Editor’s Introduction
Vital godliness emanates from a heart captivated by the glory of God. The root of the new birth, planted in the fertile soil of God’s grace, inevitably bears the fragrant fruit of the Spirit. But bountiful crops are not universal. Among believers within the Lord’s Vineyard some evidence greater depths of spiritual exercise and yield a greater harvest for the glory of the Lord. God himself remains the sole source of beauty and glory. And God is most glorified, therefore, by those who most represent his likeness. A beautiful Christian bears the beauty of his Lord and deflects the gaze of the onlooker beyond himself to the Divine majesty. The annals of Christian biography provide sketches drawn from the stencil of Christ-likeness, and the serious-minded Christian studies the patterns to find the loveliness of the Redeemer with the desire to exemplify the same.
The excerpt below brings together two ministers separated by a couple centuries but who were cut from the same spiritual mold and shared common features of biblical piety. The text is lifted from the preface that John Macdonald of Calcutta wrote for a 19th century reprinting of John Brown of Wamphray’s book, Christ in Believers the Hope of Glory. John Macdonald (1807-1847)1Other articles by John Macdonald of Calcutta can be found in Vol. 1 and Vol. 5 of The Master’s Trumpet. grew up in the manse of his father, perhaps the most powerful 19th century Highland minister, Rev. John Macdonald of Ferintosh, affectionately known as “the Apostle of the North.” God-consciousness suffused the whole atmosphere of Highland religion in that era of spiritual awakening, revival and reformation. The biography of John Macdonald, the son, furnishes us with edifying material about a life set aflame with love to God. After serving as a minister, he was sent as a missionary to labor in Calcutta, India.
In tracing the characteristics of John Brown of Wamphray (1610-1679),2For more information on John Brown of Wamphray see the book review in this volume (7) of The Master’s Trumpet. John Macdonald unconsciously provides a depiction of his own spiritual character. He not only furnishes the contemporary reader with a portrait of piety; he supplies a vision for the recovery of vital godliness in this present day of spiritual barrenness and declension, thus inviting us to imitate Brown (and Macdonald) as they imitated Christ. “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).
– Robert D. McCurley
A Portrait of Piety
Selected From: W.K. Tweedie, The Life of the Rev. John Macdonald, AM (Edinburgh: John Johnstone, 1849), pp. 281-284.
“In Brown of Wamphray’s ministrations, we have not obtruded on our famishing souls that oily sentimentalism, or that iced intellectualism, which so abound in this epicurean age of the Church; but we have the true bread, just as it has been gathered—wholesome and nutritious. O that, amidst the multitude of our popular and evangelical preachers and writers, we had but a phalanx of godly and spiritual men like him—men of heart, men of business—who would in right earnest negotiate between the Prince of life and dying men, and not merely transact between a dead doctrine and a blind intellect—men who will not ever be substituting the vague idea of ‘religion’ for the living person of the Son of God, or ‘moral influence’ for the personal operation of the Holy Ghost.
“In contemplating a past age, through such a work as this, and in contrasting our present character as a Church, with the ‘worthies’ of that day, have we not much reason to be ‘stirred up to call upon the name of the Lord, yea, to take hold on him’ as our covenant God, that He may come in, and dwell with us, and in us, as our Hope of Glory? Have we not much reason to pour forth our hearts, saying, ‘O the HOPE of Israel, the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble! why shouldest thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry but for a night? Why shouldest thou be as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save? Yet thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name; leave us not!’
“O do we not, in these our days, need a race of men, full of strong and ardent love to the living and divine person of our Lord Jesus Christ? who can discern between the Master and his service, and love the latter for the sake of the former—men who can discriminate between the infirmities of the flesh and the image of Christ, so as to love that which is His in spite of all that mars it.
“Do we not need men of humility, contented to decrease, provided Christ increase? ready to live or die, to work or cease, to do or suffer, under Christ’s eye alone; not desiring notice or advancement from man, but thirsting only for that ‘favour which is better than life,’ and wistfully catching that eye, whose beam glisteneth upon us in secret and silent power?
“Do we not, amidst our multitude of covetous worldlings, and laborious earth-worms in the Church, need a race of holy and heavenly-minded men, who shall pursue after holiness more than riches, and whose evident and supreme ambition shall be, perfect conformity to, and constant fellowship with Him who sitteth in heavenly places, even the Son of God—who shall speak of heaven as those who do really thirst for it, and who would even now prefer it to earth, were their Lord’s work but done, and His purposes completed?
“Need we not also a race of men, in whom Jesus of Nazareth may be evidently seen dwelling by faith, as their sole and cherished hope?—men who will breathe Christ, reflect Christ, diffuse Christ, savour of Christ, and glorify Christ; so that every work to which they set their hands, every gift they give, every sermon they preach, every prayer they offer, may be perfumed with the unction of His name; and so that the world might be compelled to say, ‘These men also have been with Jesus’?
“Is there not need amongst us also of a band of self-denied men, who, by reason of their living and indwelling ‘hope of glory,’ would lay all things at the feet of Christ, and, taking up their cross, would follow Him whithersoever he led them?—in whom it would be seen, as in the days of Zion’s martyrs, that in their meekness, purity, and zeal they were ‘living sacrifices,’ ready to be offered—who would stand bound by cords of love, which they would not loose and cannot break, to the altar of Christ’s service—and whose only voice would be, ‘Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?’ O how would such confound the armies of the aliens!
“Need we not men so filled with the Holy Spirit that He should become their very life?—men full of joy without levity, full of peace without presumption, full of might without pride—men promoting the kingdom of Christ by their evident happiness, and strengthening their brethren by their constant hopefulness of mind—who should at all times so act, speak, and suffer, as they who are living temples of God the Holy Ghost, ever ‘rejoicing in their hope,’ even when constrained to exchange Saul’s armour for David’s sling and pebble—men not blustering in their speech, nor vaunting in their tone, but advancing in the silent consciousness of God dwelling within them? O for such men of God amongst us!
“And, lastly, do we not need an army of Christian men, who shall never think that they may sit at ease and rest them, that they may doff their armour, or hang up the gospel trumpet in selfish silence, while hundreds of thousands in their own land, and hundreds of millions over the world, are trodden under foot of him who ‘was a murderer from the beginning,’ and are daily burying in the pit of eternal death, ‘WITHOUT HOPE?’ Jesus is our hope; by the gospel has he become such to us; that gospel of ‘Christ in us our hope,’ we hold on trust also, for those who are perishing around our dwellings, and over our world; for ‘God would make known this mystery among the Gentiles;’ and to us he hath committed the work of its publication.
“Men and brethren, let us arise, with Christ in our camp as the ‘Hope of Glory;’ let us each one shake of our sleep of selfish ease; let us arise and take possession of our promised land, which is not Judea, but the world. O when shall that day once come, when all Christians, in their every calling, shall live for this, not as a subordinate, but as a primary end, that ‘every creature’ in Britain, and ‘every creature’ in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and ‘every creature’ over the whole world, may hear of the blessed mystery of ‘Christ in us the Hope of Glory?’”
Footnotes
- 1Other articles by John Macdonald of Calcutta can be found in Vol. 1 and Vol. 5 of The Master’s Trumpet. ↩︎
- 2For more information on John Brown of Wamphray see the book review in this volume (7) of The Master’s Trumpet. ↩︎
