man saw revival taking place in his own church, there's no indication that he ever became a friend of the revival, and he remained a stranger of things of God. Bonner's ordination was attended with a profound sense of God's presence. McShane apparently came along, as well as Bonner's brothers, his older brother John and Horatio. And when they laid their hands on me, Bonner said, and the words of prayer ascended, I felt like one for whom very strong intercession was going up to God, to the very, very highest heavens. And in great calmness and strong desire, I gave myself to God my Saviour, and expected henceforth his promise. From his earliest days, his longing and his preaching which conveyed this longing, was to see men and women converted in that church. One can imagine the sort of, sitting under the ministry of this man, who was not a friend of the gospel, that there were very few in that church, men and women who were genuinely Christians. They bore the name. Scotland was a Christian nation, so called. In fact, one writer could say, and I think probably with great truth, that up until around the year 1810, no other nation in Europe had ever, had sent so many saints to heaven as Scotland. Those were the exact words. But many of these people were living on the riches of the past. Many of them were living on the heritage, the spiritual heritage of great-grandparents and grandparents. And they themselves were strangers to the gospel. And so it's not surprising that there were those who came to church, but they were not converted. And so, Bonner's longing, a longing that was expressed on the occasions when he was able to preach, seeking their conversion. He was greatly encouraged when a young woman they called Elizabeth Morrison became a Christian. She was the first of very, very many. And revival came to that church in 1839, 1840. Bonner was not there. He had preached for about, pretty solidly, for about two years on occasion. And preaching for revival and conversion. But when revival actually came, he was away in Palestine with Robert Murray McShane. They had gone on a mission to Palestine. And the man who was preaching was a man named William Burns, another of their close friends. It was interesting when Bonner heard of the revival that had come, he wrote this in his note, in his diary. The lesson God is teaching me is this, that William Burns is used as an instrument where others have been laboring in vain. He's talking about himself. Why? Because he is much in prayer beyond all of us. And the theme of prayer is, as I say, one that runs through all of his diary. I should mention that Burns and, rather Bonner and McShane, unlike most Presbyterian ministers in this generation, were pre-millennialists. In their early years they had been impacted, not only by the ministry of a man named Thomas Chalmers, they had also been impacted by the ministry of Edward Irving. And some of you may know the career of Edward Irving, one of the, probably the most famous preachers of his day, Scottish Presbyterian preacher, who found himself caught up in a movement, really, in some respect of fanaticism, and gave his blessing to it, and ended his life very sadly, and eventually was disfellowshipped by the Presbyterian church in England. But during his life, had one of the great impacts that he had made on many, not only, for instance, Bonner and McShane, but also John Nelson Darby, the founder of the Brethren, was to convince them that the view that had prevailed regarding the end of time and the end of history, among most Protestants in England, which was either a amillennial view, that there was going to be no millennium, that Christ would return, and then there'd be the judgment, and that would be the end of history, or it was postmillennial, that is, the millennium would come before the return of Christ, it would sweep the earth, and then Christ would come. Irving was a key impact, or a key catalyst, in convincing many that this was not biblical. And he was premillennial, that Christ would come first, the Jews would be converted, the millennium would be set up, and he would rule from Jerusalem, and then there would come Armageddon, and the end of history. And Bonner was fervently premillennial, like McShane. And very few Presbyterian ministers in this period were, and it remained, from the view of many Presbyterians, let's say evangelical Presbyterians, it remained a bit of an oddity, in their view. And that's why Bonner and McShane had gone to Palestine. They'd gone on a preaching tour, and their tour to kind of survey the land, to see if they could establish a mission to win Jews in Palestine, the few that were there. And one of the great interests that Bonner had all of his life was to see Israel converted. While he was away, he hears about revival that had come, and it didn't come through him. And as he reflects on this, he realizes the importance, again, of prayer. There was opposition, as I mentioned. The old minister, whom he doesn't name, remained a thorn in its side. There were others in the church and in the district who were theologically liberal. Bonner could say this, there is stronger opposition and bitterness on the part of the ungodly just now than ever. But God's people are more prayerful. Now, the period of time worth talking about, and what I'd like to do is spend a little time talking about an event that took place in the early 1840s that would have a great impact upon Bonner's ministry. The period of time in which we're talking about is one in which the differences between the evangelicals and the moderates in the Church of Scotland was coming to a head. And it would issue in what is known as the Disruption of 1843, when there would be a major division within the Church of Scotland. And again, the issue was very similar to the divisions that had taken place in the 1730s over the issue of patronage. Does the state have the right to interfere in the life of the church? The way that John Knox and the others had set up the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in the 1560s was one in which the church was intimately wed to the state. They longed to see a national church, a state church, in which the state supported the church. But there was a downside to that, which is the state had the ability also to interfere with the church. And part of the great bane of Scottish Presbyterian Church life through the 1700s and the early 1800s was the power that the state had to appoint ministers. Many of the churches in Scotland during this period of time were owned, the actual land upon which the church was built, were owned by lords, by the various aristocrats. And many of those men who were not evangelical themselves controlled their, well all these men controlled the appointment of ministers. They could choose who would receive the ministry of the church on which their land, which stood on their land. And if these men were not evangelical, it meant that they were often imposed upon evangelical congregations men who were not Christian. And this became a great thorn in the side and in 1843 it finally came to a head when Thomas Chalmers and 400 ministers in the Church of Scotland broke with the state church over this issue. Does the state have the freedom and liberty to interfere in the life of the church? That was one issue. The deeper issue is, what is going to be the authority for our life as Christians? And Chalmers and Bonner and McShane, if he had lived, we'll see he doesn't live, asserted that the word of God and God's word only is the authoritative book for the life of the church. And those ministers who go out and become known as the Free Church of Scotland go out because they feel that that authority was being threatened. This is not the first time in the history of the church this sort of thing has come to pass. And you can go all the way back to Acts 5 verse 29 with a statement that is made by Peter and John to the civil powers of that day, the Sanhedrin, we also obey God rather than men. And schism and fraction in the church, the visible church, a visible church is nothing that one ever longs for. But there are times when it is absolutely and utterly indispensable if spiritual life is going to continue in local congregation. It is very interesting to note that it is in the year 1843 when the great disruption takes place within the Church of Scotland and 400 ministers go out that it is also the year of great revival. At Colisee itself where Bonner was ministering it was a year of great spiritual blessing as many found God. And Bonner would take that as an indication of God's vindication of the stand that they had taken to assert the sovereignty of God and His in the life of the local church. And that the state had no right interfering with the life of the church. And so it is in 1843 this break takes place and it is a major break. There had been as I said a schism with the Erskine brothers in the 1730s but it was a minor one. Only about eight or ten ministers actually left the Presbyterian church at the time. But about 400 at this period of time led by Thomas Chalmers broke with the state church and formed the Free Church of Scotland. But almost as great an event, and I want to now conclude the first hour there, as almost as great an event as the disruption in Bonner's life was the death. Bonner had heard, he had received word that MacShane was ill. MacShane had been exercising a very powerful ministry at St. Peter's in Dundee, not that far from Coliseum. He had heard that MacShane was very ill, but he didn't appreciate how ill. A letter had been sent telling him that he was dying. MacShane, the letter never reached him. Until someone came on March the 25th with another letter to tell him that MacShane was dead. And the Bonner had been probably his closest friend. This afternoon he wrote in his diary, about five o'clock, a message had just come to tell me of Robert MacShane's death. Never, never in all my life have I felt anything like this. It is a blow to myself, to his people, to the Church of Christ in Scotland. O Lord, work for thine own glory's sake. Arise, O Lord. The godly ceases, and the faithful fail. My heart is sore. It makes me feel death is near myself now. Life has lost half its joy, were it not for the hope of saving souls. There was no friend whom I loved like him. And then he begins to reflect upon his impact in his own life. I've been feeling very lately, very much of my evil neglect of the privileges and opportunities which I've been given, and my very small degree of holiness. Usually, when one compares oneself with another Christian, it usually is not a good thing. But in Bonner's case, it did, it was something that God used to bless him. As he looked at MacShane after MacShane's death, what he saw was the transparency of MacShane's life, that the Christ who lived within him shone through so, so brightly, so brilliantly. And MacShane was transparent, a transparent bearer, or reflector, or radiator of the love, and person, and glory of Christ. And he felt he was so opaque, this is Bonner. Shortly before MacShane's death, Bonner could say this, when he had found out that MacShane was ill, I'd been struck at reflecting upon God laying aside MacShane, who is far more devoted to the work of the ministry than I am. It has taught me that free grace is the only reason why I have been sent with health and strength. It cannot be because of my gift of grace in the least degree. One of the things that Bonner could never figure out is why the Lord allowed him to live into his early 80s, and virtually knew no illness. Even at the end of his life, when he's actually dying in 82, he still had great health, and on the day he dies, he doesn't know he's dying, says goodbye to none of his family, and he slips quietly into the presence of God. And he could never figure out why God allowed him, he didn't consider himself to be anywhere near as holy as MacShane. One of the reasons, possibly, was that MacShane's life would be recorded by Bonner, and become such an influence, an impact to so many others. It's something that God often does, and I want to close with this reflection for the first hour, something God often does in a generation, raises up a man or a woman of incredible devotion to himself. One thinks of Joseph Align in the Puritan era, or one thinks of Samuel Pierce, who died at the age of 33, one of William Carey's closest friends. One thinks of MacShane, or in our own day, at least in the 50s, of Jim Elliot, who was martyred at the age of 29. Again, it's very... MacShane died, he died of consumption. The scenes of mourning at St. Peter's in Dundee were overwhelming, and Bonner went to preach, and was much used in the funeral, so great was his, the interest and impact of his preaching that he was asked would he consider being the successor of MacShane as the minister at St. Peter's, but he declined it. He felt, though, that he was in some way being prepared for being the successor of MacShane. He felt that a great responsibility fell on him. In his diary he could say, how very unlike Robert am I, but 2 Kings 2 is much on my mind, that's the story of Elijah, and the mantle of Elijah coming upon Elisha. Oh, that his mantle would fall upon me. Now, it may be that it did fall upon him, though it probably is rather the group of men who had been friends of MacShane. One thinks of William Burns, or Robert Livingston, or the two Bonner brothers, Andrew who we're considering, or his brother Horatius. On September 30th of that year, 1843, he began to write the life of MacShane, and he wrote it in three months. It was finished on December the 23rd, and he rejoiced that he had been permitted to finish this record of his, that is God's beloved servant. The life of MacShane had an enormous impact, has had an enormous impact upon evangelical Christianity, and there's no doubt that God used Bonner's friendship with him to put him in a position where he knew something of the inner life of MacShane. Bonner was a good writer, and once the manuscripts of MacShane's diary and letters had been put into his hand, he was able to put them into an orderly fashion that they could be used by God for great effect. By 1844, revival is still coming to Colisee, where Bonner is, and yet as he looks at the work, he feels unequal to the task. No year he could write has been more remarkable for the awakening of souls here, but very few of them were awakened, he said, by my sermons, at least he thought that. Most of them were awakened in a way that quite proved the Lord's hands without my words. Perhaps I have not yet begun to preach. Very humbling words to read in a ministry in which there is revival taking place in his church, and he says that, I have not yet begun to preach. One wonders what he would say about much of modern evangelicalism. In 1847, he was engaged to Isabella Dixon, she had been basically converted under MacShane, and he has a short entry on the day of his engagement, May 14th, 1847, I am not worthy of the least of his mercies. May the Lord keep all things in their place. Earthly affection, an undercurrent. On April 4th, 1848, he was married. Again, a very short entry in his diary. Through the day, many thoughts of the past, and occasionally a thrill of blackness. I thought, in my case, the course of true love had run smooth because we both acknowledge the Lord and keep each other in our place. In these two short entries, this idea of his love for his wife, his future wife, then his wife, being subservient to his love for God, and yet, as you read through the diary in the years that follow, it is quite obvious that both of them soon discovered that making Christ and Christ central in their love does not mean any diminution or diminishing of the bonds of earthly love. And in the rest of his diary, the deep love that he held for Isabella is one that is very, it's a very, very prominent theme, and we'll see what takes place when she dies. Now, by this time, the 1848, when he married Isabella Dixon, he's becoming fairly widely known. His books, he had written The Life of McShane a few years earlier, he had written a commentary on the book of Leviticus, which is one that tries to dovetail much of the book of Hebrews with Leviticus, drawing out from Leviticus primarily spiritual lessons of the types of the sacrifices and so on that Hebrews kind of charts the path for. He had written The Life of the great American preacher Asahel Nettleton, or he had edited A Life, rather, that was written on him, who had died in 1844. Asahel Nettleton, who had had a very powerful ministry in New England of revival, but his last years had been ones in which he felt God had set him aside. He'd been ill physically for much of that time. It was years in which he had had a major conflict with Charles Finney, and the conflict, we don't have time to go into it today, but the conflict was one of great importance for the future of American evangelicalism. Finney's approach to revival and preaching was very much different from Nettleton's, and Bonner's great interest in revival, not surprisingly, he edited this Life of Nettleton. And so he was becoming increasingly well-known, and not surprisingly, other churches had asked him would he be willing to leave Colisee and come to larger venues, larger towns, where it was felt he would have a greater audience. Eventually, in 1856, he agrees to go to Glasgow, and the place that he goes to in Glasgow is a place called Finiston, F-I-N-N-I-E-S-T-O-N, which in those days was not a particularly nice area of the city. It was a dark district of Glasgow, and he went as a church planter, and his parting from Colisee was a very emotional one. His people loved him. Many of them had been converted through his ministry, and his years there had been enormously happy ones. Yes, there had been the disruption, and there had been the death and the shame, but his years in Colisee, nonetheless, had been wondrously happy. It was there that he had met Isabella Dixon, they had married, and they had begun to have a family. This is the way, though, he records his departure from the town, and it reveals to us that his heart was that of a pastor, and I feel that Bonner is a very good model of what a pastor is to be like, a man who loves his people. Sad, he says, solemn feelings spread over me as I rode along through the town and passed for the last time as one among them. Those houses and roads so familiar to me, my heart was full. The sun was shining very sweetly, as if to cheer and to remind me that my God has been and will still be my joy. Colisee was probably not that far from Glasgow. Today, you could probably drive it in at most an hour and a half, but in the 1840s or the 1850s, it was a good journey, and so his leaving it was with the likelihood that he would get back there very little, and that would prove to be true. Also, Glasgow that he was going to was a very different city than Colisee. Colisee wasn't even a city, it was a village, it was rural. Glasgow is a burgeoning industrial centre. It is at this point in time, and would be well into the 20th century, the main industrial centre of Scotland. Also, he went to Glasgow as a church planter in the area of Finiston, where there was no church. He went to plant a church for the free church. When he went to Colisee, it was already an established church. So he had to bring people in. In Colisee, he had an audience that was there who came to church. Yes, many of them were converted individuals, but they came because that was expected of them. In Glasgow, the secularisation that was beginning to hit and impact the British Isles, the places it started were in the industrial centres, and so he would have to very much gather. On December the 9th, 1856, he began to go around, walking around the district and surveying what kind of place had he been called to, and he could write this in his diary, multitudes of souls here, but very few indeed, that seek to know the Lord. Unless I go forth among them, and if he doesn't go out and make an effort to bring people in, they're not going to come in. Unless I go forth among them, filled with the Holy Spirit, all will be vain. Not surprisingly, Bonner would seek to encourage evangelists coming to the city. In the early years, there was a man named Brownlow North, not known at all today probably. In later years, it was D. L. Moody. Moody, who had been converted in the 1850s, very little formal theological education, who made a number of trips in the 1860s across the Atlantic to sit under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. We'll talk about him next week. His ministry is going on really at the same time as Bonner's, both of them dying in the year 1892, and Moody had become of international reputation by the 1870s, and Bonner supported him strongly. Both Bonner brothers, Horatius and Andrew, encouraged his ministry, and they got themselves in great disputes about this, because there were others in the Free Church, like one of the great preachers in the North, a man named John Kennedy of Dingwall, who felt that Moody's ministry long term would not be of benefit and help to the evangelical cause in Scotland. And so there was a controversy about this issue. But Bonner encouraged Moody preaching in Glasgow, and there were many converted under his ministry who would eventually be directed into Bonner's church. His focus, though, was obviously this church in Finiston. Eventually a church was built, and over the time it was filled with people, five, six hundred or so, regularly attending that ministry. But it resulted here that he began to experience some of the sorrows that came in his life. First of all, the death of his son, Andrew, named after him, on April the 1st, 1860. Scarlet fever had swept the city, an epidemic, and his son died in it. The night before his death, he and his wife sat up with his son. Isabella and I have tried to put the little lamb into the shepherd's hands, as on the day of his baptism. It was all I could do at his bedside last night. Sense of helplessness. On the morning of his death, he wrote this, after he died, it was a beautiful sunrise as he departed. He had gone to better sunshine, both rest and refreshment. We should, I've not finished the quote, but we should note here, there has been a great debate in the history of the church, what happens to those who die in infancy like this. And Bonner believed, as did Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that all who die before any age of knowing anything about Christ, or so on, all who die in infancy, go to be with Christ. Don't pursue that theme, but it's been an issue. But he continues, Lord, shall I not abhor sin that brought in this death? Shall I not long for resurrection? Come, destroy death, be its plague and grave's destruction. Come, Lord, and wipe away all tears. Come, Lord, cast death and hell into the lake. But it was the loss of his wife, four years later, that shook Bonner to the death. And he writes movingly of it in his diary of 1864. He could write on October 15th, oh, what a wound. Last night, most suddenly, after three hours of thinking, my dear, dear Isabella was taken from me. Lord, pour in comfort, for I cannot. It needs the Holy Ghost to work at such a time. She probably died from postnatal complications. She had given birth three weeks earlier. And it was probably, although Bonner doesn't mention the cause, it was probably because of that. A few weeks later, the little daughter that had been born was baptized. His brother John, his older brother, came to do the baptism. My brother John has most fervently commended her as motherless to divine care and sympathy. He spoke of baptism, preaching all the promises of God to the believer. He spoke of our depositing the child in the bosom of the Godhead. These were circumstances of deep solemnity. I saw my children were all deeply moved. I came home feeling all the way an indescribable sadness, and yet felt as if a hand were underneath holding me up. The following year, exactly a year later, on the anniversary of her death, he said, ever memorable day to me. I do not think there's been a whole day that has passed since this night last year in which I have not at one time or another called up my dear Isabella to memory. Blessed be the Lord for the many ways in which he has strengthened me, especially by filling my hand with work and showing me much of the Spirit's presence and power in souls. We could trace all through his diary the pain that he felt deeply all of his life. And sometimes you hear the statement, pain, a time heals. And it does, and it doesn't. And the pain of a loss quite clearly evidently stayed with him all his life. On October 14, 1888, this is 24 years later, this time, 24 years ago, himself with me as being quiet consolation in the day of sorrow. 1890, ever memorable, this time, 26 years ago, what a night to be remembered. He never remarried. What stands out is the deep love he had for his wife, a love which moved, not only moved through all the years with her, but also those years without her. And it left a sorrow. And one knows uh, theologically that God is, does and can minister deeply as it is evident from his life. And yet, and that time does heal to some degree, and yet it's very evident in his life the sorrow stays. And I think it's true of the Christian life. You cannot pour yourself into somebody's life and have that deepened affection. He never talked much about the sorrow that he carried. In fact, he was not known to be a morose man. He was known to be a man of great joy and happiness, that wherever he went, he spread that. And yet inwardly there was, as we can see now from his diary, there was this sorrow that he carried with him. He rarely spoke, for instance, also about McShane, and yet he felt McShane's death to the end of his life. When in the 1860s he went over to New England, and he was in Northampton, and he saw some of the scenes associated with Jonathan Edwards, his first thought was, oh what McShane would have done to have been here and seen the place where Edwards knew revival. What it gave him over the passing years also was a yearning for heaven, which as the years passed intensified. And I do think this is true, that God, as we go on in the Christian life, there should be that yearning for the new heavens and the new earth. He was mystified why God allowed him to remain on this earth so long. And you do meet some older saints who have this very feeling. And yet he had an ongoing zeal for the work. In 1877 he was nominated to be the moderator of the Free Church Assembly. He rejected the nomination, he felt he was not worthy, but eventually accepted it, which meant he would have a great influence upon the denomination as a whole. In 1882 he'd been 25 years in Finiston at that point, two ministries really in his life. The one at Colesty, the early one that knew periods of great revival. The one at Finiston which didn't know revival as much as a steady ongoing blessing of God. He'd been 25 years in Finiston in 1882 and the church wanted to recognize him publicly and celebrate his diary entry of the time. There is a littleness about all my doings that distresses me. I would feign to have a full heart, fervent love, burning zeals, but in all these I'm wanting, oh for a day of Pentecost this year, to make me as unlike my former self as were the apostles before that day of the spirit of porn. It's very sobering. And I think personally, I think it is biblical to recognize that despite the blessings of God there is more. And there should be a yearning for more. And that in this world it will always be imperfect. And I don't see any of this as morose or wrong-headed. But the recognition that we serve an infinite God, one who is a sea, an infinite sea of love and grace and mercy, and there is so much more to know of God. And this longing then, he's a man in, at 72 at this point in his life, it's known revival blessing, but he's still longing for an outpouring of the Spirit that will change him, deepen his love for Christ, and have an impact in the broader sphere in the church. He would live in good health another 10 years. Again he remarked on this, how good his health was right up to the end. And again it mystified him. And would die peacefully at the very end of 1892. He was ill for a few days. Didn't think he was dying. Never said goodbye to any of his family. His family came in the Victorian era. Death bed scenes were something that one wanted to happen. That when you were dying you were able to say goodbye to all your friends. And often at those times evangelicals' family would write down your saying, what you said, and they'd record them. He didn't have any, because he wasn't expecting to die. His family found him the next day, a look of inexpressible peace, very similar to Cooper in this respect, almost of delighted surprise resting on his face, as if he had suddenly and unexpectedly found himself in the presence of his much-loved Lord. There are two lessons I want to draw from Bonner's life. The first is that there is no shortcut to holiness and usefulness in the work of God. Bonner learned it early in his ministry, and he probably caught it from a chain. But if not, he certainly found it in the Word of God, that for him to grow in Christ and to grow in the knowledge of God, he must spend time daily in communion with God. It's been said, or I've already quoted this, that his diary and life read like a treatise on prayer. And we learn then that Bonner realized that to grow in holiness requires perseverance. One thinks of the passage, for instance, in 1 Timothy chapter 4, where Paul, and let me read the verses, so I think they illustrate this point very well, and I'm reading from 1 Timothy 4 and verses 11 and following, where Paul has been encouraging Timothy to take care of his ministry. These things command and teach, let no man despise their youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which is given you by prophecy, with the laying on of hands of the elders. Meditate upon these things. Give yourself wholly to them, that your profiting may appear to all. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you shall save yourself and them that hear thee. And this actually ties in with the remark that I was saying earlier, that that which we want in a pastor is a holy man. A man who follows what Paul is urging Timothy to be like here. A man who takes heed to his own spiritual life and to the word of God. If he can't administer the things in the church in one sense, that's not a disaster. We can find other people who can be administrators, but if this one who stands before the people of God week in, week out, to break the word of life, is not a man who is living in communion with God, that's disastrous for the life of the church. And Bonner realized this at a very young age. That for him, pastoral ministry was a calling to spend time with God, and there was no shortcut. What would he have said in our day, when we live with all kinds of shortcuts for everything. And technologically, many of them not wrong. We have microwaves, which can give us heated food that the oven is going to take hours to do, but it gives it to us in a couple of minutes, two or three minutes. And we have cell phones, and faster and faster computers, and the internet. And we tend to take from all of these things, the spiritual life is just the same way, where it's not. It's not that way for pastors, and it's not for us who are not pastors. There needs to be that regular daily time with God. There is no shortcut to holiness. The other thing that impacts us about Bonner, is this whole area of the importance of prayer, which is tying into this. On the day of his induction at Phinison, in 1858, he noted in his diary, the Lord had made him feel afresh, I must be as much with him alone, as with souls in public. A few months after this, he says this, I find this very challenging. For nearly ten days, I've been much hindered in prayer, and I feel my strength weakened. I must at once return, through the Lord's strength, to not less than three hours a day, in prayer and meditation on the Word. Now I personally do not think that his example here, is a rule for others. That's the way the Lord led him. And yet this entry surely shows us, that for him, any sort of usefulness and vitality in ministry, is found in the place of prayer. One of the things that has struck me recently, is that only the Lord Jesus Christ, can produce in our lives, a life that honors him. Only the Lord Jesus can produce a life that honors him. And the place that is found, one wonders what he would say about our churches, and the ministry of our churches, with the busyness of life. It's interesting, we've got all these labour-saving devices, it's very curious. All these labour-saving devices, but we're busier than ever. What would he say about us? And I don't mean to lay this as a trip on you, because I feel I'm speaking very much to myself, and how vital and important prayer is. As we look at the little impact our churches make upon our surrounding culture. And it's not getting better, in some respects. Why? I'm not saying prayer is the, if we give ourselves a prayer as he did, then automatically things will change. But surely we can expect nothing to change, unless we be fervent in beseeching God. To come and fill us with his Spirit, and to change us into his likeness more and more. Bonner's life speaks to us, I think, about firstly, the importance of, there is no shortcut to holiness, the importance of holiness, of living lives that are extraordinarily like the Lord Jesus. Of being different in our generation. Of not being run-of-the-mill. Of being radical in our commitment to Christ. Being creative in that, as well. His life also speaks of the vital importance of prayer. He knew revival in his day. Much of it, he would have said, was because he had given himself to prayer, where he had recognized his own weakness. Now, since his day, the Free Church has prospered in many respects. Certainly in the highlands. The highlands of the scenes of revival blessing. On things of the Lewis awakening, in 1949, 1950, with Duncan Campbell. In more recent years, and some of you may be aware of this, and I don't want to pursue this publicly, but in recent years there's been great controversy. There has been a diminishing of spiritual blessing and power. But in Bonner's day was a time of great blessing. Much of it related to the prayerfulness of men like Bonner. The holiness of men. Well, let me stop here and ask if there are any questions. Next week we want to look at Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whose ministry, roughly parallel at the same time, died in 1892. He's somewhat younger, though, than Bonner. He was born in 1830. Any questions or comments before we... Yeah, Finney, the controversy that came in the 1830s with Finney's ministry centered upon what were called the New Measures. And Asahel Nettleton, who had known great blessing in his ministry, felt that there were certain things that Finney did that he regarded as disturbing. One was Finney's tendency, when he would go to a town, he would learn as the ministry was being conducted, he would learn from neighboring ministers of the names of people who they felt were unconverted. And he would call these names out publicly from the pulpit. If they were sitting there in the congregation, he'd try to single out people whom he had been told were not converted and name them by name, which was very deeply unsettling to these individuals, not surprisingly. Finney was a man with very piercing eyes, and apparently could be very disturbing in this thing. He also had the New Measures of calling people forward to what was called the Morning Bench. Now, this was not introduced by Finney. This appeared in Kentucky in the 1790s in Baptist and Presbyterian circles, is where that practice first appeared, of actually calling people forward to indicate that God was at work in their lives. Much more important than any of these sorts of things, one could name about five or six things that Nettleton had problems with, much more important was the theology of Finney. And Finney did not believe in what we call total depravity. He didn't believe that men and women were by nature sinners. And what really was at the root of the problem was that for Finney, men and women had complete freedom to choose or to reject God. And this has great implications for the style of preaching that one does, and for one's reliance upon God. And some of the results of Finney's ministry, although he did emphasize the spirit in his ministry, long term some of the results were the evangelist felt that he was the one who could make conversions. And it was the persuasiveness of the evangelist to persuade people to embrace Christ that was a critical thing. And the older school, men like Nettleton and Bonner, believed that only the spirit could do that. And so long term, some of the problems that come into American evangelicalism are centered on this area. Who is the one who converts sinners? Is it the spirit alone? Is it God and God alone? Or does the evangelist have a major role to play? And can an individual listening to the preaching who's not a Christian, can they take that step by themselves? And Bonner didn't believe they could, and nor did Nettleton. Finney's theology was not clear on this issue. Well, I should call for that. It was clear. He believed that the individual had the freedom to be able to embrace Christ by themselves. And thus, although he talked a lot about the spirit, some of his writing actually downplayed the power of the spirit. It's a very curious mix. Much of the controversy settled on the things that were new in Finney's ministry, the new measures. That wasn't the main issue. The main issue was the theological issue. And it was found, and I've not studied this in the depth I really need to, but it is interesting that the area where Finney exercised a lot of his early ministry in the 1830s, 1840s is upstate New York, which becomes the burned over district. It's in that very area that you get the emergence in the 1840s through the 1860s of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, I think Christadelphians, I could be wrong on this. Christadelphians emerged in upstate New York in the 1840s through 1860s. Seventh-day Adventists. And one argument has traced the emergence of some of these groups. I'm not saying Finney was cultist, not at all, but that Finney had, many of these people had gone through the revival thing, they had not generally been converted, and they were prey to all kinds of other things. It's an interesting link. There might be other lessons there that I'm not drawing out, I'm sure there are. But Finney, in the 1840s, Finney has a series of letters he publishes in which he laments how many of the people he felt were converted didn't stick. And I think part of it is what's his theology that underlay the shape of his preaching. Anyway, so Finney is a very controversial figure in American evangelicalism, and he is not without his problems. I think, although Finney has been regarded as a good guide to revival, I think Jonathan Edwards is a much better guide. This is the Free Church College. No, no, that wouldn't be correct. Because the principal is Donald MacLeod. Well, there is a new college. Okay, the Free Church College, I think, is a different school. They did, but then there was a reunion in 1905, is it? Oh, that's because there had been another split, and by the late 1800s, liberalism had come into, but it's kind of born or died. Some of the theological teaching was veering towards liberalism, and there was a union that took place with another group. Some of them stayed out from that, and they're the real free church. Now, they have a school in Edinburgh called the Free Church College, but there is a new college as well, so we're probably talking about two different, yeah, and Dodge was liberal. Dodge was liberal, Marcus Dodge was liberal, theologically. Yeah, so we're talking about two different schools. John Kennedy. Well, I think on that question, I probably need to say the remark that I could have said before. Bill said I could say, which is I've not studied it. I've not studied it enough. In some of Moody's ministry, yeah, it could cause problems down the road. But let me just put that to a side, and maybe, Lord willing, when we continue to look at the 19th century, because this little series, I want to do another. Maybe we could look at the ministry of Moody. There certainly has been a problem. I think there has been a problem, and it's evident in certain aspects of North American evangelicalism. There has been a problem in some of the leading evangelists, like Billy Sunday. Here I'm thinking of Billy Sunday's anti-intellectualism, where he argued that if you're intellectual, it's obvious where you're going, you're going to hell. Or one thinks of some of the, someone, Billy Graham, in recent years, and I know it's not politically correct to critique Dr. Graham, but I think in recent years, I'm very disturbed by things he's been saying. And I wonder whether some of it has a link back to earlier periods. Let me leave that remark to a later time, and maybe look at the controversy over D.L. Moody's ministry between John Kennedy, who was a very prominent preacher. Well, next week, Dan, we want to think about Charles Haddon Spurgeon. And the first hour, I'm going to look at Spurgeon's ministry. And then the second hour, I want to think about Spurgeon's thinking about the Lord's Table. And it'll be quite surprising for you. And I think, I'll tell you in advance, I think Spurgeon is right. And I think we need to, actually, I think it'll be very helpful for us to move in the direction of Spurgeon's thinking about the Lord's Table. So, you'll need to wait, though, until next week to find out exactly what that is. Let's close, then, in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for your work in men like Bonner and McShane. We are humbled as we think of their degree of commitment and devotion to you. We do not want to venerate or idolize them. We recognize that they, like us, who are men of clay. And yet, we would take them for example and use them to spur us on. Forgive us for being so backward in our following you, for lacking the zeal that we should have. We have come to know you through Christ and have been given eternal life. And your love and your beauty and glory should possess us far more than it does. And we pray that it would. That by your Spirit you would visit us. That you would even pour out your Spirit afresh upon us and upon our churches and upon this land. That you would come in revival and give us a hunger and thirst for yourself. May your peace and grace be with us this night and throughout the week to come. We ask in Christ's name.