I have often seen publicity for a conference with a great line-up of speakers and been disappointed that there was no way I could attend. Well, now I can at least read the addresses that were given, as this is a compilation of those given at the 2009 Ligonier Conference, with contributions by Thabiti Anyabwile,…

Steven Lawson has spent the best part of forty years studying the life and ministry of the great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, and it shows in this latest addition to his excellent series ‘A Long Line of Godly Men’. This is a truly masterful summary of the ministry of ‘…arguably the preeminent preacher of any…

A letter from overseas was once addressed simply to ‘R C Chapman, University of Love, England’; yet so well known was its intended recipient and his reputation that it was correctly delivered to Robert Chapman, the Pastor of an Assembly of Christians in Barnstaple, Devon. Charles Spurgeon once described him as ‘the saintliest man I…

Matthew Henry must surely be one of the best and most influential names in Christian history and, at the same time, one of the least known lives. Now, at long last, we have been blessed with a good biographical account of this most famous of all Bible commentators, thanks to the efforts of Allan Harman.…

When I am teaching hermeneutics, I tell my students that, before they try and apply any passage of Scripture, they have to ‘go to Corinth’ first.   It’s a shorthand way (that I learned from someone else) of saying they have to determine the original application to the original readers of the passage, before they can…

I have on my bookshelves, still unread it has to be said, a copy of Hallesby’s book entitled Conscience, published back in 1933, but I know of no other book devoted to this important yet complex subject other than Christopher Ash’s recent and welcome contribution. Stimulated by his own study of Romans 14 and 15, Ash discovered…

Given the variety of good commentaries available on the Psalter, any new addition must surely justify its existence, to avoid ‘too much of a good thing’. That was my initial reaction on receiving this title, as I mentally surveyed my already substantial collection of such commentaries. However, Godfrey’s work merits a prominent place among them.…

Given his importance in the history of the church in Scotland, it strikes me as surprising that so little has been written about Thomas Chalmers and that so little is known about him by Christians in his home country – never mind elsewhere in the world. Described by one of his early biographers as ‘the…

I am puzzled. I served in Liverpool as a Pastor for a little over four years and got to know the city and something of its spiritual legacy quite well and yet I never came across the name of Richard Hobson. Yet his life was, without doubt, one of the most remarkable ministerial careers the…