The following devotional is addressed to theological students, but I think others should find it profitable as well, if only to know and realize something of the standard to which pastors are called.

To God’s Glory : A Devotional Study of the Reformed Faith for Theological Students.
by Rev. Leonard T. Van Horn

The Subject : The Authoritative Preaching of God’s Word, part 1.

The Bible Verses to Read : II Tim. 4:1-8; Rom. 10:15; I Cor. 12:28-29; I Tim. 4:14.

Every book, every series of articles must have a beginning. And, there should be a reason for their existence. The experiences of the writer in theological seminaries both as a student and as a workman, coupled with the following statement by Dr. Benjamin B. Garfield, motivated this first in a series of articles : “You are students of theology; and, just because you are students of theology, it is understood that you are religious men – especially religious men, to whom the cultivation of your religious life is a matter of profoundest concern . . . ” (Selected Shorter Writings, vol. I, p. 412).

The day is not too far off when you will stand behind God’s Holy Desk to proclaim the Gospel of Grace You will find yourself in a minority, even among evangelicals. It is the trend of the day to entertain and to present a shallow Gospel rather than preach the Doctrines of Grace.

God, in His sovereign pleasure, has ordained some to preach the Word of God. Those called of God to this task must recognize they are preaching an authoritative Word and are preaching it on God’s authority. John Calvin said, “Let the preachers boldly dare all things by the Word of God, of which they are constituted administrators. Let them constrain all the power, glory, and excellence of the world to give place to, and to obey, the divine majesty of the Word. Let them enjoin everyone by it, from the highest to the lowest. Let them edify the body of Christ.

This will be your task. It will be impossible for you to do it unless you are walking in the Spirit. There will be no place for your egotism, your desire for popularity, your arrogance. You must face the ministry with two “Woes” ever before you :
(1) Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel;
(2) Woe is unto me if I do not heed the Word of God myself.

You must realize the souls of men are involved. Paul told the Ephesian elders that he was “pure from the blood of all men.” Such must be your goal and you can only reach it as you understand your calling and commission, as you have a burden for those entrusted to your care, as you desire to please your Lord.

It is obvious the man of God must know God’s Word if he will fulfill His calling to preach it authoritatively. What is even more obvious is the necessary desire on the part of the preacher to glorify God and to magnify Christ in his preaching. When you enter the pulpit it must be with an awesome consciousness of Who you represent, and of how you must represent Him.

Our Shorter Catechism Question 89 states the preaching of the Word of God is especially “an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation.” Since it then is the primary means of grace, how can you allow yourselves to be preoccupied with other things, how can you be unconcerned about your submission to God’s Word in all things?

As you think of preaching the authoritative Word of God, in an authoritative way, may you be exhorted by Paul : “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” Be certain that your necessary, and important, studies do not wean you away from the living, vital relationship with Jesus Christ in which you give Him the preeminence in all things. There is no greater task than the one to which you feel called by God.

“To God’s Glory” by Leonard T. Van Horn. Centerville, AL, circa March 1977.

He Was the First
by Rev. David T. Myers

It was on this day, November 19, 1800 that John Chavis was licensed as a minister of the gospel by the Lexington, Virginia Presbytery. So what else is new, our readers might add?  Many of our readers who are teaching elders have dates like this. But what makes this licensing special  is that John Chavis was an African American, as we would say today, indeed the first African American minister ordained in  the Presbyterian Church.  As our title puts it, he was the first!

John Chavis was never a slave, but  from birth, a free black citizen. The dates for his birth are disputed, as is the place where he was born. Indeed, much of his early life is hidden from the researcher. But later on, his dates and events are well documented.

As a teenager, he joined the Fifth Virginia Regiment to fight in the American Revolution. He participated in six battles of that War of Independence –  at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth – as well as in the Siege of Charlestown. Three years later, he was given an official dismissal stating that he had faithfully fulfilled his military duties and entitled to all recognition for having done so.

He became a tutor after his military service for  Robert Greenwood’s orphan children, which gave him as taste for a calling which was to occupy his  life. Marrying Sarah Francis Anderson, who bore him one son in their married life, he moved his family to New Jersey, and particularly to Princeton, New Jersey, where he entered into a tutorial relationship with John Witherspoon, yes, that John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton Seminary). At age 29, he was accepted into formal classes of this College. With the death of Witherspoon, he returned to Virginia to enroll at Liberty Hall University as the first black student in that Presbyterian college, as well as becoming the first black student to graduate from any college or university in the land.

This brings us up to his licensure in the Presbyterian Church to preach the gospel, which he entered into with slaves, free black citizens, and whites. Many a soul came to the gospel through his faithful ministry. Along with that ministry, he returned to teaching both white and black children in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a private school with a high reputation.

His vocal support for an abolitionist by the name of Nat Turner brought condemnation from many white people. Indeed, several Southern States passed laws after that failed rebellion of Turner that caused free blacks to lose their standing as citizens, including John Chavis. He couldn’t preach or teach any longer.   But the Orange Presbytery, to which he had transferred. continued to support him financially to the tune of $50 per month. Also helping him and his family in financial ways after this time was a book which he published, entitled “An Essay on the Atonement” in 1833.  Four years later, he published a paper on “The Doctrine of the Extent of the Atonement of Christ.”  A secular writer termed it “a Calvinist pamphlet.”   One year later, he would die on June 15, 1838.

Words to Live By:
John Chavis is still remembered in Raleigh North Carolina by two road signs, the first ones to an African American in that southern city. Far greater honor has come to this African American for the work which he accomplished in difficult days for the Savior.  Souls are in heaven due to his faithful preaching of the good news of eternal life. Remember dear reader, what we do for the Lord on this old earth may not translate out to temporal remembrance by the public. What we do however for our Savior has eternal rewards in heaven.

The Lord Our Righteousness
by Rev. David T. Myers

We have posted articles before on the Rev. Robert Murray M’Cheyne, the Scottish Presbyterian pastor and missionary who lived in the middle part of the nineteenth century. In the period of a short life on this earth, he accomplished much for the Lord Jesus, leaving his contemporaries much to ponder by his godly example as well as later saints of God to read and admire his life.

By his own testimony, accurately recorded by his contemporaries, like Andrew Bonar, as well as himself, he lived for the world, not heeding the call to receive Christ as Savior given often by his old Christian brother. But upon the death of that brother, whom he loved deeply, he laid aside his opposition to Christ and Him crucified, and received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Soon afterwards, he was called into the gospel ministry.

One of his many gifts was that of gospel poetry, and many of them were put to music by writers in the hymnals of the day, as was the following hymn/poem. It tells the story of his own conversion in rhyme, and written on this day, November 18, 1834. It is called Jehovah Tsidkenu, The LORD my righteousness, which name is found in Jeremiah 23:6 and Jeremiah 33:16. It follows:

I once was a stranger to grace and to God,
I knew not my danger, and felt not my load;
Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the cross,
Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.

I oft read with pleasure, to soothe or engage,
Isaiah’s wild measure and John’s simple page;
But e’en when they pictured the blood-sprinkled tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.

Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,
I wept when the waters went over His soul;
Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu – ’twas nothing to me.

When free grace awoke me, by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety in self could I see –
Jehovah Tsidkenu my Savior must be.

My terrors all vanished before the sweet name,
My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came
To drink at the Fountain, life-giving and free –
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.

Jehovah Tsidkenu! My treasure and boast,
Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne’er can be lost;
In thee I shall conquer by flood and by field –
My cable, my anchor, my breastplate and shield!

Even treading the valley, the shadow of death,
This “watchword” shall rally my faltering breath;
For while from Life’s fever my God sets me free,
Jehovah Tsidkenu my death-song shall be.

Words to Live By:
Do not trust in any supposed righteousness found in yourself or your good works. They are all filthy rags in the Lord’s holy sight. We are only made righteous by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone. This is the blessed gospel. When that is done, then His perfect righteousness will be laid to your account. We will be able to stand and only stand alone by that divine righteousness. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB) Reader, have you received Jehovah Tsidkenu, or the Lord as your righteousness alone?

Lengthy, if you read the whole of it, but well worth the time. 

Befitting a long name, a longish sermon on a most important point.

William Greenough Thayer Shedd was born in June of 1820 of a distinguished New England lineage. Sensing the call to the ministry, he attended Andover Theological Seminary, and then became a pastor in the Congregational denomination in Vermont. Even though he was Old School Reformed in his thinking, he taught briefly at the New School Presbyterian institution of Auburn Theological Seminary, from 1852-1854. Leaving Auburn, he was professor of church history at Andover from 1853-1862, and then for two years as co-pastor at the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. His life’s primary work occurred while teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he was to teach for eleven years, 1874-1892. He died on November 17, 1894.

SIN IN THE HEART THE SOURCE OF ERROR IN THE HEAD

ROMANS i. 28.—”As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a reprobate mind.”

In the opening of the most logical and systematic treatise in the New Testament, the Epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul enters upon a line of argument to demonstrate the ill-desert of every human creature without exception. In order to this, he shows that no excuse can be urged upon the ground of moral ignorance. He explicitly teaches that the pagan knows that there is one Supreme God (Rom. i. 20); that He is a spirit (Rom. i. 23); that He is holy and sin-hating (Rom. i. 18); that He is worthy to be worshipped (Rom. i. 21, 25); and that men ought to be thankful for His benefits (Rom. i. 21). He affirms that the heathen knows that an idol is a lie (Rom. i. 25); that licentiousness is a sin (Rom. i. 26, 32); that envy, malice, and deceit are wicked (Rom. i. 29, 32); and that those who practise such sins deserve eternal punishment (Rom. i. 32).

In these teachings and assertions, the apostle has attributed no small amount and degree of moral knowledge to man as man,—to man outside of Revelation, as well as under its shining light. The question very naturally arises: How comes it to pass that this knowledge which Divine inspiration postulates, and affirms to be innate and constitutional to the human mind, should become so vitiated? The majority of mankind are idolaters and polytheists, and have been for thousands of years. Can it be that the truth that there is only one God is native to the human spirit, and that the pagan “knows” this God? The majority of men are earthly and sensual, and have been for thousands of years. Can it be that there is a moral law written upon their hearts forbidding such carnality, and enjoining purity and holiness?

Some theorizers argue that because the pagan man has not obeyed the law, therefore he does not know the law; and that because he has not revered and worshipped the one Supreme Deity, therefore he does not possess the idea of any such Being. They look out upon the heathen populations and see them bowing down to stocks and stones, and witness their immersion in the abominations of heathenism, and conclude that these millions of human beings really know no better, and that therefore it is unjust to hold them responsible for their polytheism and their moral corruption. But why do they confine this species of reasoning to the pagan world? Why do they not bring it into nominal Christendom, and apply it there? Why does not this theorist go into the midst of European civilization, into the heart of London or Paris, and gauge the moral knowledge of the sensualist by the moral character of the sensualist? Why does he not tell us that because this civilized man acts no better, therefore he knows no better? Why does he not maintain that because this voluptuary breaks all the commandments in the decalogue, therefore he must be ignorant of all the commandments in the decalogue? that because he neither fears nor loves the one only God, therefore he does not know that there is any such Being?

It will never do to estimate man’s moral knowledge by man’s moral character. He knows more than he practises. And there is not so much difference in this particular between some men in nominal Christendom, and some men in Heathendom, as is sometimes imagined. The moral knowledge of those who lie in the lower strata of Christian civilization, and those who lie in the higher strata of Paganism, is probably not so very far apart. Place the imbruted outcasts of our metropolitan population beside the Indian hunter, with his belief in the Great Spirit, and his worship without images or pictorial representations;[1] beside the stalwart Mandingo of the high table-lands of Central Africa, with his active and enterprising spirit, carrying on manufactures and trade with all the keenness of any civilized worldling; beside the native merchants and lawyers of Calcutta, who still cling to their ancestral Boodhism, or else substitute French infidelity in its place; place the lowest of the highest beside the highest of the lowest, and tell us if the difference is so very marked. Sin, like holiness, is a mighty leveler. The “dislike to retain God” in the consciousness, the aversion of the heart towards the purity of the moral law, vitiates the native perceptions alike in Christendom and Paganism.

The theory that the pagan is possessed of such an amount and degree of moral knowledge as has been specified has awakened some apprehension in the minds of some Christian theologians, and has led them, unintentionally to foster the opposite theory, which, if strictly adhered, to, would lift off all responsibility from the pagan world, would bring them in innocent at the bar of God, and would render the whole enterprise of Christian missions a superfluity and an absurdity. Their motive has been good. They have feared to attribute any degree of accurate knowledge of God and the moral law, to the pagan world, lest they should thereby conflict with the doctrine of total depravity. They have mistakenly supposed, that if they should concede to every man, by virtue of his moral constitution, some correct apprehensions of ethics and natural religion, it would follow that there is some native goodness in him. But light in the intellect is very different from life in the heart. It is one thing to know the law of God, and quite another thing to be conformed to it. Even if we should concede to the degraded pagan, or the degraded dweller in the haunts of vice in Christian lands, all the intellectual knowledge of God and the moral law that is possessed by the ruined archangel himself, we should not be adding a particle to his moral character or his moral excellence. There is nothing of a holy quality in the mere intellectual perception that there is one Supreme Deity, and that He has issued a pure and holy law for the guidance of all rational beings. The mere doctrine of the Divine Unity will save no man. “Thou believest,” says St. James, “that there is one God; thou doest well, the devils also believe and tremble.” Satan himself is a monotheist, and knows very clearly all the commandments of God; but his heart and will are in demoniacal antagonism with them. And so it is, only in a lower degree, in the instance of the pagan, and of the natural man, in every age, and in every clime. He knows more than he practises. This intellectual perception therefore, this inborn constitutional apprehension, instead of lifting up man into a higher and more favorable position before the eternal bar, casts him down to perdition. If he knew nothing at all of his Maker and his duty, he could not be held responsible, and could, not be summoned to judgment. As St. Paul affirms: “Where there is no law there is no transgression.” But if, when he knew God in some degree, he glorified him not as God to that degree; and if, when the moral law was written upon the heart he went counter to its requirements, and heard the accusing voice of his own conscience; then his mouth must be stopped, and he must become guilty before his Judge, like any and every other disobedient creature.

It is this serious and damning fact in the history of man upon the globe, that St. Paul brings to view, in the passage which we have selected as the foundation of this discourse. He accounts for all the idolatry and sensuality, all the darkness and vain imaginations of paganism, by referring to the aversion of the natural heart towards the one only holy God. “Men,” he says,—these pagan men—”did not like to retain God in their knowledge.” The primary difficulty was in their affections, and not in their understandings. They knew too much for their own comfort in sin. The contrast between the Divine purity that was mirrored in their conscience, and the sinfulness that was wrought into their heart and will, rendered this inborn constitutional idea of God a very painful one. It was a fire in the bones. If the Psalmist, a renewed man, yet not entirely free from human corruption, could say: “I thought of God and was troubled,” much more must the totally depraved man of paganism be filled with terror when, in the thoughts of his heart, in the hour when the accusing conscience was at work, he brought to mind the one great God of gods whom he did not glorify, and whom he had offended. It was no wonder, therefore, that he did not like to retain the idea of such a Being in his consciousness, and that he adopted all possible expedients to get rid of it. The apostle informs us that the pagan actually called in his imagination to his aid, in order to extirpate, if possible, all his native and rational ideas and convictions upon religious subjects. He became vain in his imaginations, and his foolish heart as a consequence was darkened, and he changed the glory of the incorruptible God, the spiritual unity of the Deity, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things (Rom. i. 21-23). He invented idolatry, and all those “gay religions full of pomp and gold,” in order to blunt the edge of that sharp spiritual conception of God which was continually cutting and lacerating his wicked and sensual heart. Hiding himself amidst the columns of his idolatrous temples, and under the smoke of his idolatrous incense, he thought like Adam to escape from the view and inspection of that Infinite One who, from the creation of the world downward, makes known to all men his eternal power and godhead; who, as St. Paul taught the philosophers of Athens, is not far from anyone of his rational creatures (Acts xvii. 27); and who, as the same apostle taught the pagan Lycaonians, though in times past he suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, yet left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. (Acts xiv. 16, 17).

The first step in the process of mutilating the original idea of God, as a unity and an unseen Spirit, is seen in those pantheistic religions which lie behind all the mythologies of the ancient world, like a nebulous vapor out of which the more distinct idols and images of paganism are struggling. Here the notion of the Divine unity is still preserved; but the Divine personality and holiness are lost. God becomes a vague impersonal Power, with no moral qualities, and no religious attributes; and it is difficult to say which is worst in its moral influence, this pantheism which while retaining the doctrine of the Divine unity yet denudes the Deity of all that renders him an object of either love or reverence, or the grosser idolatries that succeeded it. For man cannot love, with all his mind and heart and soul and strength, a vast impersonal force working blindly through infinite space and everlasting time.

And the second and last stage in this process of vitiating the true idea of God appears in that polytheism in the midst of which St. Paul lived, and labored, and preached, and died; in that seductive and beautiful paganism, that classical idolatry, which still addresses the human taste in such a fascinating manner, in the Venus de Medici, and the Apollo Belvidere. The idea of the unity of God is now mangled and cut up into the “gods many” and the “lords many,” into the thirty thousand divinities of the pagan pantheon. This completes the process. God now gives his guilty creature over to these vain imaginations of naturalism, materialism, and idolatry, and to an increasingly darkening mind, until in the lowest forms of heathenism he so distorts and suppresses the concreated idea of the Deity that some speculatists assert that it does not belong to his constitution, and that his Maker never endowed him with it. How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!

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The Apostle of Presbyterianism to Western Pennsylvania
by Rev. David T. Myers

You cannot miss the connection. William Tennent sets up the Log College in New Jersey to train ministers for the infant Presbyterian Church in the colonies.  Samuel Blair studies under his oversight and eventually becomes the pastor of Faggs Manor Presbyterian Church, near Cochranville, Pennsylvania. A classical school and pastoral school of theology are set up at the latter church. John McMillan, who is born on November 11, 1752, near Faggs Manor of Scots-Irish parents who emigrated from Ireland, studies at Blair’s school, both in the grammar school and then at his pastoral school. He finished his training at Pequea Academy, at Pequea, Pennsylvania under another Presbyterian minister.

Completing his training for the ministry, he attended the College of New Jersey at age 18 and finished by graduating in 1772. There, he studied at the feet of John Witherspoon. Licensed by the Presbytery of New Castle, he began a trek west on foot, preaching to scattered groups of Presbyterians along the way.  Arriving in Western Pennsylvania in 1775, he organized two Presbyterian churches, Pigeon Creek Presbyterian Church, where he ministered for nineteen years, and Chartiers Presbyterian Church, where he ministered for forty-seven years. But to clear up one important detail, McMillan hadn’t forgotten his roots or his training, and was ordained in 1777.

Rev. McMillan set up a classical school and training school for ministers in 1785, which became Canonsburg Academy in 1790, and later, Washington and Jefferson College.  Later on, the University of Pittsburgh came into existence through his efforts. His influence can also be seen in the establishment of the Pittsburgh Xenia Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania.

It was thought that he had a direct influence upon 100 ministers as they studied for the gospel ministry under him.  It was said of him that he aided the church and education more than any other man of his generation.  He was a pioneer, preacher, educator, and patriot as he engaged in being “The “Apostle of Presbyterianism in Western Pennsylvania.” He would receive his “Well done, good and faithful servant” on November 16, 1833.

Words to live by:  It was reported that he had preached 6000 sermons in his endeavor to reach the West (Western Pennsylvania) for the gospel. That simply proves that the Word will not return to us empty or void, but will accomplish what the Lord wills for His glory and the good of the elect. Let us all remember as witnesses, whether ordained or not, that God is opening and closing doors all the time. Give us insight to see what spiritual doors are open, and by faith to enter into them boldly and faithfully.

For further reading:
• Guthrie, Dwight R., John McMillan: The Apostle of Presbyterianism in the West, 1752-1833. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1952. Hb, 296 pp.; indexed; bibliography, pp. 277-287.
Articles:
• Bennett, D.M., “Concerning the Life and Work of the Rev. John McMillan, D.D., Journal of the Department of History (of the Presbyterian Church), 15.4 (1932): 208-216.
• Guthrie, Dwight R., “John McMillan Pioneer Educator,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, 33.2 (1955): 63-86.
• Macartney, Clarence Edward, “John McMillan: The Apostle of the Gospel and Presbyterianism in Western Pennsylvania,” Journal of the Department of History (of the Presbyterian Church), 15.3 (1932): 121-132.
• Slosser, Gaius J., “Concerning the Life and Work of the Reverend John McMillan, D.D.” Journal of the Department of History (of the Presbyterian Church), 15.3 (35.1): 133-158.