Preachers With Power

Douglas Kelly here reintroduces one of the richest periods of evangelical history, spanning the years 1791-1902, and captures its ethos in the lives of four of its most influential men: Daniel Baker , who spent his life as a missionary and itinerant evangelist though sought by a church and two U.S. Presidents for Washington; James Henley Thornwell , equally able as a pastor and professor but best remembered as a preacher ‘wrapt in wonder at the love, humiliation and condescension of the Trinity’; Benjamin M. Palmer , who, in the words of a Jewish rabbi, ‘got the heart as well as the ear of New Orleans’; and John L. Girardeau , ‘the Spurgeon of America’, who was so remarkably used among the black people of South Carolina. In addition to these moving lives, Dr. Kelly gives us many illuminating side-lights on Christians of the South, such as those of the Midway Church, Georgia, for whom ‘religion was a matter of their brightest hopes, their warmest feelings, their deepest convictions’. The author is not only well-qualified to write on ‘the old South’ but, more important, he inspires a fresh vision of the great lessons embodied in his subjects. He convinces us of the truth of the words of R. L. Dabney: ‘The real desideratum is not new methods, but fidelity to the old, a real revival in the hearts of ministers and Christians themselves, a faith that “feels the power of the world to come”, a solemn and deep love for souls. What we need most is repentance, and not innovation.’