1Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!
Dr. Alan Cairns served for 25 years as pastor of Faith Free Presbyterian Church, Greenville, SC, before retiring and being named Pastor Emeritus in 2007. Prior to coming to the United States, he pastored Free Presbyterian churches in Dunmurry and Ballymoney, in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. Dr. Cairns also held the position Professor of Theology in the Whitefield College of the Bible in Northern Ireland and lectured in what is now Geneva Reformed Seminary in Greenville. As both an author and expositor, Dr. Cairns is revered for his Christ-centered focus and gifts of scriptural insight.
The hymn is based on a long medieval Latin poem, Salve mundi salutare, with stanzas addressing the various parts of Christ’s body hanging on the Cross. The last part of the poem, from which the hymn is taken, is addressed to Christ’s head, and begins “Salve caput cruentatum.” The poem is often attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), but it first appears in the 14th century.
The last part of the poem was translated into German by the prolific Lutheran hymnist Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676). The German hymn begins, “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden.
The hymn was first translated into English in 1752 by John Gambold (1711-1771), an Anglican vicar in Oxfordshire. His translation begins, “O Head so full of bruises.” In 1830 a new translation of the hymn was made by an American Presbyterian minister, James Waddel Alexander (1804-1859). Alexander’s translation, beginning “O sacred head, now wounded,” became one of the most widely used in 19th and 20th century hymnals.
Another English translation, based on the German, was made in 1861 by Sir Henry Baker. Published in Hymns Ancient and Modern, it begins, “O sacred head surrounded by crown of piercing thorn.”
In 1899 the English poet Robert Bridges (1844-1930) made a fresh translation from the original Latin, beginning “O sacred Head, sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn.” This is the version used in the Church of England’s New English Hymnal (1986) and several other late 20th-century hymn books.
The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein Gmuth ist mir verwiret.” The tune was appropriated for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656. Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used it five times in his St. Matthew’s Passion; this arrangement has come to be known as Passion Chorale 7676D. Bach also used this melody in the opening choral and triumphant final chorus of his Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) was born July 24, 1874, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Converted in his teen years under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he studied art and archaeology at the University of Edinburgh before answering a call from God to the Christian ministry. He then studied theology at Dunoon College. From 1906-1910 he conducted an itinerant Bible-teaching ministry in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
In 1910, Chambers married Gertrude Hobbs. They had one daughter, Kathleen.
In 1911 he founded and became principal of the Bible Training College in Clapham, London, where he lectured until the school was closed in 1915 because of World War I. In October 1915 he sailed for Zeitoun, Egypt (near Cairo), where he ministered to troops from Australia and New Zealand as a YMCA chaplain. He died there November 15, 1917, following surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Although Oswald Chambers wrote only one book, Baffled to Fight Better, more than thirty titles bear his name. With this one exception, published works were compiled by Mrs. Chambers, a court stenographer, from her verbatim shorthand notes of his messages taken during their seven years of marriage. For half a century following her husband’s death she labored to give his words to the world.
My Utmost For His Highest, his best-known book, has been continuously in print in the United States since 1935 and remains in the top ten titles of the religious book bestseller list with millions of copies in print. It has become a Christian classic.
“Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter; but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power for thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute losing of one’s self in God’s glory, and an ever-present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God–men who can set the Church ablaze for God; not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God.”
Note the factors that are prerequisites in a man that E.M. Bounds say’s “can set the Church ablaze for God” through prayer.
Some relevant verses to meditate on:
John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
John 9:31 “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him.”
Psalm 34:15 “The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous And His ears are open to their cry.”
Psalm 66:18 “If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear;”
Yes, remember to pray always…but remember that dying to self and living an abiding life in Christ is what gives prayer its power.
Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Can you stand with the apostle Paul in proclaiming, without hesitance, that you too “no longer live, but it is Christ who lives in you?” I ask this not from a seat of judgment, or as one who “has already attained (Phil 3:12),” but rather that I may encourage my brethren to examine themselves always.
Edward M. Bounds – (1835-1913), American Methodist minister and author.
Edward McKendree Bounds was trained and apprenticed as an attorney, but instead of pursuing a legal career, he entered the ministry in his early twenties. In 1859 he was ordained as pastor of the the Monticello Methodist Church in Missouri.
Bounds was a chaplain in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was captured by the Union Army in Franklin, Tennessee and later released. After his release, he strove to build up the spiritual state of Franklin by starting weekly prayer sessions.
Bounds was an associate editor of the official Methodist newspaper, The Christian Advocate, and is best known for his numerous books on the subject of prayer.
“Edward McKendree Bounds did not merely pray well that he might write well about prayer. He prayed because the needs of the world were upon him. He prayed, for long years, upon subjects which the easy-going Christian rarely gives a thought, and for objects which men of less thought and faith are always ready to call impossible. From his solitary prayer-vigils, year by year, there arose teaching equaled by few men in modern Christian history. He wrote transcendently about prayer, because he was himself, transcendent in its practice.
“As breathing is a physical reality to us so prayer was a reality for Bounds. He took the command, ‘Pray without ceasing’ almost as literally as animate nature takes the law of the reflex nervous system, which controls our breathing.” -Claude Chilton, Jr., in the Foreword to Necessity of Prayer.
Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon (June 19, 1834 January 31, 1892) was a British Reformed Baptist preacher who remains highly influential among Christians of different denominations, among whom he is still known as the “Prince of Preachers.” In his lifetime, Spurgeon preached to around 10,000,000 people, often up to 10 times a week at different places. His sermons have been translated into many languages. Spurgeon was the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in London for 38 years. In 1857, he started a charity organization called Spurgeon’s which now works globally. He also founded Spurgeon’s College, which was named after him after his death.
Spurgeon was a prolific author of many types of works including sermons, an autobiography, a commentary, books on prayer, a devotional, a magazine, and more. Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages during his lifetime. Arguably, no other author, Christian or otherwise, has more material in print than C.H. Spurgeon.
2 Peter 1:10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
2 Peter 1:11 For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
So far as I can find out, I have no theory about Jesus to make these talks fit into. I have tried to find out for myself what the old Book of God tells about Him. And here I am trying to tell to others, as simply as I can, what I found. It was by the tedious, twisting path of doubt that I climbed the hill of truth up to some of its summits of certainty. I am free to confess that I am ignorant of the subject treated here save for the statements of that Book, and for the assent within my own spirit to these statements, which has greatly deepened the impression they made, and make. There is no question raised here about that Book itself, but simply a taking and grouping up together of what it says. ( Summary by Introductory Section )
In the early 1900s, S.D. Gordon was a widely traveled speaker in high demand. A prolific author, he wrote more than 25 devotional books, most with the phrase “Quiet Talks” in the title. His first book sold half a million copies over 40 years! He died in 1936.
E.W. Kenyon said that “S.D. Gordon is a sporadic outburst of divine grace. He is unusual, as are all of God’s rare tools… he is perfectly balanced in the Word and in the Spirit. He represents that rare but vanishing class of spiritually minded men of the last generation.”
“The Treasury of Quiet Talks Selections from S.D. Gordon” (1951) by John W. Bradbury gives this brief biography (adapted): “Samuel Dickey Gordon ministered the deep things of God, he was not an ordained minister, He could boast no academic degrees, he was never doctored [he never received an earned or honorary doctorate]. Theological concepts he obtained from his Bible. A plain man, controlled by a deep desire to edify God’s people, he won the respect of the learned and at the same time the affection of the simple.
“Gordon lived a long and useful life. He was born in Philadelphia August 12, 1859 and died June 1936. A public school education was all the academic training he had. But, as a young man, he was hard working , consecrated and sought the best God had for him. He served as assistant secretary of the Philadelphia Young Men’s Christian Association in 1884-86 so efficiently that he became state secretary for the YMCA in Ohio, serving from 1886 to 1895. In this period he developed a quiet style of devotional speaking which was quite the opposite of the powerful forensics which dominated the pulpit style of that period.
“Gordon then took four years to visit the mission fields of the Orient and to tour Europe on speaking missions. His quiet manner, simplicity, illustrative quality and gentle spirit won for him a great following wherever he went. “Quiet Talks on Power” was his first book, published by Fleming H. Revell in 1901. Gordon was then forty-two. His “Quiet Talks on Prayer” followed in 1904, “Quiet Talks on Service” and “Quiet Talks about Jesus”, in 1906. The demand for his books had grown so great that he could produce two in a year and follow thereafter with one series of Quiet Talks each year until 1915 when the first World War disrupted everything. After the war he resumed his Quiet Talks in books but not at the same speed. Altogether he produced twenty-five books, twenty-two of which belonged to the Quiet Talks series.
“An incessant and tireless itinerant, Gordon never lacked for opportunities to preach. He never called himself a preacher, preferring the title of lecturer. In a real sense he was unique. His manner of speaking, never dull, always illustrated by parabolic stories, had gripping power to hold the attention and stir the heart.”
His brother, James Logan Gordon, was an ordained minister, and served three pastorates in Canada and then at the First Congregational Church in San Francisco.
John Bunyan (1628-1688), Puritan author, had very little schooling. He followed his father in the tinker’s trade, and he served in the parliamentary army from1644 to 1647. Bunyan married in 1649 and lived in Elstow until 1655, when his wife died. He then moved to Bedford, and married again in 1659. John Bunyan was received into the Baptist church in Bedford by immersion in 1653.
In 1655, he became a deacon and began preaching, with marked success from the start. In 1658 he was indicted for preaching without a license. The authorities were fairly tolerant of him for a while, and he did not suffer imprisonment until November of 1660, when he was taken to the county jail in Silver Street, Bedford, and there confined (with the exception of a few weeks in 1666) for 12 years until January 1672. He afterward became pastor of the Bedford church. In March of 1675 he was again imprisoned for preaching publicly without a license, this time being held in the Bedford town jail. In just six months this time he was freed, (no doubt the authorities were growing weary of providing Bunyan with free shelter and food) and he was not bothered again by the authorities.
He wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in two parts, of which the first appeared at London in 1678,which he had begun during his imprisonment in 1676. The second part appeared in 1684. The earliest edition in which the two parts were combined in one volume came out in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693. The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most successful allegory ever written, and like the Bible has been extensively translated into other languages.
He wrote many other books, including one which discussed his inner life and reveals his preparation for his appointed work is Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). He became a popular preacher as well as a very voluminous author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. In theology he was a Puritan, but not a partisan. He was no scholar, except of the English Bible, but that he knew thoroughly. He also drew much influence from Martin Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.
Some time before his final release from prison he became involved in a controversy with two theologians of his day: Kiffin and Paul. In 1673 he published his Differences in Judgement about Water-Baptism no Bar to Communion, in which he took the ground that “the Church of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of the communion the Christian that is discovered to be a visible saint of the word, the Christian that walketh according to his own light with God.” While he agreed as a Baptist that water baptism was God’s ordinance, he refused to make “an idol of it,” and he disagreed with those who would dis-fellowship from Christians who did not adhere to water baptism
Kiffin and Paul published a rejoinder in Serious Reflections (London, 1673), in which they set forth the argument in favor of the restriction of the Lord’s Supper to baptized believers. The controversy resulted in the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists leaving the question of communion with the unbaptized open. Bunyan’s church permitted pedobaptists (those who baptize children, such as the Calvinistic Presbyterian Church) to fellowship and eventually, Bunyans church even became a pedobaptist church.
On a trip to London, he caught a severe cold, and he died at the house of a friend at Snow Hill on August 31, 1688. His grave lies in the cemetery at Bunhill Fields in London.
John Berridge – The Heaviest Afflictions on this Side of Hell
John Berridge, Vicar of Everton, was a leading 18th century evangelical and a passionate open-air preacher who travelled all over East Anglia. Some historians claim that had he lived in London, he would have been one of the most famous preachers that ever lived. Instead he simply became known as “the countryside pedlar of the Gospel”.
Born in 1716, he was the son of a wealthy grazier in Nottinghamshire. He spent much of his childhood living with an aunt who looked after him while he attended a nearby school.
The school failed to give him any religious teaching, but he used to visit a school-friend at home who would passionately read the Bible to him.
Young John Berridge was too polite to show his deep dislike, and he continued to listen respectfully whenever his friend read to him.
At fourteen, he returned home. His father hoped that he would one day inherit the family farm and continue to run it in the time-honoured manner.
To his father’s great regret, he showed no aptitude whatever for farming. Instead he developed an interest in spiritual matters. After several years his father despaired of teaching him the trade and in 1734 sent him to study theology at Clare College, Cambridge.
John Berridge found both the academic and social life at university highly stimulating. As well as reading theology, he studied logic, mathematics, and metaphysics. He built up a wide circle of friends, graduated with honours and in 1742 became a Fellow of the College.
However his wide-ranging interests brought him into contact with diverse ideas and theories which distracted him from studying the Bible.
Even so he was ordained in 1745, but still felt no wish to take up parish duties until 1749 when he became curate at Stapleford near Cambridge. Despite his enthusiastic sermons which advocated a life of good works, he had little success.
In 1755 he became Vicar of Everton, near Sandy, but still his preaching failed to have any effective results.
Later that year, as John Berridge was meditating on the Bible, he discovered that trying to earn salvation by good deeds alone was mere vanity and pride. Instead he began to recognise the idea of “justification by faith” — that salvation required an act of sovereign grace by God.
This discovery transformed his whole life. He lost no time in making up for the years he had wasted. He abandoned and burnt all his previous sermons and began to preach salvation by “faith” rather than “works”.
The effects were amazing: “Some of his hearers cried out aloud hysterically, some were thrown into strong convulsions, and some fell into a kind of trance or catalepsy, which lasted a long time.”
John Berridge’s ministry and outreach had a new authority. Within a few months people in the large congregations that gathered to hear him were regularly converted.
By 1758 he would ride on horseback far and wide across the whole of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and the surrounding counties. He went wherever people could be found. He preached up to twelve open-air sermons and travelled over 100 miles each week.
Compelled by a desire to spread the good news of salvation, the indefatigable John Berridge became a leading evangelical in the same vein as the 18th century revivalists, such as the Wesley brothers, Daniel Rowlands and other Methodists.
Like them, he angered the clergy in whose parishes he preached, and the Bishop of Ely, Matthias Mawson, threatened to dispossess him unless he put a stop to his itinerant preaching. But the bishop backed down when William Pitt the elder, a friend from his Cambridge days, intervened.
Unlike some Methodists, he resisted marriage, and wrote that there was “no trap so mischievous to the field-preacher as wedlock; and it is laid for him at every hedge corner.”
Although John Berridge was not as well renowned for his preaching as George Whitefield and John Wesley, he played a vital part in the eighteenth century revival, as his contemporaries recognised.
Henry Venn, who accompanied Berridge on preaching tours, said in 1776 that he had “the largest congregations that were ever known …. and greatly was his word owned of the Lord.”
George Whitfield, who invited him to preach regularly at his chapel in Tottenham Court Road, London, described him as “a burning and shining light”.
After a successful ministry of more than thirty years, both his sight and hearing began to fail. He died at the age of seventy-seven. Thousands of people attended his funeral.
At his own request John Berridge was buried on the north-east side of Everton churchyard as “a means of consecrating it”. This piece of ground had previously been reserved for those who had come to a dishonourable end.
33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
J.C. Ryle – (1816-1900), first Anglican bishop of Liverpool
John Charles Ryle was born at Macclesfield and was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was a fine athlete who rowed and played Cricket for Oxford, where he took a first class degree in Greats and was offered a college fellowship (teaching position) which he declined. The son of a wealthy banker, he was destined for a career in politics before answering a call to ordained ministry.
He was spiritually awakened in 1838 while hearing Ephesians 2 read in church. He was ordained by Bishop Sumner at Winchester in 1842. After holding a curacy at Exbury in Hampshire, he became rector of St Thomas’s, Winchester (1843), rector of Helmingham, Suffolk (1844), vicar of Stradbroke (1861), honorary canon of Norwich (1872), and dean of Salisbury (1880). In 1880, at age 64, he became the first bishop of Liverpool, at the recommendation of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He retired in 1900 at age 83 and died later the same year.
Ryle was a strong supporter of the evangelical school and a critic of Ritualism. Among his longer works are Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (1869), Expository Thoughts on the Gospels (7 vols, 1856-69) and Principles for Churchmen (1884).
8Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
John Ryle had his beginnings at Oxford, where he was an athlete and first class student of the Greats. He was headed for a career in politics, but then was called to the ministry. This work is a study of holiness, or Christian perfection. Ryle works to debunk many of the popular beliefs of his day concerning holiness. Reviewers praise his balance of honest, tough-love messages and compassionate, pastoral care. An intense but readable book, Holiness has been inspiration for living a Christian life for over a century. Believers looking for instructions on how to improve their lifestyle and continue the process of sanctification will value this book, which discusses grace, God’s love, and, of course, holiness.
(This volume is considered the best book on
the Christian life that has EVER been written.)
Chapters on:
Sin
Sanctification
Holiness
The Fight
The Cost
Growth
Assurance
Moses—An Example
Lot—A Beacon
A Woman to Be Remembered
Christ’s Greatest Trophy
The Ruler of the Waves
The Church Which Christ Builds
Visible Churches Warned
Do you love Me?
Without Christ
Thirst Relieved
Unsearchable Riches
Needs of the Times
Christ is All
“From his conversion [in 1837] to his burial [in 1900], J.C. Ryle was entirely one-dimensional. He was a one-book man; he was steeped in Scripture; he bled the Bible. As only Ryle could say, ‘It is still the first book which fits the child’s mind when he begins to learn religion, and the last to which the old man clings as he leaves the world.’
“This is WHY his works have lasted—and will last—they bear the stamp of eternity. Today, more than a hundred years after his passing, Ryle’s works stand at the crossroads between the historic faith and modern evangelicalism. Like signposts, they direct us to the ‘old paths.’ And, like signposts, they are meant to be read.”
“He [J.C. Ryle] was great through the abounding grace of God. He was great in stature; great in mental power; great in spirituality; great as a preacher and expositor of God’s most holy Word; great in hospitality; great as a writer of Gospel tracts; great as a Bishop of the Reformed Evangelical Protestant Church in England, of which he was a noble defender; great as first Bishop of Liverpool. I am bold to say, that perhaps few men in the nineteenth century did as much for God, for truth, and for righteousness, among the English speaking race, and in the world, as our late Bishop.”
~ Rev. Richard Hobson, three days after Ryle’s burial in 1900.
Christian Sermons and Audio Books 