Christian Praise and Worship in Sermons and Songs

The First Epistle of John in Form of a Dialogue – William Perkins

William Perkins was born in 1558 to Thomas and Hannah Perkins in the village of Marston Jabbett, in Bulkington parish, Warwickshire. As a youth, he indulged in recklessness, profanity, and drunkenness. In 1577, he entered Christs College in Cambridge as a pensioner, suggesting that socially he nearly qualified as gentry. He earned a bachelors degree in 1581 and a masters degree in 1584.

While a student, Perkins experienced a powerful conversion that probably began when he overheard a woman in the street chide her naughty child by alluding to drunken Perkins. That incident so humiliated Perkins that he gave up his wicked ways and fled to Christ for salvation. He gave up the study of mathematics and his fascination with black magic and the occult, and took up theology. In time, he joined up with Laurence Chaderton (15361640), who became his personal tutor and lifelong friend. Perkins and Chaderton met with Richard Greenham, Richard Rogers, and others in a spiritual brotherhood at Cambridge that espoused Calvinist and Puritan convictions.

Cambridge was the leading Puritan center of the day. Perkinss formal training was Calvinism within a scholastic framework. The strict scholastic training at Cambridge was modified somewhat, however, by Peter Ramuss influence. Ramism had won the support of the Puritans, due to its practicality. Ramus, a converted Roman Catholic, had reformed the arts curriculum by applying it to daily life. He proposed a method to simplify all academic subjects, offering a single logic for both dialectic and rhetoric to make them understandable and memorable. Chaderton first introduced Ramuss Art of Logick to Cambridge students, particularly to Gabriel Harvey, a lecturer who used Ramuss methods for reforming the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

Perkins was impressed with Harveys presentation and applied it to his manual on preaching titled The Art of Prophesying, or a treatise concerning the sacred and only true manner and method of preaching. Perkinss training in Ramuss method oriented him toward practical application rather than speculative theory, and gave him skills for becoming a popular preacher and theologian.

From 1584 until his death, Perkins served as lecturer, or preacher, at Great St. Andrews Church, Cambridge, a most influential pulpit across the street from Christs College. He also served as a fellow at Christs College from 1584 to 1595. Fellows were required to preach, lecture, and tutor students, acting as guides to learning as well as guardians of finances, morals, and manners.

Perkins died from kidney stone complications in 1602.

Revival On The Isle Of Lewis – Rev. Duncan Campbell Sermon

On Revival (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzOwqed_gET0yRGROUp_xdhB9PrYnRiAl

Link to my “Christian Devotional Readings” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Devotional-Readings/196846270398160?ref=hl

The minister at Barvas, the Reverend James Murray Mackay, had been led to write to Duncan through the prayers of his congregation, and in particular two elderly sisters named Peggy and Christine Smith who had received the God-given assurance that Duncan would be the instrument that God would use to fulfill His purposes on the island.

Duncan was quite unaware of these things and he intended to stay in Lewis for just ten days and then take a rest from his mission work. However, despite his tiredness, he immediately recognised the feeling of spiritual expectation amongst the people who had invited him to Barvas, and after the preaching service on the second evening he was there, the congregation lingered outside the church and were joined by others who had not attended the meeting. At that moment, the voice of a young man was heard praying aloud inside the church, and many were moved to join him as a sense of deep conviction came over the crowd. The church was soon filled with people calling upon God for mercy and praising Him for His goodness, and even when they separated in the early hours of the morning, small groups went on praying in various parts of the village. The powerful awakening which swept through Barvas in the following days was not an isolated event, and although Duncan Campbell’s preaching was similarly blessed when services were hastily arranged in villages such as Tarbert, Leurbost and Arnol, the revival was felt throughout the whole of Lewis, to such as extent that he later described it as “a community saturated with God.”