The Force Of Truth

Thomas Scott had already been a minister in the Church of England for several years before he discovered that he had never been a true Christian.

Entering the ministry because his father’s plan that he should become a surgeon failed, and because he regarded the clergyman’s task as less laborious than that of the grazier he was otherwise destined to become, he was ordained to preach the gospel, although few of his personal convictions were decidedly Christian.

In this once famous best-seller, Scott describes the various influences which brought him into the kingdom of God. Chief among them were the books he read, the meditation in which he engaged, and, supremely, the patient friendship and wise pastoral care of John Newton.

Here is the testimony of a man gradually awakened to his need, struggling with the experience of showing his parishioners their need, yet being unable to point them to any final answer until he himself yielded to the claims of Christ and the force of the truth. Although he had once insisted that he and John Newton would never think alike until they were in heaven, Thomas Scott became a fine evangelical preacher and pastor and the author of a famous Commentary on the Whole Bible. William Carey wrote of him: ‘If there be anything of the work of God in my soul, I owe much of it to his preaching’.