A selection from a letter by A. W. Pink to John Culver:
One book read slowly, mediated upon and assimilated, is worth twenty skimmed through hurriedly.
The Life of Arthur W. Pink, Ian Murray, Banner of Truth, p. 137.
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Moody Stuart said, "Ruth Bryan's letters are remarkably like those of Samuel Rutherford's, closely resembling them in most winning, unwearied, and gloriously endless eulogy of the King in His beauty." Joel Beeke says, "Ruth Bryan stands in a class of great female devotional writers, such as Anne Dutton and Mary Winslow, whose Christ-centered correspondence has helped hundreds of God's people drink more deeply of the wells of salvation."
by Charles Haddon Spurgeon
About Me
Why Life & Letters?
Before e-mails, telephones and text-messaging, people wrote letters to one another. Letters are personal and thoughtful. We can be thankful that biographers have letters to and from the people they write about from generations gone by, for modern forms of commu-nication leave us in want. Letters have a quality about them not found in e-mails. Historian and biographer, David McCullough, says, “I think often of how little we will leave about ourselves and our time in our own words. Maybe some of the e-mail will survive, but I doubt it. How will future gen-erations ever come to know us? Historians and biographers a hundred or three hundred years hence will have almost nothing of a personal kind to work with. Our story, consequently, will be a lot less interesting, less human, per-haps even impossible to write.”
It is a shame that few of us today craft letters to our children and friends. Letter writing is a lost art. I hope this blog will inspire others to write letters. Letters are valuable. C. H. Spurgeon said, “A man’s private letters often let you into the secrets of the heart.
Most of what appears here are selections taken from letters of Evangelical Christians. There will also be occasional reviews of books of letters.
It is a shame that few of us today craft letters to our children and friends. Letter writing is a lost art. I hope this blog will inspire others to write letters. Letters are valuable. C. H. Spurgeon said, “A man’s private letters often let you into the secrets of the heart.
Most of what appears here are selections taken from letters of Evangelical Christians. There will also be occasional reviews of books of letters.
Articulate, Thoughtful, and Well-Composed Letters
"In the nineteenth century, many biographers wrote books titled The Life and Letters of So-and-So. While this was not always an eloquent way of writing history, it speaks volumes about our cultural distance; if restricted to composing a narrative of someone’s life around his written correspondence today, we wouldn’t be able to write biographies, because people write too few letters to constitute the substance of a book. Further, if you read those nineteenth-century letters, you cannot fail to notice how articulate, thoughtful, and well composed they commonly are. A culture that was accustomed to thoughtful, well-composed letters produced remarkable significant letters, even among fairly common people. Today, we have become a culture of telephone babblers, unskilled at the most basic questions of composition…"
Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, by T. David Gordon, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2009, pp. 66-67.
Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, by T. David Gordon, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2009, pp. 66-67.
A Wonderful Book of Letters: "The Marvelous Riches of Savoring Christ: The Letters of Ruth Bryan"
Moody Stuart said, "Ruth Bryan's letters are remarkably like those of Samuel Rutherford's, closely resembling them in most winning, unwearied, and gloriously endless eulogy of the King in His beauty." Joel Beeke says, "Ruth Bryan stands in a class of great female devotional writers, such as Anne Dutton and Mary Winslow, whose Christ-centered correspondence has helped hundreds of God's people drink more deeply of the wells of salvation."
A Sample Letter
by Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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4 comments:
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in a sermon I listened to recently, expressed the same sentiment in regard to the Scripture, discouraging the use of plans that read through the Bible in a year...
Steven,
Thanks for your comment. I am surprised to hear that Lloyd-Jones made such a statement since Ian Murray says in The Fight of Faith, "For over fifty years he [MLJ] had followed M'Cheyne's calendar for daily Bible readings..." (p. 747). I like Bible reading guides and have found M'Cheyne's to be one of the best.
The Doctor was discouraging folks from rushing through the Bible mechanically, and was encouraging them to spend time digesting what they read. I've already deleted the message off my iPod, but I sent a note the the MLJ Trust asking them which message it was so I can download it again. I'll get you a better quote.
Here's the quote I was referring to:
“I’m always afraid to say a thing like this. But there is an awful danger in these mechanical schemes of Bible study. That you just rush though it; you’ve done your portion. My friend, does the Bible speak to you every day? If it doesn’t, I’m inclined to suggest you to drop your schemes for a moment. And just take a verse and begin to think about it and ask it, “What you’re saying to me?” We’re not just meant to rush through the Bible a given number of times, in a year, or however often you do it. The Bible is the Word of God. It’s the food of the soul. It’s the Spirit’s message to you. Make certain that it’s speaking to you.”
MLJ1009, “The Spirit in Christians", at approximately 33:50
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