Life & Letters: The Terms and the Treaty of Reconciliation

Friday, March 28, 2008

The Terms and the Treaty of Reconciliation

From the pen of Thomas Chalmers, to his friend, Mr. Duncan, a professor of Mathematics, whom he exhorted to become a Christian, written on Sept. 13, 1846:

There is a precise, definite, and let me add, only and exclusive way laid down for the attainment of [eternal life] – a way authoritatively pointed out and prescribed by Heaven. He who hath the Son hath life; he who hath not the Son hath not life. Christ says of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life – by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved,” and, “No man cometh unto the Father but by the Son.” Let us not quarrel with this way, more especially as it is open to all of us: “Whosoever cometh unto me shall not be cast out,” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” It is for God, the offended party, and not for us, the offenders, to dictate the terms and the treaty of reconciliation. Heaven grant that you may be led henceforth to bestow an earnest heed on the Word of His testimony till the day dawn and the day-star arise in your heart.

Letters of Thomas Chalmers, edited by William Hanna, first published 1853, reprinted by The Banner of Truth, 2007, p. 364.

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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.

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.

A Wonderful Book of Letters: "The Marvelous Riches of Savoring Christ: The Letters of Ruth Bryan"

Friday, March 28, 2008

The Terms and the Treaty of Reconciliation

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Why Life & Letters?

Articulate, Thoughtful, and Well-Composed Letters

A Wonderful Book of Letters: "The Marvelous Riches of Savoring Christ: The Letters of Ruth Bryan"

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