// you’re reading...

Church

Peter Taylor Forsyth: Inspiring!

I’ve just finished Jason Goroncy’s ‘Descending on Humanity and Intervening in History: Notes from the Pulpit Ministry of P.T.Forsyth’ (2013: Pickwick, 373 pp.).

Forsyth (1848-1921) was an amazing man, astonishingly erudite for a practising pastor. Today we’d call him a ‘polymath’, certainly an ‘autodidact’. The modern church-goer eschews such sermons ’employing 100 words when ten would suffice’, but if you ‘hang in there’, his commitment to the Christian Gospel-without-apology is inspiring…

Take this as one jewel among hundreds: ‘The meaning of life is only to be known from life’s goal, not its career; and the goal of life is known but to God, Who achieved it in Christ, Who made us for Himself, in Christ and Who in Him sees the end from the beginning. It is known for certain but to God, and to those to whom He reveals it by His Son, His Cross, His Spirit. That is the meaning and truth of history’ (p. 280).

Forsyth was a prophet, without ‘hesitation in speaking strongly… I am not a statesman who has to weigh every word and consult a thousand interests. I have no responsibility upon me but that of uttering the truth’ (p. 56). If only our fellow-clergy were as free…

A suggestion to preaching pastors: Read a page or two a day for a year! Be challenged… and in awe of a man who modeled in his calling so many shades of integrity…

Discussion

Comments are disallowed for this post.

Comments are closed.